“We got ‘m!” , squealed the US viceroy, Paul Bremer, in a very triumphalist manner. And so they had. And there he was, in all his blackness. In the great depth of his dirt. They said that he was being co-operative and talking. They’d given him a ‘medical’. Examined his ass. And they were making sure that they checked his head for lice in public; that is, with the full scrutiny of the world’s tv audience focused on his head. This was supposed to demean him, and they said that he looked crushed. But he didn’t. He just looked as though he’d gone back forty years. Back to jail. And he knew that he had to deal with them. And he knew how to. And he’d already begun. They said that he’d lost his dignity. But he hadn’t. There was a moment when he looked at the camera with all the old arrogance. And anyone seeing that knew that he was still playing hardball. The bad cop from Tikrit.
Then Dubya appeared, and spoke the speech that he’s been mulling over for the best part of a year. The man whose only job is to learn speeches. He’s got better at it. He’s now approaching dead-pan two-star. ..Something about ‘justice’, which word I personally found particularly incongruous coming from Bushmouth. I suddenly had visions of Justice Scalia being hung by his bollocks to the ceiling of Leicester Square ‘Gents’. Then Blair appeared, and muttered into his beard. Something about ‘a great day for Iraq’ (and me), and visibly hoped that he’d not be found out again, and can we move on to something more relevant to deftly trying to hand some council tax back to a huge group of grey-haired voters by some round about route… that won’t provoke another pay strike in the fire service. Please.. Oh, and the NHS.. we’re doing something there, aren’t we?
I’m glad I woke up late. I’d otherwise have spent the day clambering over the same ‘news’ item on every channel, across the board. I’d stayed up to catch the century in Sri Lanka by Michael Vaughan. I’d woken up three times with the box still on. First things first. I was horizontal on Plymouth Hoe. I didn’t even know it, but Saddam could wait.
There will now be absolutely every shade of Saddam madness for a few weeks. After all, Saddam is a man who killed every relative he ever suspected. And performed bad experiments on the rest. Shiites and Sunnis will bristle. The Jordanian border will liquidise, Sharon will try to pull a swift one, the Lebanese will shuffle, the Syrians will be breathing heavily, and hoping Saddam doesn’t spill too much juice with the beans. The Iranians will liquidise their own border to expand Shiite power, and successfully smoke screen Shirin Ebadi quickly sideways; and the Kurds will nudge ahead in the queue for that certain elusive piece of cheese. The Turks will be standing on the over-extended Bush neck to keep Iraq in one piece.. No separate Kurdistan please George.. which is likely to end up with the Kurds accepting autonomy within Iraq. Which is virtually the current status quo. When we all reconvene in a month or two, the goal posts will have been moved again. The new circus download will be in full swing.
Meanwhile Saddam has already started to deal. The Americans will be telling him that if he doesn’t talk, and fast, that they will be handing him over to the Shiite Iraqi police to research getting some answers out of him by internationally unrecognised means. He may be able to bluff that one out. Leastways, whoever tortures him will have to have an American doctor present to make sure that the boys don’t get too near to doing what they really want to do to him. I should imagine that it will be performed by experts. To ‘lose’ him in custody will have the same reflection on the Bush cabal as going to war in the first place did. The red cross is already screaming ‘foul’ because they can’t get to see him and check on him as a POW. The new Iraqi Council and the White House will be deaf to any of that. Even though it is required under international law, international law will only be condescended to by Dubya when it suits him. As per usual. What else would you expect from The Emperor?
