I have a love-hate relationship with 24 hour news channels. BBC News is probably my second most watched channel after BBC 1, and I enjoy nothing more than waking up to the delightful Sian Williams of a weekday morning. Not literally I wistfully add!
Unfortunately since the advent of 24/7 coverage all news stations feel the need to fill every last second with mind numbing repetitive soundbites, and this was never better illustrated than by the reporting yesterday of the so-called suspicious packages found on cargo planes at Newark & Philadelphia airports in the USA and at East Midlands airport over here.
In the forty minutes or so after 5 o'clock I had BBC News on no more information was gleaned than could have been reported in five minutes at 5 o'clock, ie, the package at East Midlands was not a bomb but was "potentially sinister" (a dozen Halloween clown's costumes perhaps?) and that they had no idea what was found over the pond apart from the usual "white powder."
The packages came from Yemen so of course they must be highly suspect. Doubtless "aQ" and his mates are behind it....
You may detect a smidgeon of cynicism here, and you would be right. Coincidentally earlier this week, Martin Broughton, Chairman of British Airways, laid into the British Airports Authority and the European airport authorities for, as he put it, "kowtowing" to the Americans over their demands for ludicrous paranoid and excessive security checks on us poor long-suffering passengers at those god awful cattle sheds they call airports. Demands incidentally, that are not enforced within the United States' own borders! Two days later there is a big security alert re the "suspicious packages", all highly convenient for governments as it keeps us scared, just how they like it, and where BAA may have loosened security measures they will probably now no longer consider it.
Today it now transpires that two packages containing explosives (or did they?) were intercepted (or were they?) in Dubai causing the alert to be sent out to other cargo planes bound for the US. The parcels "bore "aQ" hallmarks" according to Dubai police. In my opinion the term "aQ" is applied whenever anything suspect is found or an act of terrorism is carried out, creating the impression that this is a well organised and connected worldwide organisation intent on the downfall of the West. Personally, I consider that yes, there are small organised cells, but I strongly doubt that "aQ" if it actually exists at all has the wherewithal to globally co-ordinate all these small scale operations. If you repeat something enough times it becomes self-fulfilling, and in this case that applies to both the Middle East and the West.
The paranoia created allows first world governments to continue the cycle of fear to the extent where in this country legislation is soon to be passed allowing security services to snoop on all our emails and URL connections with impunity, as most of the public will either not know about it or will be too cowed to protest.
That turned into a bit of rant!
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Another update (16:00 Saturday) - the device at East Midlands airport did contain explosives (so we're told) and "could have brought down an aircraft". The perpetrators apparently would not have known where or when the device would have exploded. That sounds like an operation planned by a highly organised and efficient world wide terror organisation, don't you think?
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