'Art' & 'Torture'

Apparently, 'performance artist' Mark McGowan has eaten a Corgi live on the radio. I say "apparently" because I wasn't listening. Partly because I, despite living in London, have never listened to "London-based arts station 104.4 Resonance FM" (although who has?); partly because the stunt, like all of McGowan's work is a mediocre attention-seeking scam on, not just the media, but the public as well; partly because it is supported by Peta, the people who arrange protests outside animal rescue centres that put ill pets to sleep, but do the same thing themselves in such large quantities that their headquarters need a walk-in freezer to store the carcasses; but more important than any of these considerations was the name of his fellow guest: Yoko Ono.

Not being a massive Beatles fan, I don't have much to hold against Ms. Ono, but she still irks me something dreadful. Whenever I hear her pontificating on whatever subject Channel 4 will pay her to talk about, I am reminded of the US military's SERE school (that is their Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school), the people who train US servicemen for capture and interrogation by the enemy. After 9/11, when America realised it would require a whole new framework to cope with the questioning of the al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees who would soon be arriving at Guantanamo, they consulted the instructors at SERE to learn new tactics and techniques for interrogation. And amongst SERE's box of tricks? Yoko Ono's music. That's right, those Yoko Ono CDs no one buys are actually torture implements sitting unbeknownst to the general populace in plain sight, ready for a world where Amnesty International won't be around to protect us from such dreaded tactics as white noise and stress positions...