WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS MENACING ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

Paul Chambers is a man who has suffered one of the worst reactions to a joke of all time. Back in January, sitting cold in South Yorkshire’s Robin Hood airport (no, it’s not a joke, it really is called that), he was frustrated that his flight had been cancelled by snow, and so tweeted:

Why is the Lockerbie bomber still alive? This week Senator Robert Menendez, Chair of the Congressional Inquiry into why someone (or indeed everyone) isn’t dead yet announced plans to send a team of yankee investigators to Scotland.   This we can understand as it clear that protocol has been breached on this matter.  When someone in Scotland commits a crime like say theft or in the case of the accused, Bertybasset al-Megrahi being spotted buying a jumper (or another one the same colour) which was found on a plane, they are tried by a group of vote hungry senators in the run up to mid-term elections.  The only hope of clemency for those found guilty comes in the form of a Christmas pardon from our Lord and Saviour, Obama H. Christ.

Kenny McAskill chose to bypass the time honoured tradition of doing exactly what America wanted and instead exercised a strange form of indigenous justice.  Under this crazed system us savage Scots occasionally demonstrate that we have different values to those who seek to destroy us…or America…or is that the same thing?

Anyways understandably pissed off Menendez is sending a crack team to Scotland to investigate what’s wrong with this crazy country and what we can learn from our American brethren.  SSY meets the men who hope to save us.

Leading the group will be Frank “Freaky Sheik” McDeak (Dem.) Frank will investigate the disgraceful link between oil and political power in Scotland.  “This all came as a shock for me, I had to cut short my Saudi holiday…I was watching 50 virgins spray oil out their whatnots while I threw dollars at them…and now I hear these Scotch have been cutting deals in exchange for oil…America would never cut deals with those who tried to blow us up in exchange for oil and money.  The Sheik just wouldn’t have it.”

Controversial Texas Governor Rick Perry (Rep.) is to investigate the woefully inhumane Scottish Justice system.  “Sure I’ve killed a few people….well a few hundred…and I’ve fired all those in the justice system who questioned my decision to execute a man who according to all my closest advisors and scientists was asleep at the time he is supposed to have murdered his kids…but these Scotch!  I tell you…letting someone go who allegedly bought a jumper, a strand of which was allegedly found on a plane that Iran Libya blew up…monsters I say…the lotta them!”

The final senator will be Hawky Pearson (Rep) well known international peace activist.  He is concerned by what he sees as a continuation of a trend.  “We should have seen the warning signs in Darien.  For centuries Scots have been dragging their junior partners in the US around on a series of imperial adventures.  They dragged us into their conflict with Libya then just like we sent our young men to die for Scottish oil companies in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I say no more American blood should be spilled for Scottish interests!”

We also understand that the Senators are to be accompanied by other progressive Americans concerned that Scotland is slipping into an authoritarian nightmare.

Pat “McGroin” Robertson, gay rights activist, is looking into allegations that crazy, Christian homophobes are funded the very same SNP government who freed the terrorist plotter.  “We believe some rightwing bus bandit may have influenced the Scottish regime with his insane ranting about the gays.  I’ve never been to Scotland but as I’ve always said there are definitely lots of homos there.  We can’t allow these people to influence the government.”

The group will be rounded off by asylum campaigner and renowned anti-racist Pat Buchanan.  He is expected to directly challenge the racism of the Scottish regime by visiting the controversial “Border Wall” constructed all the way along the border to prevent the flow of poor southerners crossing the border to Scotland to access free personal care for the elderly and lower tuition fees.  “I intend to deliver a message to the racists in Scotland.  I will invoke the spirit of Reagan and say ‘Mr Hadrien!  Tear down this wall!’”

In the US Mr al-Megrahi, convicted on, quite literally, a shred of evidence would have been taken out and shot thus saving the need for all these pesky investigations and all this pish chat about “the truth”  “justice” and “closure.” The SSY is ecstatic that these Americans want to visit our depraved nation and show us the light.

