the war on sense continues

Britain has issued a stark warning that Europe faces a 'very real threat' from terrorism. This is a considerable escalation from the previous level of threat, which was 'moderately real', but still some way away from an 'absolutely real threat', which observers note would be pretty realistic.

Said Home Secretary John Reid: 'We believe that issuing this emphasised reality check should shake some people from their complacency, particularly victims of state and non-state terror everywhere who just want to get on with their lives and wish that ideologues - who also, conveniently, possess all the weapons - would just mellow out a bit because it's not like anyone else never had an idea they liked a lot or anything, into acknowledging that when we say 'real', we don't just mean real or a bit real but hyperbolically real. ' [He didn't really say this.]

'Under previous governments the reality level of terror threat fluctuated between 'actually' and 'properly' real, but of course the methods of terrorists have changed in the 21st century. Mere acknowledgment of the reality of a threat is no longer enough. This kind of terror is so much more terrifying, differs so radically from all previous forms of terror - let us not conflate the actions of Al-Qaeda or its afffiliates with those of the IRA, PLO, Irgun or Baader-Meinhof or their affiliates in the last century, for example - that we have been led to the current unequivocacy with regard to the exact reality of the threat.' [Or this.]

'Neither let us pander to those who would question the reality of the threat. This threat is real.
Totally, utterly, really very real.' Reid responded that he refused to countenance 'weaselly quisling word twisting' arguments, such as the notion that threats themselves are abstractions.

He preferred, he said only to 'deal with very reality. The reality of Britain and America's foreign policy, including 12 years of continual bombardment of Iraq, while admittedly real, is not very real in comparison with bombings carried out for spurious reasons which are clearly not real. So it's totally not our fault, and anyone who suggests that we might all be to blame, and should just stop fighting for five minutes before the species wipes itself out in a mass intransigence incident, is playing into the hands of the terrorists.' [He didnt say this either, more's the fucking pity.]

I mean, really, though.