Britain turns Brown

Hokey “bomb” threats in London and Glasgow reveal new PM’s colors

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
7/1/07

By now, we’ve all heard about how terrorists, with horrible efficiency, caused all of Glasgow and its environs to vanish in a vast explosion that killed nearly thirty million Scots, or roughly 500% of the inhabitants of the country. That’s normal, by the way. You usually have to kill a Scot several times before he’ll lie down and be still. Britons were horrified, thunderstruck by a level of terror that had never been seen on the Sculpted Isle, or even in the Sculptured Aisles. (The Sculptured Aisles, like the Isle of Mann and Wyoming, are a semi-autonomous part of Great Britain, and would normally be considered a part of that Island were they not separated from it by stretches of open water, and did they not have their own currency, preferring Tesla coils to AC).

The “attacks” in Britain, no matter how deadly the intent might have been, were nothing more than low farce. One car bomb, which, had it been a real bomb, would have been most murderously placed, at Haymarket by Piccadilly, and the other would also have had maximum effect, being situated in a heavily trafficked area. The first fizzled, the second didn’t go off at all, and being illegally parked in one of London’s busiest areas, quickly attracted official notice and in fact had been impounded and towed off before anyone noticed anything unusual about the contents. As for the incident at Glasgow, the SUV hit the building, caught fire, which in turn caused a small part of the terminal’s facing to catch fire. On the plus side, it was one less SUV cluttering up the M-1. The driver apparently climbed out, poured gas over himself, and set himself alight. Truly an exercise in pathos. If he dies, I can just imagine his next conversation. “Seventy two virgins? You think you earned seventy-two virgins with that embarrassing cockup!? You made the whole of Islam look clownish! No, my boy, I’m not giving you any virgins. Instead, I’m sending you to the worst place in all of the afterlife. That’s right! I sentence you to BAPTIST HEAVEN!!”.

That’s assuming, of course, that the event at Glasgow was anything other than an ordinary car crash. They seem to be retracting the self-immolation element of the story, and now admit that no explosives, other than the fuel in the tank, were found. So maybe the guy gets seventy virgins and points off his driver’s licence.

Now, the Brits have this tradition. When hit with adversity, they tend to get resolute. Whether it’s Henry the Fifth and his merry band at Agincourt, or Churchill snarling defiance over the Beeb at Hitler, Briton’s leaders rise to the occasion and urge their people to keep a stiff upper lip. Keeping a stiff upper lip has made Brits among the most courageous people on earth, but unfortunately also plays a role in that other well-known national trait, British teeth.

The events of the past couple of days hardly count as adversity. It certainly doesn’t compare with 7/7, the terror attacks in the Tube and on the double deckers of London a couple of years back, and it’s not in the same league as the IRA bombings of the 60s and 70s. Anyone remember Harrod’s? These “terror attacks” barely climbed above the level of April Fools’ pranks. London saw a lot more bombs from labor strife in the late 19th century.

It’s hard to imagine Churchill getting on the radio to talk about fighting them on the landing grounds and on the beaches. “No matter how many SUVs they ruin, we shall never stop laughing.” Any proper PM would have been contemptuous if he bothered to respond at all.

Not Gordon Brown, though. According to the Guardian, “The prime minister, Gordon Brown, warned Britain was subject to a ‘long-term and sustained’ terror threat and warned that attacks like those attempted over the last two days ‘can happen at any time’.”

Be afraid, Britain. Be very, very afraid. They’re under your beds, they’re in your closets, they hide in your tea kettles, on the beaches and especially on the landing grounds, only now we call them airports, don’t we? We shall always surrender, or at least whimper a lot and give up.

When Blair finally faded into the sunset, or at least the middle east, a lot of Britons – including most Labourites – heaved a sigh of relief and hoped the new guy would a bit less blatant in the office’s propensity to leg-hump the President of the United States.

Since it’s unlikely that Brown really wants Londoners to quiver in the alleyways hugging their knees and peeing themselves in fright, it’s likely that the “we’re-all-gonna-die” talk was for the benefit of Washington, which adores public officials who are anxious to inform people that a ragtag band of clowns with explosives is a greater threat than Hitler and Stalin combined, and that the only thing for it is to throw ourselves to the ground and beg George W. Bush to protect us from the bogeymen.

That something as bad as 9/11, or even much worse, could be in the works is beyond dispute. But panicking the public with an eye to quashing their rights and freedoms is no answer to that.

The government of the US, and now, apparently, Gordon Brown, want to protect us all from the big bad terrorists. What they don’t or won’t admit is that terrorism, by its very structure, defeats the ability of government to protect anyone. In fact, it’s a tactical jiu-jitsu, using the power of the government against itself.

The government has a vast military, which avails it naught against bombers. It has the power to watch, to control, to track, but it is a power that catches precious few terrorists but instead alienates its own populace, who, even if they are timid enough to believe that big daddy government will protect them from the mad bombers, quickly tire of the endless watching and restrictions and limitations, the guarded speech and endless sense of being watched that a government in full protect mode instills. They quickly learn to hate the false security.

Brown finished up his speech by saying, “I think it is very important that the British people send a message to the terrorists that they will not be allowed to undermine our British way of life. But it is also important that the public are vigilant, that we take proper precautions.”

In other words. Watch each other. Snitch. Deal with the endless cameras, the posters begging you to turn in your neighbor, the not-so-subtle appeals to racism and xenophobia. Remember, the fatherland comes before all.

Brown isn’t going to be any better than Blair. And Blair was just plain embarrassing.