We shall greet them on the tarmac waving our Saltires and asking…Why isn’t Scotland more like America?

Chris Morris, the comedy genius behind shows like Brass Eye and The Day Today, has turned to the cinema with the release of his first feature film, ‘Four Lions.’

But he’s moved on from attacking ridiculous “news” programmes or hypocritical celebrities. For the last four years Morris has been engaged in a huge programme of research to produce what’s probably the world’s first laugh out loud funny comedy about suicide bombers.

The premise of the film is that a group of young Muslim guys from Northern England are plotting a terrorist attack against the UK. Their problem? They’re totally incompetent. There’s Waj, a none too bright spark who, not quite managing the Qu’ran focuses more on reading ‘The Camel Who Went to Mosque.’ Or Faisal, who plans to attach a bomb to a crow that he’s trained to fly into a building. There’s wannabe rapper Hassan, who, after exploding a fake bomb full of party poppers in a public meeting shouts “Oh what, just because I’m a Muslim you thought it was real.” But the two most interesting characters are the feuding would-be heads of the cell, Barry and Omar.

Barry is clearly a man with a lot of issues. A white convert to Islam, he constantly raves and rants about his desire to bring jihad to British streets. His greatest resentment though is that the others have not recognised him as the natural leader.

Omar on the other hand is a security guard at a shopping mall, where he sits day after day listening to his inane boss drone on about his fitness regime whilst staring at CCTV monitors. He is the heart of the film, and you can’t help but sympathise with him.

When Waj and Omar are eventually summoned to take part in a training camp in Pakistan, they make a total arse of things, culminating in firing a rocket propelled grenade the wrong way and accidentally killing their hosts. When they return to Britain they are unable to face Barry and others and tell them the truth, and so invent a mythical sheikh who has given them orders to attack.

We see their chaotic preparations of explosives, and their inept attempts to film martyrdom videos. The video scenes are some of the funniest, as they try to explain what has motivated them on to their present course. They denounce western consumerism, decrying Britain as a “McDonalds, Disneyland, TK Maxx” land of bullshit, to which Waj enthusiastically responds “Fuck Mini Babybels!”

In another pivotal scene, Omar tries to convince Waj of the justice of their cause by comparing earthly life to the queues at Alton Towers, and the martyr’s paradise as the rides. From that point on, when Waj is trying to explain what he’s fighting for, he constantly tells people “Rubber dinghy rapids!”

One of the strengths of the film is in fact that it makes little reference to Islam itself. Omar has a devout brother, who in fact tries to argue Omar out of what he’s doing, saying that it’s contrary to Islam. The underlying message seems to be that these terrorists’ motivation has little to do with their religion or some mythical goal of a global caliphate, and everything to do with alienation from the society they live in, particularly represented by Omar’s job. It’s a message that seems all the more credible after reporters discovered that the guy who recently attempted to bomb New York’s Times Square was probably motivated mainly by the impact of the credit crunch on his family, and is more comparable to that guy who flew his plane into a tax office than Osama Bin Laden.

Perhaps this could have been explored further by showing us a little bit more about how Barry came to be one of the group. He’s a self-important nutter who clearly has turned to Islam to give his ridiculous life some meaning, as seen in the scene with the meeting, where he’s on the platform spouting slogans and generally making a lot of noise. (Omar, btw, consistently derides him for this public activity, recognising his need for attention undermines their efforts.) But Barry’s full motivation and background are never explored fully, and he remains a bit of a comedy caricature.

But the exploration of the group’s motives is perhaps the film’s most important achievement. Morris has attended hundreds of trials and demonstrations, and interviewed all kinds of experts from the police to imams. What his film sets out to do is what we also tried to do here on Leftfield when deconstructing Islam4UK: debunk the myth of the massive Islamist conspiracy. The Scottish/English Defence Leagues are the street expression of a political idea perpetrated by a right wing media seeking to bolster the power of the state: that there is a well organised extreme Islamist movement poised to take over Britain and impose Sharia law. Something which is total nonsense.