All of the social movements by ordinary people over the last couple of hundred years which have been founded to deliver people from former injustices are being ignored by the very people who stand to gain the most from them. I.E. The leaders of the western democracies. If those leaders cared to invest time and effort into an organisation which was specifically set up TO MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE that there is justice for every living person, then international peace would be a fairly swift product of that. In an organised society where everyone’s rights are properly addressed, a person the like of Saddam Hussein is sorted out between the age of ten and twenty, and never progresses far enough as a bad egg to be able to threaten his own locality, never mind huge tracts of an area on the planet. The only way to disable the potential Saddams of this world is to treat everyone absolutely equally. Manners become paramount. I’ve said this before, but I guess that there’s no harm in repeating myself.. To murder anyone, for any reason at all, is uncivilised. The reason that it is uncivilised is that it sends a message to the whole world community that killing is ok. What this means is THAT THERE IS NO CHANCE THAT KILLING CAN BE STOPPED. And so it’ll carry on being a fact of human life. In Ruanda, in Saudi Arabia, in Burma, in Zimbabwe, in China and in the United States Of America. Where civilisation is largely discredited and ignored, the death penalty is ongoing. It’s the savage way. It’s basically the very unintelligent way. Thank goodness that in Europe we no longer have the ugly spectre of the street scenes of ‘the morning of the execution’. They were deplorable scenes. Humanly degrading. Like turning up at a road accident and gawping. The seedy end of humanity turn up for stuff like execution or torture. It’s a very depraved and dishonourable thing to be involved in as a human being, and the sooner we retire these type of punishments to history, the sooner we see the end of events like mass murder, either by Saddam, or Blair, or Bush.
This isn’t to say that either misdemeanour or punishment will disappear overnight, just that they will probably become less serious issues than is now the case. Possession of a gun should require a person to do months of social service. Naughty boys should be encouraged to be naughty in friendlier ways. Without pissing around, is it possible for humans to have a friendlier society? We don’t really know whether it can be that friendly, but what we do know is that execution and torture are definitely NOT the way forward. George Bush does not believe this. He never will. It has never entered his head. It will require a fundamental shift in his powers of perception to get there. George’s powers of perception are not that great. He is lately touted as being more of his own man. An example of that is said to be that when Blair and he met recently, Cheney moved to the back of the room. But I would have to say that that would be the safest place to be when the two evangelists are together. And especially if you’re Dicky the known shifty dealer. However, what we now see is that the ultimate shify dealer, a man who is known to the Republican Party and to the world as ‘The Velvet Hammer’, James Baker, ex-Secretary Of State in the Bush Snr administration, and the man who guided the Dubya coup d’etat to success, is currently in Europe on a mission to arm twist Shroeder and Chirac into funding some of the Iraqi debt. Presumably for contracts in the eventual rebuilding…..! To cut a long and boring story short, he appears to be having some success. But he would; the French need some of their Iraqi investment back. And they know the Iraqi infrastructure better than anyone else. Even as degraded as it is. The obvious idea is to get the great European bulwark of France/Germany together onside with Bush. Will they fall for it? Can they afford not to? Right now it’s a very hot potato for them. They’ll shift for a while… June is likely to be the earliest point at which they would want to cash in their current moral superiority for the dangling filthy ucre. But they wont being going into a hostile scenario any time soon. Baker needs America to be seen to be stood with nations whose morality is in a higher league. What are they going to charge him for some moral promotion? For sure, French and German lives will not be traded. Hammer or no hammer.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, how can Saddam deal? He doesn’t want his remaining relatives to be touched in Syria or Jordan, or wherever they are. But they will be threatened. And presumably he wants his own life, but I don’t think that he’s going to hang on to that if he can use it to wreak some permanent adverse publicity upon the ‘Coalition’. What does he have to deal with? Presumably a lot of info and an alleged $3 billion stashed somewhere. We can kind of discount the dosh because it’s chicken feed for a day on the international markets. The info is where the real clout is. If our man is who we know him to be, and Jack Straw has said that he wouldn’t be able to recognise the truth even if he stumbled over it, then he’ll give them snippets every now and then. The process is likely to become Pavlovian. With each side taking turns to be the dog. While Mr Straw stumbles on. Without finding anything..
The most important questions for the Americans will be “Where and when did you last see or hear of Osama”, but even if he’s got some fairly recent or salient info, it’s not going to be easy to move without a deal in place. It’s going to take weeks, if not months, to hammer that out. Neither side will want to give anything. The Americans are not going to want to let legal representation anywhere near him, but they may perceive in this matter that they must be seen by the rest of the world to be as transparent as possible this time. The US ‘intelligence’ consensus will be to torture him. Outside the reach of any cameras. They must surely realise that this is never going to be out of world view again, and if they do resort to abuse, then they will open up a significant further gap between themselves and the rest of the world in terms of perceived just process this time round.
