Not wishing to make a long nose on the sly, leaving an island of two CCTV cameras to return to one with 4.2 million is a culture shock to the system.
And Her Majesty's Customs and Excise must have been expecting global jihad to be imported on a charter flight from Kapodistrias if the multicultural array of uniformed stasi welcoming us "home" were anything to go by. At least the practice of illegally fingerprinting travellers which, until recently, was the new code of illicit conduct at Heathrow, has been terminated after Privacy International (PI) advised flyers to photograph the officers performing the illegal act. Entertainingly, PI are seeking the prime minister's fingerprints for a poster campaign regarding this massive infringement of your human rights.
PI lists Britain as an endemic surveillance society and as we returned to our inner city office space, we were CCTV'd to a movie set of the gathering ghetto. Homeland Security, the War Of Terror, the Clash of Cultures... it sounds like the backdrop to another one of Sky's extravaganzas but this postmodern surveillance is omnipresent in our Mancunian Reality. In fact, there is but one route out from our offices where we might avoid detection only to be picked up in the next cell of their surveillance web after we have appeared to have quantum tunnelled our particular existence to a new state.
Britain is supposed to be waging a war of terror whereas, actually, it is in a state of war with itself. Fear is beneath this veneer of big brother militarism - fear of strangeness, fear of difference. The camera impacts upon the citizen, the observer affects the observed. Some of the new cameras allow two-way conversations and some are now equipped with loudspeakers to shout societal commands at those perpetrating minor indiscretions. We no longer look at the camera as the camera's monitor our every step; it can only be a matter of time before these watchtowers are fitted out to deal with biometrics and DNA swabbing as the database of Black genetics reaches full fruition. There are routes which might take us into the "appearances" or "phases of the image" of Baudrillard - the camera is recording you within a state of Hyperreality, is this valid evidence? - but such pomos mutterings are not for this place. Although, one might envisage future court cases where fractals, simulacra, resolution, the dislocation of time and image are the defining arguments in a defence case...
Of course, Baudrillard knew what was going on: "A switch from the panoptic mechanism of surveillance... to a system of deterrence, in which the distinction between the passive and the active is abolished". As we dodge the cameras just for the sheer hell of it (we know how to enjoy urban fun in god's-own-city), we are comforted by the local Territorial Army keeping us abreast of the trends relating to the national state of emergency - Bikini Black presumably being a rather heightened level of national insecurity... We should wear disguises and avert our profiles from close ups, sunglasses would seem a necessary item of fashion as we adapt our appearances to suit the projections of a Police State Hyppereality. Britain is attempting a fractalised real-time version of Google Earth where the cameras focus into the lives of the disenfranchised and away from the property of the gated communities and futuristic commodity malls. Behavioural monitoring both on- and offline as the marketeers perfect their campaigns of promotion. "Imprisoned in a flattened universe bounded by the screen of the spectacle that has enthralled him, the spectator knows no-one but the fictitious speakers who subject him to a one-way monologue about their commodities and the politics of their commodities" - Debord.
A reader might infer that I am not too delighted to be back in this country when I had scheduled watching the Champions League Final from a beach bar in Lakka. But meetings must be attended. The juxtaposition of living in the least invasive European culture and returning to the most invasive is striking. The smothering effect of the state is omnipresent in the inner cities and it reminds us that a political sousveillance - observation from below - is a necessary retort to the increasingly nosey crown.
Sousveillance is our only weapon in an autocratic system. The Perfect Crime leaves clues and traces that reveal the perpetrators and the hitmen of spectacular realities. Dietrological use sousveillance in every aspect of our organisation from market analysis to negotiation, from big picture modelling to monitoring insider trading. Sousveillance is our edge. Our spider trawls the ether for prices of consequence, our software munches the money numbers before delivering to our desktops the trading realities of the Illusion.
And the Illusion's Final Offering is upon us as the leveraged buyout merchants take on the oligarchical oilman. Matthew Frost, the groundsman at the Luzhniki Stadium, is "totally disappointed" with the pitch. He then rationalised: "That's Russia, I'm afraid. Its not a perfect world". A Baudrillardian groundsman? Indeed, perfection is not something that should be expected on the menu this evening as all of the major parameters (and there are a considerable number of them) impacting upon this event are Hyperreal, Illusory and Corrupt - the perfect template for the seasonal conclusion. Frost is a bit of comedian though - when asked what he would do if approached by Sir Ferguson regarding the state of the pitch, the lawnmower man stated: "I think I'll just pretend I'm Russian and I don't speak English" - not a valid tactic against the hairdryer but... Platini claims "not to have heard of any problem so far" regarding the pitch which is a concern as the plastic was initially replaced by a green meadow of a monstrosity before a further £160,000 was shelled out to some Slovakians to produce a pitch with bare patches and many bumps, while blocks of frozen grass have not bedded down as hoped. Slovakian grass and Slovakian match officials - what's going on?
Enjoy the Spectacle...
© Football Is Fixed/Dietrological
