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Behold My Virtue (2)

December 8, 2008 47 Comments

The Guardian’s Leo Hickman shares his wisdom on today’s security breach at Stansted Airport, courtesy of activists from the environmentalist group, Plane Stupid:

When I first heard about protesters breaching the perimeter fence at Stansted airport on the radio this morning, my first reaction, given Plane Stupid’s previous actions, was to wonder why the campaign group hadn’t done something on this scale earlier in the year.

My first reaction was to wonder whether those inconvenienced by this self-aggrandising display would be able to demand compensation from the airport’s security provider. Using a snowplough to shift protestors is faintly amusing, I grant you, but in an age of terrorist attacks on airports, five hours is a long time to wait and firearms might have expedited matters.

A second reaction came to mind after seeing this on the Plane Stupid website: “Plane Stupid welcomes actions in its name, provided they are non-violent and accountable.” Accountable, eh? Presumably, then, the fifty or so middle-class hippies and student eco-poseurs would have no objection in principle to facing whatever legal action might be taken against them individually by the airlines, by the airport and by each and every one of the inconvenienced travellers. And, presumably, the protestors will soon be offering to personally reimburse the thousands of people affected by their actions. Even, one hopes, to the point of destitution.

Mr Hickman continues:

The protest has caused, on average, 90 minutes’ worth of delays at the airport. In other words, not too dissimilar to any normal day at a British airport.

Actually, the effects of the protest, which began at 3:15am, are still being felt as I type, with stranded passengers being interviewed live on television some eleven hours later. Some 56 flights have so far been cancelled, affecting thousands of passengers, and disruption is expected to continue for up to three days. Mr Hickman doesn’t seem inclined to linger on the possibility that quite a few of those passengers may have been travelling on matters of urgency and personal or financial import – weddings, funerals, job interviews, business meetings, etc – and that their needless delay may have serious consequences. Instead, Mr Hickman’s attention is on much loftier matters:

Non-violent direct action rubs against the grain of popular opinion in order to get itself noticed amid a sea of self-interest, apathy and day-to-day distractions.

Ah, the protestors wish to be noticed. Sorry, they wish their cause to be noticed.

It is born out of desperation and frustration that the normal democratic processes have failed, are flawed, or are corrupted by vested interests, despite clear evidence that the current path is dangerous or unjust.

It’s odd how some are so keen to dismiss the “normal democratic processes” in favour of undemocratic, criminal – and much more exciting – avenues. Specifically, avenues unburdened by details like persuasion, verification and reasoned argument, and which instead hold passengers to ransom with a display of theatrical onanism. One wonders if Mr Hickman would be similarly well-disposed to other fringe groups, perhaps groups antithetical to his worldview, which nonetheless deem their cause of such importance that discussion and legality are readily dispensed with.

How many people now see Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela and Emmeline Pankhurst as criminals rather than heroes, despite the fact they all broke the laws of their day to protest for what we now see as worthy causes?

At this point, comment is perhaps unnecessary.

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Written by: David
Comics

Context is for Weaklings

13 Comments

In a similar vein to this, here’s a random panel.


Comet_the_super_horse


A partial explanation can be found here.














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Written by: David
History Politics Psychodrama

Resentful Beings

December 6, 2008 13 Comments

Theodore Dalrymple ponders terrorism, its apologists, and those most readily drawn to it:

Although I am not an historian, it has long seemed to me that some acquaintance with the history of Nineteenth Century Russia is absolutely crucial to understanding the modern world, for it was there that the various forms of modern revolutionary terrorism, and politics as the pursuit of an ideological end, first developed. And the first terrorists were certainly not downtrodden peasants brainwashed by religious or other leaders: they were either aristocrats suffering angst at their own privilege in the midst of poverty, or members of the newly-emerged middle classes, angry that their education had not resulted in the influence in society to which they thought themselves entitled by virtue of their intelligence, idealism and knowledge.


This pattern has been repeated over and over again. Latin America is a very good example. Castro was the spoilt son of a self-made millionaire who had a personal grudge against society because he was illegitimate and sometimes humiliated for it; in other words, he was both highly privileged, with a sense of entitlement, and deeply resentful, always a dreadful combination. Ernesto Guevara was of partially aristocratic descent, whose upbringing was that of a bohemian bourgeois, who was too egotistical and lacking in compassion for individual human beings to accept the humdrum discipline of medical practice.


The leaders of the guerrilla movement in Guatemala (a country, oddly, with many parallels to Nineteenth Century Russia) were of bourgeois and educated origin; one of them was the son of a Nobel-prize winner, not exactly a true social representative of the population. The leader and founder of Sendero Luminoso of Peru, a movement of the Pol Pot tendency (and Pol Pot himself, of course, studied in Paris), was a professor of philosophy, and his followers were the first educated generation of the peasantry, not the peasants themselves. Peasants are capable of uprisings, no doubt, even very bloody ones, but they do not elaborate ideologies or undergo training for attacks on distant targets.

The rest.














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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera

December 5, 2008 12 Comments

Real-time global map of distress calls and disasters. // G-Speak spatial interface. // Space station bachelor pad. // The world of washing machines. // The museum of art museum toilets. (h/t, Mick) // Art museum guards. (h/t, Coudal) // The collected Jonathan Meades. (h/t, Georges) // Irony. // Clever Monkeys. // When birds flock. // Underwater robot rescues fish. // Bioluminescent fungi. // Transmogrifier. // Vintage pop-up books. // Mannequin moustaches. // Art cars. // Concept cars. // Honda’s V4 concept bike. // Groovy antique scooter. // Knitted motorcycle cosy. (h/t, Wild Slutty Womens) // And, via The Thin Man, it’s Mr Burl Ives.














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Written by: David
Comics

More Innocent Times

December 4, 2008 17 Comments

Further to this, here’s a little something for at least one of our regulars. Some of you may spot a theme in these vintage comic covers. 


Wonder_Woman_squeezes_hard Wonder_Woman_reaches_for_the_tip Wonder_Woman_plays_rough Wonder_Woman_missile_trouble Wonder_Woman_impending_torpedo   


I should perhaps point out it wasn’t just Wonder Woman.














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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.