A catwalk for emperors. posted by Richard Seymour

That, you may as well know, is what you can call the television news. To dally with the obvious if lexically gamesome for a moment, the wonder-wounded stars of breakfast television and early evening blockbuster headline-reading are arse-licking acolytes and sycophants who never acquired the habit of contradiction. They are entirely in the acquiescent mode: the emperor's latest outfit is either revelatory, sultry, sexy, cool, urgent, spicy or whatever creepy expression they can come up with.

"Reid tells of 'four terror plots'", the BBC tells us. It goes on, with the usual breathless excitement: "Home Secretary John Reid has revealed that 'at least four major plots' have been thwarted since the 7 July attacks in London last year." He has "revealed" that, has he? It did not occur to the BBC's reporter to think: "this government constantly 'reveals' what later turns out to be anus-dribble. Why did they not take the opportunity to shove the evidence of these alleged genuine successes down our collective throats at the time? Who was arrested, what charges have been made, and has a court convicted anyone? Is there a point at which my role becomes more than politely asking a goverment minister helpful questions and attentively recording his replies?"

Suffice to say, Reid is also asked by the nice man about whether it is really, really true as The Observer states that two dozen 'terror cells' are being tracked down. Reid responds: "I'm not going to confirm an exact number but I wouldn't deny that that would indicate the number of major conspiracies that we are trying to look at." Reid, of course, "wouldn't deny" what his office leaked to The Observer in the first place. The BBC may as well have asked the Home Secretary if we should all immediately evacuate our bowels and construct Anderson shelters in the back garden - to which the response would have been: "I'm not going to confirm that this is the recommendation, but I won't deny that it would be useful..."

Take this latest Evil Plot. Supposing we take for granted everything that has been said - in spite of what we know about the Khoyairs, Menezes, the 'ricin plot' that never was, the plot to blow up the Manchester United stadium that never was - if we simply take what is being said for granted, we are going to be changing our opinion every half-hour. The latest trademarked innovation of the news was Liquid Terror. It was initially unclear what the liquid was that could be concealed in baby-milk. Perhaps, it was suggested, a sports drink could be combined with some kind of peroxide paste. We are now told it could be TATP, the same substance that apparently was used to blow up the tubes on 7/7. The superficial beauty of this claim is that the stuff is so volatile that it would not require a detonator. The suggestion is that they would have mixed the ingredients on the plane with such violence that it would formed the little crystals and detonated with immediate effect. The thing is, this stuff is usually made on ice because of its volatility and - well - you don't simply want any old explosion with any old amount of the stuff at any old time. You could end up merely taking your own head off and leaving the rest to spill. Timing, at least, would have been important since these alleged airborne assassins were supposed to be doing it simultaneously. This is why it is alleged that the London bombers actually mixed the stuff in a bath, rather than getting out a contrived chemistry set on a crowded tube train. This is why Richard Reid didn't actually have the components of the stuff craftily concealed in a series of Lucozade bottles. Someone is evidently spoon-feeding (or bottle-feeding if you prefer) a steady supply of this nonsense to easily gulled hacks and editors.

Latest news is: "In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports." It is now suggested that American intelligence wanted to hurry the whole thing along, announce the arrests and remind us all once more that one is either with Bush or with the "terrorists" (that is, one must choose between murder and suicide). Why, I wonder, would they want to do that?