They will want to give him to the Iraqis, because that’s where he will definitely meet death fairly quickly. In other words America will have it’s few pounds of flesh, but won’t dirty it’s hands in the actual act. This isn’t likely to work out all that well though, because he will definitely become a martyr if he is killed. Absolutely the best thing to do with him is to try him internationally, publicly and quickly for his murders, then lock him up and throw the key away. Strip him of any further voice. Any further input. My guess is that he would like to be bound for martyrdom, and that he will generally be the arbiter of how that happens, but it could go on for years. It’ll take a year to sort out the witnesses and the evidence.
Dubya is used to having the death penalty meted out willy nilly. I’ll never forget seeing his face as they asked him whether he was going to reprieve one reformed female murdress. It was just blank. Like.. “What are you asking me stupid questions for, can’t you see I’m on my way out to dinner”. He won’t have changed. Saddam will take that final voice if he is offered it. I can’t see him taking death with obsequious aquiescence. He’ll be seen to be up there rallying the troops for the very naughty far right. Bush Snr, Rumsfeld and Saddam employed each other during the Iran-Iraq war. They are members of the same loose community. Everyone knows that the far right will glorify in using it’s old methods on one of it’s errant old boys. But can the international community be strong enough to stop them all in their tracks. It was perceived at Nuremburg in 1946/7 that to kill too many of the Nazi hierarchy would alienate considerable tracts of humanity. Enough was deemed to be enough after the first flush of blood, and particularly after all the main culprits had committed suicide. And that was nearly sixty years ago.
Saddam’s ‘troops’ constitute potentially 40% of Iraqis. The Sunnis. The Americans refuse to accept that there is a ‘resistance’ to their occupation. They prefer to call their opposition ‘terrorists’. We all realise that this isn’t true, and that potentially 40% of Iraqis will disagree with that assessment. Moreover, it’s now got potentially more dangerous for the coalition because, as Robert Fisk said yesterday, “The committee of the ‘faithful’ are now free to join the resistance because Saddam has gone”. Iraq will now take it’s place as a Muslim nation among Muslim nations, whatever happens, now that the partially secular and criminal Saddam is in permanent custody. The war in Iraq is now for different things, and anyone caught in the crossfire, and most especially the coalition, had better leave. The Shiites constitute the other 60%. And, as we’ve said before, the foisting of democracy isn’t going to be the primary concern in 2004 Iraq. Basically, when you reduce what was an educated population to rags and a ruined infrastructure in a matter of days, you make enemies. No electricity, no jobs, no fuel, not much food. Lots of enemies. the real liberation of Iraq will now be a long time coming. Blair and Bush put paid to the potentially quicker and more peaceful alternative. Iraq will be full of ‘foreigners’ for some time to come. Now and then, Al Qaeda will be mentioned. Latter day Visigoths.
The recent meeting of these two heads of the two governments involved in the pointless killings of tens of thousands of people in Iraq was heralded by warnings that Al Qaeda would strike at the western establishment. It did. George Bush and his Blairite cronies were protected by hundreds of British marksmen and 14,000 police in London in November 2003. The out-sourced Istambul branch of Al Qaeda easily found a way round that. The western Empire is too big and too scattered not to go unpunished in the moment of its leaders rejoicing in their own propaganda on British soil. It was an opportunity too good for Al Qaeda and friends to miss. On offer was the same, linked, global coverage. The life of the British Consul in Istambul, and a couple of arrests, was an easy and cheap price to pay for such massive global media coverage. And what price a reality check on the Turks? Who continue to try to live in two worlds. Road kills, as Al and the boys try to bully their way westward a country at a time? There are obvious advantages for Al Qaeda to be so active on such a day, but we should examine those reasons more thoroughly after we have further perused the triumphalist western persona together with the very active will for extremist Muslim expansion.
