Terrorist Secret Weapon Is
Latest Japanese Fashion Item
Somebody left a copy of ‘The Sunday Express‘ on Amos Beach, Nr. Turunç, Marmaris, yesterday and when I got round to reading it I found a disturbing story.
Sunday Express Political Editor Julia Hartley-Brewer claims that “suicide bombers could be planning to use fake ‘pregnancies’ to hide explosives in a bid to evade security.”
An image of a ‘bomber jacket’ is inset into a picture of a London Bus that had been destroyed by a bomb blast.
Hmmm, I thought, I have seen that image of a garment that emulates pregnancy recently it was on a blog called www.we-make-money-not-art.com
The web site called it a “silly but irresistible item of the week.” It is a fashion piece by the Japanese Designer Nishida Nobuko. Her design is ironically entitled “Love and Peace’, and clearly is intended to be a bit of fun.
Simon Barrett director of the International Coalition Against Terror, an organisation seeking to expose terrorism is quoted as saying: “It is very alarming that suicide bombers could disguise themselves as pregnant women to evade security checks.”
Call my stupid, if you will? But it seems to me that if some terrorists are prepared to kill themselves whilst murdering others, and if women terrorists are being deployed, then stuffing a bomb up a woman terrorist’s jumper is a fairly obvious thing to do. It hardly rates as evil genius, or news.
Julia Hartley-Brewer claims that an American anti-terrorist group intercepted the images from an extremist Islamic web site showing how explosives could be concealed in the false baby womb. But the inset in The Sunday Express clearly is a fashion photograph taken at the YKK Fastening Awards. Either Julia is very naive, or she’s not publishing the full goods?
Forgive me if this seems a bit of a rant, but if Jean Paul Gautier designed a hat in the shape of a watering can, and its image appeared on an Islamic web site would we conclude that we should be cautious of all people wearing hats, or carrying watering cans?
The truth is that in cities and areas of concentration we must be doubly alert for our safety But also we have to get on with our lives without spreading fear, and distress by sensationalising silly stories. In my opinion Nobuko Nishida’s design should not have featured in ‘The Sunday Express’ article, even if terrorists have suddenly developed an interest in haute couture.
The ‘Love and Peace Terror Bomber Jacket design may be seen in more detail as modelled at the YKK Fastening Awards where videos are available in both Real Player, or Windows Media Formats.
Kindly note: The scan of ‘The Sunday Express’ article under analysis is used as ‘fair use’ under U.S.C. Section 107 for news reportage purposes only, to illustrate various points made in the article. Text and images available over the Internet may be subject to copyright and other intellectual rights owned by third parties.
September 6th, 2005 at 9:58 am
[...] Salesmanship is like this. The aim is to always tell the truth attractively. Popular reportage frequently aims to do the opposite. It aims to shock, disturb, horrify and selectively edit. I wrote about this a day or so ago. True reportage of course simply attempts to report events objectively. [...]