The fact is that hardcore Islamist political ideas are held by about 4% of the Muslim population in the UK. The idea that they represent some kind of powerful movement is a dangerous lie, used to justify racism against completely innocent people, and to give the state ever growing powers to control our lives and snoop on us.

Morris has attempted to make this stance clear, writing for example to attack vile racist Martin Amis. He’s also talked about how footage of the September 11th planners dicking about on a farm and having a laugh convinced him he had to humanise terrorists, and make us understand they are real people rather than cartoon monsters.

The only part where this falls flat for me is the introduction of Omar’s family. Omar’s wife is an intelligent, modern woman who nevertheless fully supports Omar in his plan, as does his boy. Something about the ease with which they talk about his plans to kill himself made me feel that the message about the realities of Muslim life was being undermined. Not because I think that intelligent people don’t ever think that it’s ok for their families to become suicide bombers -- it’s just the lack of seriousness about it, the fact that it’s something that can easily be chatted about over a cup of tea.

However, it should also be pointed out that the film, although it dwells on terrorists, does not leave out the incompetence and thuggery of the state as well. At several points you think the game is up for the gang, only to find out that racist cops have got the wrong folk. In the final sequence, when the film is at its funniest, the remaining members of the group have disguised themselves in silly costumes to cover their bombs as they infiltrate the London marathon. Omar is dressed as the Honey Monster. Police snipers receive an order to shoot a grizzly bear, and promptly take out someone dressed as Chewbacca, leading to an argument on police radio about whether the Honey Monster, or Chewbacca, are bears.

The film has also been compared to Dr Strangelove in that it doesn’t shy away from showing the realities of what’s being discussed. In a similar way to the Kubrick classic, Four Lions tries to make us ask real questions about what’s going on in our society through the medium of farce. There’s no doubt that the realities of imperialism, and terrorism, are horrific, but constant repetition of those horrors has been used to shut down debate and justify some pretty awful things. Just as he’s done with drugs or paedophilia in the past, Chris Morris has successfully used humour to once again break through those barriers, and to see that for every September 11th, there’s a whole lot more Glasgow airports, with terrorists so inept it only took the likes of John Smeaton kicking a burning man in the balls to stop them.

Ah, newspapers. We’ve already commented on their tendency to jump on (or in fact create) a headless chicken bandwagon in order to sell papers keep the public informed (for an excellent article on this subject, check out Charlie Brooker) and lately, a story came along that was, in many ways, harder for them to resist than a good old moral panic over drugs. It had everything; terrorism, a Carry On film edge, scary women’s bodies, modern science gone mad and, what all newspapers are looking for, something new for people to be afraid of. Buy this newspaper or you will DIE! Too bad it wasn’t at all feasible or, in fact, true.

“Terrorists ‘could use exploding breast implants to blow up jet’” warned the Telegraph. Cue panic in the streets! Anyone you know could be a secret terrorist with deadly breasts! Next time you sleep with a woman, how will you know her chest isn’t going to explode right in the middle of things?! Maybe that woman with the big breasts who’s on your plane to Disneyland is a threat to your children! But really, the only warning signs present here are to do with the nature of the article itself.

“Breast implants packed with explosives could be used to blow up an airliner, experts are said to have warned.” Well now, I count three obvious marks of hemming and hawing in just this once sentence. Terrorists could use explosive breast implants to blow up a plane? Well yes, I suppose they could, but I could also stuff a pet snake with condoms filled with plastic explosive, get it put in the luggage hold and do the same. That doesn’t mean I’m going to.