It would seem that the arrangement for the Bush visit to London was started as a pre-2004 US election exercise by the Republican Party in the wake of 9/11. During the witch-hunt for the men of an equivalent bible belt cloth in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the afterglow of the incomplete subjugation of Afghanistan…. As some kind of a foreign trip/policy statement to enable this eloquent president to maintain his ‘most powerful man in the world’ role. Win him a second term in office on the back of being seen hobnobbing with the Palace Hillbillies. One wonders at the kind of advise he is receiving that enables his administration to imagine that he will be able to emerge from the visit with flying colours, or indeed with anything other than the bad press he deserves from the liberated media on this side of the pond. Historically speaking, that is. That the visit wasn’t cancelled out of respect to humanity only indicates the amount by which government by the people through their elected representatives is losing credibility.. and falling a very long way short of what would be considered democratic, in the modern sense of that word. Suffice to say that if you were not part of the protest a month ago then you are either too sick, infirm, or too far away to attend, or you are blissfully ignorant of what’s been happening to your human world this last couple of years.
Huge amounts of column inches have been devoted to the general erosion of individual freedoms that is taking place in the name of Bush-style ‘freedom’, i.e.., imprisonment without recourse to justice, but I don’t intend to re-iterate much of that here. The reason that I have felt obliged to put pen to paper again is because hardly anyone is willing to see, or indeed purloin the space to advance ideas which might allude to the finer detail of the bigger pictures involved in the current struggle. Such as the fact that the world’s burgeoning human populations want, desire, need and are entitled to the same kind of equality of opportunity we allegedly still enjoy in Europe, N America and Australasia etc. .. and they are going to be willing to take it by any means they can. If that means invading our borders in such numbers that a high percentage are going to get through, then so be it. If it means flying planes into skyscrapers to slow us down in bomb disposal traffic jams and airline security systems etc., then so be it. As previously mentioned in this diary, we all made the obvious connections when 9/11 happened.
(Admittedly the advance of rational ideas in such a cacophony is seriously challenged. And nigh on impossible. It’s almost as if the present can no longer be understood as being of any consequence, because it’s now a blur. An irritation in the dream. A disturbance in the force. Far too demanding to look into the face of. A frightening affront. And always profoundly gone. At the same time, in the same fantasy, history becomes just some kind of redundant academic idea. The only view left is frantic. And will be in momentary frantic hindsight. And that’s very possibly going to become the most accepted view.. Momentary frantic hindsight.. because there isn’t enough time for anything more sustained to develop, and when we only have to wait until tomorrow for hindsight, why bother? Why bother with history when it’s always a perceived lifetime away, and completely subjective. There’s no time for that. Why look at shapes during the long weekend in Ibiza?)
Meanwhile, back at the objective grindstone, you have real anger in the world, because the empire is everyone else’s cash flow problem, and you only need to spice that up with a bit of religion (superstition) and envy, and automatically, you’ve wandered aimlessly across a line that has been drawn for some time in deserts scattered about the place. Once the exhausting first rung on the western type ladder is achieved…. the ability to fill in forms, have 1.1 children, be young and fit, and have professional qualifications, there will generally be enough scraps around for the more enterprising souls to make the actual trek towards the dream dollar.
Of course we all have to admit that fundamentalist religious mania exists in all parts of the human world, but it would seem that there’s a not so secret desire among the poorer humans to aspire to secular western home comforts, values and spending power, no matter what brand of religious fire they are currently exposed to, and a desire to join the dosh as quickly as is possible. There’s a Pharaoh in everyone’s lottery ticket, as Bonaparte might have said. But then there are huge numbers of people east and south of Istambul who would never have any attraction for anyone in the west; other than sexual, perhaps, and they know it. They are people who would want a more material lifestyle than they could ever achieve in their local circumstance, but they are intelligent enough to realise that, one, their own way of life is, in some fundamental ways, unacceptable to the great western silent majority, and two, that even if they were able to disguise that, their progress to the point of acceptance in the west would be painfully slow and populated with some pretty insensitive obstacles. These people are not even going to try to join the gold rush. If anything, they’re going to try to undermine it. Or at best dictate what piece of desert the western diggers can be condemned to digging each other out of. Blair and Bush have recently intensified those feelings of disenfranchisement in the rest of the world.
