The Trouble with Harry

On Friday morning, on Radio Bloke, Nicky Campbell chose to ask the White Van drivers of the nation for their thoughts on the whys and wherefores of torturing terror suspects. You can imagine what that was like, can’t you, and the replies, for the most part, were what you’d expect. However, this particular exchange between Campbell and ‘Harry in Birmingham’ (twenty minutes and thirty-four seconds into the podcast) on what did and/or should happen to Binyam Mohamed made me prick up my ears:

Campbell: If he was tortured, was it justified?
Harry: I would put the adeno... er, the electrodes onto his testes and put ’em on! This guy’s a pathological, homoeopathic murderer, a terrorist, and I’d do that just to get vengeance back off him! Okay?

A pathological, homoeopathic murderer? How would a pathological, homoeopathic murderer operate? Would he stab his victims with a microscopic knife? Would he strangle them with a human hair? Now we know what those bombers had in their water-bottles... infinitely diluted tinctures of Semtex.
Of course, if a murderer were to adhere to the homoeopathic principle - to cure like with like - then he or she would have to kill by using the life force against itself. The only way I could imagine this happening would be to shag the victims to death, to subject them to such an orgiastic, orgasmic marathon of debauchery that they would expire out of sheer sexual exhaustion. To coin a War-On-Terror phrase... bring it on!
I also quite liked Harry’s phrasing at the end there: ‘I’d do that just to get vengeance back off him!’ In other words, he’d commit the torture especially so that he could, later, be the victim of his own victim’s vengeance, enacted upon himself... which is, er, both sadism and masochism in perfect - almost homoeopathic - harmony.

There Will Be Blood

I have been silent lately because I have had very little to say. But I have been reading a lot - inspired and galvanized as I have been by the thinking of my friend Cat Vincent. Like me, he has been exercised by the men - and they are nearly always men - who scream their fanaticism for religious and political manias in fit and fury. He names them after ‘the unintelligent cartoon character’ of the old Viz comic. These souls take offence at the least perceived slight, and their fizzing hatred can do nought to sixty in under a second. The Stig!
Why are they so furious? I, too, have been wondering this. For a long time I have questioned whether ‘believers’ are, indeed, quite right in the head. Now I have read a lot of scientific papers over the past month or so... enough that I am beginning to see some evidence that, just maybe, they are not. The part of the brain that seems to be involved in their ill-behaviour is an area known as the temporoparietal junction. If you’re outraged to unblinking frenzy by anyone’s lack of faith in whatever personal obsession rules every minute of your day, then your t-junction may well have sustained a bit of damage along the way. Too many philosophical handbrake turns coming home from late-night mental ram-raids, I expect.
Of course, all the world’s muckers, hate-mongers, rude-kids and flame-boys are deft hands at DIY and will want to put it right themselves. I recommend a Black and Decker CD18CA Drill Driver with a 5mm bit in the keyless metal chuck. Angle it towards the nexus of the temporal and parietal lobes. Keep a steady hand and you'll surely get there, and after you do, admire your work in the mirror. As you gaze on that little round aperture, you will be able to see exactly how the rest of the world needs any of you.