Then there’s that ever present word – experts. Experts said this, experts said that. When newspapers deploy this term they never explain what they mean by an expert, what qualifies their expert to comment and half the time they don’t even say who the expert is! It’s one of those catch all stylistic get outs that newspapers use in order to print any old shite they want. In this case, the Telgraph aren’t even confident enough to say definitively that their experts have made this warning. They’re only “said to have warned” of it. Now, what does that mean?

All is revealed once we get further into the article. The source of the Telgraph’s information is…The Sun. The Sun. That well known paragon of good, honest journalism. Apart from the nature of the paper the Telegraph are using as a source, this is yet another habit of modern newspapers, and it’s one of the most destructive and poisonous. They don’t do independent investigation (you know, actual journalism) but instead they just feed off of each other’s panic until you end up with newspapers screaming ridiculous things about exploding breast implants. Maybe though, just maybe, The Sun had a reliable source? No such luck; their source was Fox fuckin News. The biggest amount of work the Telegraph did for this story was to phone a plastic surgeon to see if it was at all possible to put an explosive implant into a woman’s breast or, in fact, a guy’s arse cheeks – isn’t it hillarious how they kept the bomb implants all gender appropriate?

I can’t believe that none of them thought to answer one very simple question. How on earth do you detonate a breast bomb? Nipple fuses?

Eventually, the air was cleared by an unlikely source – the bigoted, foaming at the mouth US neocon website World Net Daily. I wont link to it here, but a bit of googling should lead you to the right article if you so desire. Essentially, it seems, the Telegraph didn’t even attribute this ridiculous quote to the right person. They claimed that Joseph Farah, self proclaimed terrorism expert and editor in chief of World Net Daily, had warned of this new development in blowing things up. Instead though, it was actually one of his underlings at the site (who even they seem embarrassed by) who made this claim and then put the words in his boss’ mouth, probably to lend them more legitimacy (lol).

The upshot of all of this is that the whole story is a piece of nonsense, which UK newspapers printed without doing any serious investigation, and after yet again taking ‘experts’ at their word. And will they learn their lesson? Will they print an erratum? No, of course not. They’ll keep on doing the same thing, peddling shite to a mass audience, because it makes them money and fits with their owners’ agendas. It’s easy to drop a journalistic grenade among an already on edge population – it’s much harder to do the work of debunking the nonsense that papers print.

If you were in  a city centre or on the train over the weekend you might have noticed a much larger police presence than usual.

This follows the Home Office announcing the latest bout of the “don’t-be-worried-but-we-should-all-be-scared-shitless-game” with the raising of the government’s terror threat level from “substantial” to “severe”, meaning the government apparently believes an attack is “highly likely.”

Telling people they shouldn’t be worried, whilst also telling them there’s a pretty fair chance they might get blown up, unfortunately for the government, loses quite a lot of its impact after 9 odd years of similar “scares”, and people just seemed to be ignoring the high police presence.

But if you weren’t worried about the imminent threat of exploding underwear, the security services have a new terrifying development in the world of ingenious terrorism – the “clean-skins”.

According to an article in the Sunday Telegraph, the wannabe-Jack Bauers are worried that al-Qaeda have been training women who may not be Arabs. These are what they call “clean-skin” agents.

“There are others who are still out there who have been trained and who are clean skins – that means people who we do not have a record of, people who may not look like al-Qaeda terrorists, who may not be Arabs, and may not be men,” said Richard Clarke, a former White House Chief Couter-Terrorism Adviser.

The term “clean-skin” has its origins in the War On Drugs that came before the War On Terrorism, in relation to people bringing drugs into the US from Latin America or elsewhere who did not fit their pre-conceived profile of what a smuggler looks like. Dictionary entries for the term offer “lilywhite” as an alternative, showing that, although officially about criminal records, immigration processes always were driven by a fair dose of racial profiling.

Now the term has transferred to the ongoing process of classifying people undertaken as part of the “War On Terror”. So, according to British government analysts, the London bombers, who were British citizens, would be classified as “clean-skins”.