One of the biggest faults with an administration like the Bush cabal is that it is unwilling to negotiate with the future on anything but the most selfish of terms. It’s obvious that the richer nations, mainly because of former stimuli such as war and population pressure, have developed the means, mechanically and socially, to live longer and potentially more fulfilling lives on quite a large scale within quite a robust society. The rest of the world wants to be in on this; in on their own versions of it. They can see it on the media scraps they get. It’s glamourous. It seems healthy. They want it. They want the quatro shave in the dream team bathroom. They perceive that it will bring the much desired immediate fruit. No matter whether that perception is right or wrong, they (we), are all in the restless queue for it. Personal transport. personal medicine and personal entertainment. And an advantage that can obviously seem to benefit the majority has always eventually been inherited by the majority. If not by force then by exigency. And for how long, in one age, can generosity be kept off the human playing field? Even Caligula stroked his horse… but no… no, the stunted black canine will not enter this treatise as a source of ridicule.. roy..
So, what would constitute the universal elixir? The panacea. The release from this continuous round of confrontation. And would it be worth the price? Globally..? BUT, and perhaps more importantly, IS IT IN ANY WAY ATTAINABLE? In my best moments I would like to think that I know the answers to these questions without undue consideration. That the elixir is to allow the whole human intelligence to develop benign formulas for the longevity of it’s entire imagination.. would be an approximation of my own version. I would also have to add that all people should have access to immediate care. But these considerations would be among the myriad others put forward by any democratic consensus. Do I think it would be worth it? Well yes, but what I’m talking about is the actual and definite end of slavery. And that’s a price which people will continue to pay for in lives….and in droves, and for the foreseeable future. Why are we struggling to want to be part of a future where masters are universally approved for their humanity before they can assume the great responsibility that comes with leadership; with the power to govern others? Do we secretly, unconsciously, want, even need, the authoritarian Big Brother in charge? Are we just being lazy about proportional representation? Perhaps the future is beginning to be perceived to be as irrelevant as the present.. Forget any particular party line. At best, that’s unreal in such a crisis…. Though there should never be a price list put on the quality or availability of life. .. there manifestly still is.
Ok, so we might be forced by weight of numbers to agree means which attempt to contain the actual ongoing quantity of life, but an integral agreement on that could only be addressed with 100% consensus. The odds on that becoming world policy with religion in full swing, are still billions to one against. Meanwhile, the empire will say that it is providing the ‘dream’.. the ‘American Dream’ or the ‘European Dream’ or take your pick….. But if you can’t possibly live that dream, then you’re almost obliged to be at war with it because it’s in the throws of depleting your world in order to continue to feed the dream. Which, as that word itself would indicate, can very rarely, if ever, be connected to reality. Regardless of whatever dream you have signed up to, you will always be obliged to fight slavery, whether it’s economic or actual. And in effect, there is very little difference between the two. If you don’t, it’ll always be there. A permanent social disease. A very threatening running sore. Business will have to be infinitely more ethically regulated. And morally accountable, as in food for children, or scientific planet management, etc. Dreams, as in things wished for by populations, will have to be more real. Or at least more connected to generally perceived actuality. If human intercourse ever reached these points, then we would be in the same ballpark as ‘attainable’, but there’d still be some distance to go. We may eventually actually find ourselves having to disconnect what we know to be true, and what we’d like to imagine is true. Struth! As my Dad would have said.
The war at the moment seems to have been developed between two slightly different versions of a concept of dim and dusty immortality that owes it’s existence to the inequities of empires which have existed for the last 5,000 years. And particularly from between 3,370 years ago, during the reign in Egypt of Akhenaton, the first man to suggest the concept of ‘the one god’, and the foundation of Islam by Mohammed 1400 years ago. Empires where life was cheap and nasty. Still is. Where people were thrown to the lions in all walks of life. And wherefrom sprang such universal escapes as ‘We are all equal under the same god’. What a powerful drug to die to. I am about to meet my maker. There is only one of him. I will be able to face him immediately after this moment of pain.. and surely my tormentors will also be judged in his presence, along with me, where all wrongs will be exposed, and all will come out in the wash…… !
