It’s President Barack Obama!
And a green toilet plunger!
On Saint Patrick’s Day!

Yes, it’s a real picture.

I don’t really understand any of this, but I don’t think Mr. T does either, so at least I’m in good company.

Glad we cleared that up then.

[found at extra-extra, who found it at Evil Bobby]

So they tried to bomb us again. Even worse – they are us! Have no fear though. Days before we decided to try to bomb us again UK Home Secretary, John “Resin” Reid announced the Government’s latest cunning plan to thwart those who wish to curtail our freedoms. The Government is going to make us give up our freedoms first. That’ll show ‘em!

It doesn’t stop there though, because you know those useless terror levels that the Americans have had since the World Trade Centre attacks, the ones that everybody has taken the complete piss out of the world over? (For example: “Better bring an umbrella today, the threat level is ‘Amber’. Honey, have you seen my amber sweater?”). Well now we have them in the UK too, oh happy day.

To stress the point, they (not that they, the other they) have placed the threat level at critical, which is one worse than severe, dontchaknow. This means we are to feel afraid (but not terrorised, that means they’d win) and are to be vigilant at all times. Once the level goes down, I guess we’re expected to return to being happy go lucky and ignoring all those abandoned bags on the tube.

A knock on effect of this has been that America has raised it’s level too, as the systems are in sync and… only they haven’t; they have raised the level to “Red” only for ‘planes arriving in the United States from the UK. Some alert that, they’re not just doing it to humour us then.

Of course you’d imagine that Tony Bliar would have his face plastered everywhere talking about defending our freedoms and that, only he’s not; the blighter got out of here just in time and is on a beach in the Caribbean. Lucky for him, I’d follow him, but I can’t get on a plane unless I’m naked and have no luggage. Anyway, you know what, he’s gone and left John “Two Shags” Prescott in charge. And they say the man doesn’t have a sense of humour, who’d have known?

I’d have stuck a We Are Not Afraid image on the site, but then I would have felt like a total knob.

Gary McKinnon would get smoked up, fire up a perl script that scanned for blank admin passwords for machines with publically available military IP addresses, and then log onto the boxes with a VNC-style application and snoop around. Hardly hacking, but that hasn’t stopped the United States calling it the “Biggest hack of all time”

He even explained in an interview with the BBC that while he was logged onto the machines he could see plenty of people from around the world “hacking” in with blank passwords.

Instead of thanking him for exposing the shockingly awful security on machines that, the military claim, are full of information that could threaten the security of their country, the Americans instead called up London and demanded he be extradited to America.

In the past this would have required the Americans to present actual evidence in a UK court before getting their hands on someone, but not anymore. Thanks to a treaty to deal with those evil-doing terrorists, America can get anyone they want extradited from the UK, simply by lodging a request. Of course, this is not a reciprocal agreement, and so the UK must still present evidence in an American court if, God forbid, they want to have someone brought the other direction across the pond.

While there has been great interest among technologists in the UK, in a large part due to the fact that this wasn’t even a real hacker, just someone who got onto machines that some idot in the US military left without passwords, the media has generally taken the line that he is a dangerous man akin to Magneto from the X-Men. The same media has now taken up the cause of three Natwest bankers who are being extradited to America to face trial for alledgedly being involved in the Enron scandal.

Still, even if the terrorists are still coming to get us, at least we’re safe from computer hobbyists and accountants, phew!