Daily Mirror - news from the future

The guerrilla journalism of Network 23's Edison Carter was cutting-edge by virtue of it being 20 minutes into the future. The Daily Mirror has gone several better and is now reporting its news from the trial of the 21/7 flour-power peroxide bombers-with-no-bombs a whopping 2 WHOLE DAYS into the future. Note the date and the futuristic headline:

19 January 2007

BIN LADEN 'NOT BEHIND 9/11 ATTACKS'

By Mirror.co.uk

CONTROVERSIAL Islamic preacher Abu Hamza told one of the alleged 21/7 bomb plotters that terror leader Osama bin Laden was not behind the 9/11 attacks, a court was told today.

What next from The Mirror? 'Tony Blair to be hanged'?

Good though that the Mirror is on the case with coverage of the 21st July 'chapati' 'burka' bombers because - scoop time - Sky News only applied for permission to reproduce the trial transcripts for the first two days of the trial and therefore only the case for the persecution prosecution. Anyone interested in the details of the case for the defense is, well, out of luck for now if they're a Sky News devotee. Who else in the media has taken the path of most obvious propaganda and neglected to obtain permission to publish any further transcripts that cover the case for the defense?

Meanwhile, no sooner has the judge asked the jury to forget anything that might prejudice the trial, the dead-tree news organs fill their pages with yet more 7/7 related photos released to the world by the Americans, who seem to have a monopoly on 7/7 pictures, which are alleged to show an exact mock-up of the 'bomb factory' alleged to be have been used by those accused of making 7/7 happen. Subtlety has disappeared into obscurity. The Americans also forgot to include one of the main bits of kit in the mock-up, the industrial fridge, the same industrial fridge for which Lord Patel of the Internet has issued a million pound reward.

Forty-plus people have been arrested in connection with 21st July 2005 - the day when nobody was killed, nobody was injured and no explosions occurred and there's still not been a single arrest of anyone at all in connection with the events of 7/7 two weeks previously, when 56 were killed and over 700 injured. What a crack team the four 7/7 lone nuts must have been. Or, if you prefer, if over forty people have been rounded up and detained for 18 months for not killing anyone with their chapati flour bombs, the law of averages states that there must be at least a few others involved with making 7/7 happen, doesn't it?

A nice touch in the 21/7 trial proceedings for those with long enough memories (or the research skills to learn a bit about the history of terrorism on mainland Britain) is the implication of guilt that follows the discovery of a rubber glove with traces of something suitably nasty-sounding found on it during a raid somewhere. See the case of the Macguire 7 [PDF] for how this old judicial one-two, the forensic fox-trot, was used to great effect in the successful conviction of another bunch of innocent individuals for crimes they didn't commit.