Now apparently, security sources have said that it was “inevitable” that al-Qaeda would eventually turn to using women with a “western appearance” to carry out suicide attacks. The fact that such a blatantly racist term as “clean-skin” is reinforced here as meaning “white” without blushing really shows how much racism underlies most of what we get told about what the secret agencies we all fund get up to.

SNP Justice Minister Kenny MacKaskill’s decision to free convicted Lockerbie bomber Al Megrahi on the grounds of compassionate release has unleashed a tornado of criticism upon both himself and the devolved administration.

He has been attacked by virtually all other opposition parties, tabloid newspapers, and even the current director of the FBI Robert Mueller who said his decision empowered terrorists.

The decision itself opens a can of worms for Socialists – is it possible for a mass murderer to be rehabilitated? Should a justice system keep a dying man in prison, even when he is almost certainly in no position to re offend?

There are powerful arguments for having compassionate release, to provide convicted criminals with the option to spend the last months of their lives with their family and friends.

It’s an act of humanity which they might not have treated their victims with, but it’s something a civilised state can do for people who are in no position to commit crime again.

In Megrahi’s case however there is a far more powerful justification for his release – he is innocent.

Megrahi has spent 8 years locked away from his family, friends, in a foreign country for a crime he did not commit and has been made a scapegoat for.

As part of his compassionate release he has been forced to drop his appeal, meaning he will die as a convicted mass murderer.

While Megrahi may unfortunately never live to see his name cleared, it is important that those who are still living speak out against his politically motivated conviction; not only for the sake of his and his family’s name, but for the victims of Lockerbie as well.

The bombing itself occurred on the 21st of December 1988, when Pan Am 103 was blown up over the skies of Lockerbie. All 259 passengers and crew were killed, along with 11 people on the ground.

The investigation into the bombing was undertaken by the Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary – the smallest force in the UK – alongside international agencies like the FBI.

Megrahi’s conviction was based on evidence obtained from the wreckage of Pan Am 103 – specifically a brown Samsonite suitcase, and a minute timer fragment.

The Samsonite suitcase was identified as the case which contained the bomb, through the use of modern forensic techniques.

The contents of the suitcase were also put together, by identifying items of clothing which must have been in the same case as the bomb due to scorching etc.

These clothes were identified as coming from a shop on Malta owned by the trials key witness, Tony Gauci.

Megrahi was alleged to have used these clothes to pack the suitcase containing the bomb.

This bomb was then supposed to have been loaded on to a flight from Malta to Frankfurt, then from Frankfurt to Heathrow where it was loaded on to Pan Am 103

Gauci made a positive identification of Megrahi as the man who bought the items of clothing from his shop.

Megrahi himself was named as an agent of the Libyan Government by another witness, Abdul Majid Giaka a defector from Libya.

The minute fragment of a timer found at the crash site was identified as being manufactured by Mebo AG, a telecommunications company whose employees identified the fragment and admitted to selling the timers to Libya.

At first glance the case appears to be relatively solid. But on closer examination of the trial, and with some new developments relating to the evidence and witnesses the credibility of the trial falls apart.

The evidence used to convict Megrahi was at best circumstancial and at worst a calculated attempt to frame him.

The star witness of the trial, Tony Gauci was found to have seen pictures of Megrahi a few days before “identifying” him. Contrary to procedure, this information was not turned over to the defence.

Gauci initially described Megrahi as being in his fifties and six feet tall – he is in fact five feet tall and was 36 when the bombing occured.

Gauci was labelled as “not the full shilling” by the Lord Advocate due to his contradictory testimony, and was reported to have received a $2 million dollar reward from the US.

The so-called defector Giaka who accused Megrahi of Libyan intelligence was revealed to be a fantasist, who was milking his CIA handlers for all he could get. His other “revelations” included evidence Gaddafi was involved in Masonic plots with the President of Malta.