The regenerative train is in the station, and will depart each generation unless and until the cobwebs of ‘immortality’ are finally woven and the spiders take over. Or hopefully not…. So one version of the wannabe immortals is currently engaged in a global war with the other. And unless real concessions are granted by the empire, then hostilities will eventually amount to more than just the acquisition of temporal territory for the guerilla side. As usual, the guerillas will have died in great numbers to achieve the right to an absolutely new and powerful voice. And very quickly it may become so loud that it’s the only voice. And a voice to the far right of The Church Of Rome. Effectively. Do we all want this? Is this the best thing for us? Do we want the empire to be dallying with such a voice? Is the crusading bible belt the only answer to this voice? Or is true recognition of actual fact humanity’s only hope? (I may attempt to address those particular questions later on in this essay.)***
Before I even attempt to answer any of that, I have to imagine myself as a good soldier of the empire, just for a moment, and think immediately about the emergency in front of me. So, could this new voice have been closed off? Can half the world be closed off to the other? Left to it’s own devices? Ignored? Gagged?.. Not in a million years. We are all in this together…. There is no way for large groups of people to avoid each other’s existence. Could any particular distressed group still be pacified? However big they were?.. Only with a quick injection of cash. Lots of money. Get ’em watching their own Blind Date with Cilla spinoff, as quickly as possible. And wondering whether the guys on Jackass are going to be cripples in early middle age. Do a Rupert Murdoch on them. Feed them on everything they know they don’t want so that the largest fraction of their kids are stuck in Starbucks by the time they’re fifteen. Feed them with material until they’re sick. Bulk, with puke flowing in the rivers and huge landfills in the Sahara. Turnover. Otherwise.. the Visigoths are at the door again.
It occurs to us that fumbling humanity may not easily be able to extricate itself from the current cycle of greed and violence.. might not have the desire, the wherewithal or the social machinery to do so. Plague proportions, after all, would not in theory be conducive to a balanced performance of logic, even if the end can be logically predicted, given the circumstances. Who knows what alternative cultures might have achieved without the precipitous charge for blood and carbon that is the hallmark of western and certain middle eastern populations and their solutions. The seeming universal thrust is for harmony. But I’m not so sure that harmony is that possible from the battlements. Even from the first notion of battlements. To start with, harmony has drifted quite some distance from it’s former technical, Pythagorean recognition. Definition. The Reich was going to be the thousand year harmony, the allegedly harmonious Timothy Leary led a moment of ‘flower power’ into the rank morality of the 1980s. Such is harmony. Harmony is finished in the moment of it’s achievement. A temporary euphemism and an umbrella for the deeds done thereunder and thereafter. Theory.
Of course, underneath the doctrinaire posturing, it’s all tribal. If someone speaks with even the slightest difference in dialect, then he’s an outsider. A different language then she’s an alien. A different colour then he’s just the other side of being a potential enemy. For reasons which will pertain to the integrity of the social group, humanity is generally exclusive. If you’re an outsider, you will generally have to present the indigenous group with an obvious advantage for letting you join them. And you will have to temporarily adhere to the current pecking order. These are obvious mechanisms which flow from perceived imperatives to retain the environment necessary to maintain current lifestyle. With some perceived headroom.
All that having been said, we now live in a world in which former territorial empires, and their largely material philosophies, are now being disabled by lack of space to conquer. When we ran out of space on the ground, we went up, which became an obvious target. Problems for us. But not for invading poverty. The skylines are too inviting. While there isn’t much easy luxury left to insurge in on for the lower ranks of the masters, rank poverty has worlds to capture. It was the same in 1789. But I can’t carry this on without returning to a couple of questions I raised 4 paragraphs ago, i.e., do we want to be governed by one implausible voice? By Big Brother?
When I ask this question, I can’t help but think, logically, that democracy doesn’t favour a long term solution for mankind. It proffers too many obvious potentially confusing obstacles. Like the eternal argument. The bitter conflict. Hostility. Ego. Politics. Disparity. Enmity. Endless revolution. Violence and so on…. Surely, what would benefit mankind’s longevity would be rigour. The only way forward would seem to be to biologically organise. Absolutely and infinitesimally organise. On such a scale that nothing was left to chance. That biological order was universal. And followed to the ultimate preservation of the species. Totally altruistic. Absolutely meek. But how can you be meek with frontal lobes? Same answer… Go straight to apocalypse. Do not pass go… ….Is human kind automatically eventually disabled by the development of it’s ego and self-identity? By those crucial three million uniquely placed genes, out of the alleged hundreds of billions we all share, that separate each single human identity?
