Grayling/Today/Mailorder

AC Grayling was on the Today program this morning, talking about The Matrix reloaded. He prefers The Matrix (which he saw on video) because it uses philosophical ideas, rather than trying to explain and discuss them. Apparently he's a fan of action films.

Well, you live and learn.

On Thursday I ordered some stuff from three websites. Yesterday the postman knocked on the door and handed me a packet containing two CDs and a tshirt. This morning I got a 10" (Millenium) from Swansea and a CD that had come all the way from Sydney. Halfway round the world in less than three working days. I'm impressed, but it does make the otherwise-excellent Sister Ray's mail-order performance look even more pathetic.

Gaa. I'm maybe starting to take this too seriously. I've got a couple of posts lurking as Private because I'm not finished with them yet.

War On Terror over - terror wins.

Nice to see the recent lack of bomb attacks on civilians justifying the policies of our glorious Governments. There was an interesting article in the paper at the weekend about this.

I did comment last week that the immediate reaction to the bombings was to blame al-Qaeda (who seem to have taken over from the International Communist Conspiracy as the bogeymen du jour[1]) without any visible reason.


It is dangerous in the world. In fact, it is becoming more dangerous with every passing day. This is because the President and the men who answer to him and his allies are not winning the war on terror, they are losing it.
[ . . . ]
Al-Qaeda, conceived of as a tight-knit terrorist group with cadres and a capability everywhere, does not exist in that form. It barely existed before the war in Afghanistan in 2001 destroyed Osama bin Laden's carefully constructed infrastructure there. It certainly does not exist now.
[ . . . ]
They do not carry membership cards, they have not taken any oath of allegiance. If these groups, cells and individuals are part of al-Qaeda, they are merely part of an 'al-Qaeda movement' not any structured, hierarchical organisation. This movement is as diverse as the many countries from which its members come. Unless this is understood, and a fundamental change made in the way al-Qaeda is viewed and combated, we will all suffer for a long time to come.

The entire article is available at http://www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,958242,00.html. It's possible, of course, that Government officials understand all this, but still talk about "al-Qaeda" as if it were a single body for PR reasons. It wouldn't surprise me.

[1] Do you think Steve Jackson games will ever have an al-Qaeda card for Illuminati? "bin Laden, it's your turn."