Licking Lizards Into Line  

London Mayor Boris Johnson is the weirdest conservative I've ever come across - while I frequently disagree with his views, I usually enjoy his bizarre writing - and on this occasion, I agree with his point as well (though why he's quoting David Icke is beyond me - I don't mind a bit of tinfoil but lizard people are going too far) - Obama could have those lizards licked in no time

Way to go, Mr President. I think we can all agree that it has been a cracking first week. Apart from the swearing-in glitch - which was entirely the fault of that judge - I have supported just about everything that Barack Obama has done.

But before we all get too misty-eyed about the new era, there is one more thing in his diplomatic in-tray. There is one last piece of neocon lunacy that needs to be addressed, and Obama could sort it out at the stroke of a pen.

In a legal nightmare that has lasted seven years, and cost untold millions to taxpayers in Britain and America, the US Justice Department is persisting in its demented quest to extradite Gary McKinnon, 43, of London.

To listen to the ravings of the US military you would think McKinnon is a threat to national security on a par with Osama bin Laden. According to the Americans, this mild-mannered computer programmer has done more damage to their war-fighting capabilities than all the orange-pyjama-clad suspects of Guantanamo combined.

And how? He is a hacker. He hacked into the Pentagon, he hacked into the army, the navy and the air force, and the Americans say he temporarily paralysed the US naval weapons station Earle, by deleting some files.

In their continuing rage at this electronic lese-majeste the Americans want him sent over there to face trial, and the possibility of a 70-year jail sentence. It is a comment on US bullying and British spinelessness that this farce is continuing, because McKinnon is not and never has been any kind of threat to US security. He had only one reason for fossicking around in the data banks of Pentagon computers, and it had nothing to do with the fight against terrorism.

McKinnon believes in UFOs, and he is one of the large number of people who think there is a gigantic conspiracy to conceal their existence and that this conspiracy is organised by the US Government.

I am not so brave as to claim that UFOs do not exist. The astronomer royal, Sir Martin Rees, has said he believes in life forms on other planets, and no decent empiricist could rule out the possibility.

It may be that the former footballer David Icke is right, and that the world is run by giant lizards in disguise. Perhaps Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling are supersized saurians who have been sent on a 10-year mission to wreck the British economy, in preparation for the great lizard takeover. Maybe the whole plot will climax in Davos this week as all 2500 leading economic and political lizards meet in the Swiss alps - having done untold damage to global finances - and hail the arrival of the lizard mother ship as it perches on the mountain top.

All this is theoretically possible, just as it is possible that there really was an accident involving an alien spacecraft at Roswell, and that there is an extra large teapot in orbit around Mars. It is just that I happen to think it vanishingly unlikely.

We have a word for people who persist in believing in alien abduction. They are cranks, and they do not deserve to be persecuted.

They do not deserve to be arrested and have their lives ruined by the agonising delays of the law, unable to work, a drain on the resources of the state and of their families.

McKinnon was not even a proper hacker. He did something called "blank password scanning", and because these military computers were so dumb as to lack proper passwords, he was able to roam around their intestines in search of evidence of little green men. He was so innocent and unfurtive in his investigations that he left his own email address, and messages such as "Your security is crap". ...

To persist with this extradition is so cruel and so irrational that the only plausible explanation is that beneath their suits the US Justice Department and the British Home Office are occupied by a conspiracy of great green gibbering geckos from outer space.