Mmm.. it may seem that we would need to suddenly develop an innate and unconscious ethic of approximately 95% humility in order to become humble enough to survive. An ethic we can’t possibly have the chance of understanding this side of borderline apocalypse. As the poor insurge. So, pre-apocalypse, what do we have to fear? The society of the poor? The absolute bond that is a struggling family in the face of often overwhelming odds? To fear that is to deny society altogether.. But I’m talking UNCONSCIOUS. Truly meek in the absolute sense of meek. At least as meek as a wasp. And with a social hierarchy to match. Where failure is not even a consideration, and if it arrives, is an unnoticed catastrophe with no survivors. Apocalypse is not exclusive. It’s a daily occurrence.
Unstinting obedience WILL work. Of course it will. But which bitching idiot doing 45 in a 30 zone is going to come to heel for the sake of some fantasy sibling? If Little Sister isn’t even in the car then she won’t be subjected to the private daily obligatory attack of rage behind the wheel. Will she? We can all feel a general encroachment of more control being exercised among us. Most of us are at odds with large parts of what it’s saying and doing to our concepts of human rights. But are not human rights now firmly in the way of ultimate survival? Do we go for annihilation now, purely because we all refuse to be bound by a 30 mph limit? (Perhaps the sheer weight of numbers is going through another critical phase!) But I’ve drifted… I’m sat onstage again trying desperately to rescue myself from an indifferent gig…
So I’ll sing another song.. before significant numbers of you walk out with the sheer frustration of no music for at least another ten minutes. In fact, I’ll sing the keystone song of the night.. so that you can go away into the night saying “Yes!’ Or “No”. etc. etc.
The Hutton enquiry will publish it’s findings early in the new year. Apparently. If Hutton and his office are to be believed, and there is no outstanding reason why they shouldn’t be, the findings will go to all parties on the same day. So that no one has any obvious advantage in the debate which will follow. So it’s eyes down then. On the day. With teams of young eagles spotting imaginary deviations in the intentions of the judgement. Feathers will be ruffled together. My own pre-judgement, based on what I’ve heard with my own ears and seen with my own eyes, is that Blair is probably the most culpable of all those who will attempt to defend the idea that they didn’t throw David Kelly to the wolves, (and wouldn’t have hesitated to throw any of us in there after him..) In my own opinion, the whole affair tastes exactly like a Blair recipe to these old taste buds.
So let’s further beat about the Bush for a while.. For instance, is Blair as stupid as he looks? OO, personal affront roy, out of order… ok, did he start a war resulting in thousands of unnecessary deaths in a country he had never visited, in any sense, without either a UN mandate or any other reason which was an internationally recognised procedure for committing people to war? In my opinion absolutely .. Yes. Is the confined remit of the Hutton enquiry going to find him guilty of this…. No, of course not, that’s not their brief. Is he going to walk away from it as Prime Minister of GB. Yes. Unscathed? That’s in the hands of the electorate. If you believe that people should be killing each other on tv, then you obviously have no problems with state mass murder. And without the backing of Blair, Bush would never have gone it alone. So that, in effect, though Cheney and Wolfovitz, Rumsfelt, Baker, Ashcroft and Bush Snr., and even Powell and Rice proposed the issue, it needed to be seconded.
And Blair was the idiot who gave permission. The sheep in sheep’s clothing who fannied his way into a western history that can never, as he will forever maintain that it will, “prove him right”, for the simple reason that it is now irreversible. All we now have to admire, is a fantastic mess. A mess to equal Vietnam, that my own country, with my own tacit approval has created by means of a fundamentally unintelligent error by one of it’s leaders. I say that this is with my own tacit approval in that I was among those who championed the ‘Labour’ cause against Margaret Thatcher whenever I could. This result is a leaf out of her book. I couldn’t have chosen a worse cause to espouse. The following appeared in The Guardian on December 3rd. Please try to understand how much pressure there is going to be placed on getting to know what’s in that document well in advance of it’s publication; and by any means possible.
Quote:
‘Lord Hutton will break constitutional precedent early next year by handing over his report into the death of the Iraq weapons expert Dr David Kelly simultaneously to the BBC, Tony Blair and other leading witnesses to his inquiry.
