Thursday, August 20, 2009

A NASTY PIECE OF HARDWARE


Our commenting pal Ghostwoods alerted us the highly disturbing revelation that cops in the UK are now deploying this eye-in-the-sky remote-controlled "flying saucer" as one more piece of Big Brother tech in their surveillance arsenal. It’s first public outing was at the neo-Nazi British National Party's Red, White and Blue festival in Codnor, Derbyshire, where “anti-fascist protesters had assembled.” I recall a piece of science fiction where the protagonists shot down similar mini spy saucers with their blasters. I can’t remember without checking whether I wrote it myself, or maybe it was Philip K. Dick, or even a Vaughn Bode cartoon.

According to the London Daily Telegraph
“Merseyside Police was the first force to use the drones, launching them during a number of crackdowns on gun and gang crime, as well as against anti-social behaviour. The aerial cameras have also previously been deployed to deter crime at pop festivals. Yesterday was the first time it was used at a demonstration. Their capacity to provide extra video evidence could prove useful to police forces which face allegations about their public order tactics, and about differing versions of major events such as London's G20 protests in April.” Click here for the rest.

Anti-social behaviour? Demonstrations? Pop festivals? On the surface, it would seem that the jaws of the vice are closing and, like fucking sheep, we are being corralled into a culture of slavish obedience to authority, but I retain some hope and faith the human capacity for fuck-you deceit. Maybe masks with become a fashion vogue (we may also need them to breath the air before too long) and we’ll all start wearing them like in V for Vendetta or – if you’re old enough to remember – the Nazi-fighting Deathless Men in the old brit comic The Wizard (which I suspect Alan Moore borrowed for V for V.)

And talking of sheep…

7 comments:

roldo said...

"And I dreamed I saw the remote-control surveillance drones riding shot-gun in the sky turning into bullet-spitting killing machines above our nation"...
Hands up everyone who knows who Vaughn Bode was.

x_S said...

Masks & face-paint are already popular amongst a number of underground & counter-culture trends... take Slipknot or the Insane Clown Posse [ICP] for example.

You can't really go to a horror-core or acid rap show without a large number of the audience wearing masks or having their faces painted & death metal shows are getting to be near the same way. Sure, its not like these are the most fashionable & popular trends, but its also not diminishing or going away any time soon.

Pepsi said...

Subversive igenuity knows no bounds.

butlincat said...

Fuck the illuminati and their bully-boy thugs - may they rot with their Jahbulon worshipping masters!

Anonymous said...

I can 't remember a specific science fiction novel but our alien overlords in John Carpenter's "They Live" possessed similar flying drone technology (that film had its problems, but it is getting more prescient every day).

As for masks, protective gear etc, I suspect that Governments are already trying to deal with them. In Greece, following the huge Demonstrations from last December, the Conservative parties attempted to introduce tougher punishment (including jail time) for protesters who committed vandalism while wearing a hood. The Popular Orthodox Alarm Party (or crypto- Nazi scum, as I like to call them- essentially our version of the BNP) insisted that everyone who wears a hood in a demonstration should be arrested and charged. Their argument was that anyone who wears protective gear in a demonstration has something to hide.

The scary part isn't the argument itself. They could never enforce it in practice (they cannot even enforce the non- smoking laws in Greece). It's the fact that this was considered to be a valid argument by many other parties (not to mention average people on the street). We live in interesting times.

Dimitris

The Steampunk said...

I remember just after Katrina when everyone was going around in respirators and goggles. Just regular folks in suits ties and heels, ya know, the cubicle crowd. Some sported those old-school full-face mustard-gas-masks (like the sandman used to wear) while others opted for simple paper masks and safety glasses. Just like riding on a tokyo tube during flu season, only with black-mold and asbestos. A Teslian to the bitter end, I myself have been rockin the goggles since the nineties (when it looked a little less strange) so I was all set up to ride the trend.

I also remember reading some sci-fi junk in jail one mardi gras, think it was called "O-zone", where folks were crammed into post-atomic urban 'safe zones', catalogued by letter a'la Huxley, and masks came into high fasion as both breathing apparatus and forced-breeding-identity-protection items.

But does anyone recall a decade or so ago when, I believe it was China, starting outfitting roaches with radio-control backpacks to "search for earthquake victims" or some such? Wait, here it is, from the AP. Japan...it was Japan...
[well, of course it was...]
http://wireheading.com/roboroach/index.html
Pretty scary shit, hey?

Chris T said...

Check this out, Mick:

"The drone used by Derbyshire police to monitor Unite Against Fascism demonstrators against the Red, White and Blue festival held by the BNP could bury the force in a wave of paperwork."

http://atthesauce.blogspot.com/2009/08/down-drone.html