The judges themselves were totally unable to account for the movements of the “magic suitcase”.

The case alleged to contain the bomb is supposed to have travelled from Malta to Heathrow unaccompanied.

There was no explanation given as to how this was possible, as the Judges accepted in their verdict below,

“As we have also said, the absence of an explanation as to how the suitcase was taken into the system at Luqa is a major difficulty for the Crown case but after taking full account of that difficulty, we remain of the view that the primary suitcase began its journey at Luqa”

Megrahi’s defence argued that the bomb was probably loaded on Pan Am 103 at Heathrow. A retired security guard gave Megrahi’s defence team a sworn affidavit that there was a break in early on the day of the Lockerbie bombing.

This break in would have allowed access to the baggage at Heathrow. The security guard commented that he was surprised this information was not made known at the trial.

The minute fragment of timer discovered in Lockerbie that was used to identify Libya as the state sponsor of the bombing has also been exposed as misleading.

An official of Mebo has signed a sworn affidavit to Megrahi’s defence, claiming that he was not only asked to lie in the trial regarding identifying the timer fragment but that he also stole a timer on the behalf of “someone investigating the Lockerbie case”.

Megrahi’s defence team also had a sworn statement from a Scottish Police chief, alleging this fragment was planted. The timers themselves were also sold to many other countries, including East Germany who may have provided them to the real Lockerbie bombers.

Newly released memos from the US Defense Intelligence Agency also claim that it was Iran, not Libya that was believed by US intelligence agencies to have carried out the bombing. The memo states,

“The bombing of the Pan Am flight was conceived, authorised and financed by Ali-Akbar Mohtashemi-Pur, Iran’s former interior minister.
“The execution of the operation was contracted to Ahmad [Jibril], Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command [PFLP-GC] leader, for a sum of $1million [£600,000.
"$100,000 of this money was given to Jibril up front in Damascus by the Iranian ambassador to Sy [Syria], Muhammed Hussan [Akhari] for initial expenses. The remainder of the money was to be paid after successful completion of the mission.”

All of this evidence is what lead to the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission granting Megrahi a second appeal – one that would likely have proved his innocence.

So if it wasn’t Libya or Megrahi, who did bomb Pan Am 103? For once US intelligence was (originally) right. The most likely suspect is Iran, using the a Palestinian militant group the PFLP-GC to do it’s dirty work.

Iran had a clear motive to bomb an American airliner. 5 months before Lockerbie an Iranian Airbus was shot down by the USS Vincennes, an American warship.

The Vincennes mistook the Airbus for an Iranian fighter jet, and killed 250 people on pilgrimage to Mecca.

Both the Airbus and the Vincennes were in Iranian territorial waters at the time of the attack.

Unlike Megrahi, the Captain of the Vincennes, William Rogers was not indicted for murder or even manslaughter. He was given the Legion of Merit for his command of the Vincennes.

Iran clearly had a motivation for revenge.

The Lockerbie bomb itself also points at the PFLP-GC and Iran. 2 months before the bombing a PFLP-GC cell was arrested in Frankfurt.

They were found to be making bombs disguised as Toshiba radios – exactly the same kind of improvised explosive device used to bring down Pan Am 103.

The evidence linking Iran to the bombing was dropped, and suspicion cast on Libya because the US needed both Iran and Syria to remain neutral during the Gulf War.

The price for that neutrality has meant an innocent man has been jailed for 7 years, his name destroyed and justice for the Lockerbie victims may never be done.

Part of Megrahi’s compassionate release involves dropping his legal appeal. CIA agent Robert Baer wrote that the appeal would be so damaging to Scottish Justice that Kenny MacKaskill had two choices, “to release Megrahi or smother him in his sleep”.

McKaskill chose the more humane option. But it’s still not justice. The truth about Lockerbie cannot be allowed to die with Megrahi, it must be exposed regardless of the shame it causes legal establishments both sides of the Atlantic.