Monthly Archives: December 2005

DIY Sabotage Manual — CIA version

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Intriguing Flickr slideshow of a sabotage manual allegedly produced by the CIA in the 1980s for anyone interested in destabilising the Nicaraguan government. Helpful advice such as:

BURN THE LOCAL POLICE STATION!
1. Fill a narrow-necked bottle with petrol, kerosene or other burnable liquid. If possible, add shredded soap or sawdust…

It’s a bit dated, of course, but still….

Other suggestions include:

  • Threaten the boss. Phone in false fire alarms and bomb threats!
  • Leave lights on and taps running.
  • Don’t maintain vehicles and machines.
  • Obstruct roads with trees, rocks or ditches!
  • Disable car batteries.
  • Cut the cables of telephones and alarm systems!
  • Make BIG explosions!

    This last suggestion is clearly popular with disaffected Iraqis.

    Er, it has to be a spoof — doesn’t it? After all the US government is committed to upholding the rule of law and spreading democracy everywhere.

    • Ambiguous domain names

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    Quentin has a nice link to an amusing site which collects domain names that are unintentionally funny. Example: an organisation with the perfectly respectable name of Experts Exchange, but the URL www.expertsexchange.com. And then there is the pen specialist, Pen Island. I leave you to imagine the URL.

    Words as weapons

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    Although the content of the speech was highly political, especially in its clinical dissection of post-war US foreign policy, it relied on Pinter’s theatrical sense, in particular his ability to use irony, rhetoric and humour, to make its point. This was the speech of a man who knows what he wants to say but who also realises that the message is more effective if rabbinical fervour is combined with oratorical panache.

    At one point, for instance, Pinter argued that “the United States supported and in many cases engendered every rightwing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the second world war”. He then proceeded to reel off examples. But the clincher came when Pinter, with deadpan irony, said: “It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.” In a few sharp sentences, Pinter pinned down the willed indifference of the media to publicly recorded events. He also showed how language is devalued by the constant appeal of US presidents to “the American people”. This was argument by devastating example. As Pinter repeated the lulling mantra, he proved his point that “The words ‘the American people’ provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance.” Thus Pinter brilliantly used a rhetorical device to demolish political rhetoric.

    Michael Billington, writing in the Guardian on Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture, delivered from a wheelchair.

    Lovely phrase that — “voluptuous cushion of reassurance”. Must remember it.

    Buy shares, tip them in your column, go to gaol

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    The three Daily Mirror financial journalists who tipped shares they owned have been convicted and may go to gaol. The odd thing is that this kind of thing has been going on for as long as I can remember. But these guys were small fry — they only netted between £17,000 and £41,000. If they’d made serious money they would probably have been safe.

    Dear Santa

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    Alan Coren in The Times, imagining the kinds of letters which might be arriving in Lapland this year. Sample:

    dere snata

    i am riting on behalf of my partnr, nicklas, 8, on acount of he wares this micky mouse wotch, and i am ashamed to be seen out wiv him, it is not sheek like yu see in mens magzines, i wuld like him to ware sunnink cool and fashnibble such as a wane roony wotch, wich he wuld do if yu brung him wun for crismas. if yu felt he woznt reddy for that, praps yu culd meet him half-way, with, frinstance, a micky roony wotch. for miself, i wuld like a DVD of teddys bare piknik

    yuors
    cheryl

    Sucking up to the Cameroons

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    There’s only one word for the media coverage of ‘Dave’ Cameron: nauseating. The Tory party has been hijacked by a bunch of refugees from Notting Hill. (The press has already dubbed them the Cameroons.) I keep expecting to find Hugh Grant lurking somewhere at the back of the publicity pictures. So it was nice to find some robustly sceptical comment at last — in this case a splendid column by Jonathan Freedland in today’s Guardian. Sample:

    Progressives should start telling the media: enough of the infatuation – it’s getting embarrassing. For a “compassionate conservative”, as Cameron styles himself, is not a new creation. We have seen one before – and his name was George Bush.

    He too knew how to talk nice — “No child left behind” he promised in 2000, usually surrounded by plenty of telegenic black and female faces – but once he had installed himself in power, he was as ruthless a rightwinger as any Republican in history.

    Cameron is no chum of Bush – and the president is unlikely to alienate Blair by getting too cosy with him now – but the parallel is not entirely bogus. For one thing, Cameron too is surrounded by ideological neoconservatives, his campaign manager and shadow chancellor George Osborne chief among them. Cameron strongly backed the Iraq war while his allies, Michael Gove and Ed Vaizey, last month founded the Henry Jackson Society, named after the late US senator who is the patron saint of neoconservatism.

    It’s all of a piece with a new Tory leader who wants to look and sound kinder and gentler, but is actually truer and bluer. Europe hardly featured in the leadership contest, but one of Cameron’s few specific promises was to pull his MEPs out of the European People’s Party grouping in the European parliament – leaving them instead to rub along with a few ragtag nationalists and hardliners on the fringes. Even IDS [Iain Duncan-Smith] rejected that move as too batty.

    I’ve always thought that the phrase “compassionate conservatism” is an oxymoron, like “military intelligence”.

    Fact: The Henry Jackson Society was founded by a group of right-wing academics in Peterhouse, Cambridge. As I understand it, Gove and Vaizey were just early Parliamentary ‘patrons’ of the outfit. I was invited to join (one of the founders is a friend of mine), but gracefully declined, because I was unable to sign up to some of the Society’s key ‘principles’. I could not, for example: “Support the necessary furtherance of European military modernisation and integration under British leadership, preferably within NATO.”

    Nice to see also that Simon Hoggart had noticed young Dave’s curious repertoire of hand signals:

    There’s the fly fisherman, casting his line, the University Challenge student suddenly hitting the buzzer, and the pinball wizard working his flippers.

    That’s more like it. Why, I feel better already.

    The Sony DRM fiasco: one puzzle solved…

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    One big mystery about the Sony DRM fiasco is why were the anti-virus companies so slow to deal with the Sony rootkit? Now we know. The answer: they were afraid of

    violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, according to security expert Dan Kaminsky. He says creating new software to remove DRM software is a violation of the DMCA, forcing antivirus companies to create patches that eliminate the software’s dangerous behavior, but do not remove it.