The law lord has decided that the Downing Street spin machine cannot be trusted not to misrepresent or leak his findings in advance if he allows ministers to see a draft version of his report. As a result, ministers, officials and the BBC will receive a copy of the report one day before Lord Hutton expects Mr Blair and Lord Falconer to make statements to parliament on his findings.
“Lord Hutton is determined that his report will not be leaked in advance or misrepresented. He does not want the government to be able to hold on to his findings so that information can be selectively leaked,” sources close to the inquiry said yesterday.
The BBC will be asked to sign a binding legal undertaking not to leak the report a day in advance. There is a clear understanding that recipients of the report will be able to publish after 24 hours.
Copies will only be given to the leading players in the inquiry, including the prime minister, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, Sir John Scarlett, head of the joint intelligence committee, Gavyn Davis, chairman of the BBC, and the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan. Lobby journalists, friends and colleagues of Dr Kelly will not be sent copies of the report in advance. The report is expected to run to more than 1,000 pages.
Lord Hutton, who is preparing the report alone, aims to write a readable narrative. In its present draft form there are no recommendations or appendices. Instead he will rely on acerbic comments in the narrative to make it absolutely clear who is to blame and what needs to be done. Lord Hutton is understood to take the view that those who are to be criticised – including senior Ministry of Defence officials – received notice to that effect at the end of the first round of the inquiry, before they were recalled for cross-examination in the second phase.
It is believed no one will be subject to significant fresh criticism as a result of the cross-examination. However, witnesses will not know until shortly before the report’s publication whether their response to cross-examination – by their own lawyers as well as by those of other witnesses – has changed Lord Hutton’s judgement.
He has also laid down a number of other guidelines which he expects Mr Blair to follow. The law lord has told Lord Falconer that he has no intention of producing his report during the parliamentary recess, or in the dying days of the present session, because he believes ministers would try to bury bad news. Instead he would like it published in January, preferably on a Thursday, with a commitment from the prime minister that parliament could debate his findings within a week. Originally, he proposed even more drastic curbs on its release, giving ministers three hours to read it before it was released to the public.
The procedure is in marked contrast to that adopted by Lord Scott during his arms-to-Iraq inquiry. There was no cross-examination at his inquiry and Lord Scott gave witnesses passages of his draft report where they were criticised. That led to a series of leaks which allowed government and other witnesses to manipulate the debate before that report was published.’
Unquote.
But is this establishment law talking up it’s hand before it then has to find a way of not over-turning the constitutional apple cart, the fragile status quo? The law has to be seen to be heard. But can the law really challenge the government? In this day and age? Could it ever? Not in GB. At least not to date.
So, in January, be aware of what is going down. 1. The new establishment is being rumbled by the old. 2. The old establishment is going to try to rap the ‘New’ across the knuckles, because they will deserve it for attempting to usurp more power than is authorised by law. Will this mean that the old establishment is willing to sacrifice a few ancient precedents and effectively indicate that the present government isn’t worth the paper that it’s written on? I very much doubt it. It would be a constitutional thunderbolt would anything more than a slight reprimand be administered to a sitting government of the UK by practitioners of it’s own law. That would be interpreted as the old order seriously censoring the new, while most of the weapons are still in the camp of the ‘new’. Reprisal and recrimination would swiftly follow. And the old establishment don’t have the support of the popular press. Therefore it is likely to be generally accepted that the balancing act between legal advise and the enactment of law would have to be maintained as is. That there is a continuous smooth flow between the arbiters and the foot soldiers. That the chain of command in the empire is not compromised. That no weakness is shown. In any way.
Will any of what ensues lessen the blame that Blair has for killing thousands of people? Most certainly not. And please understand that. Please understand that this man is beyond the law. But please also understand that he needs to be removed at the earliest opportunity. This is unlikely to happen at the next general election, because he will be maintained by a million sycophants and a local constituency which are highly unlikely to unseat their Prime Minister local MP. Post election, if we all do our stuff, is where this shabby prime minister is going to feel the brunt of massive opinion against his policies. When he has lost at least 40 or 50 members of his parliamentary support. I am likely to lose some of my own support for saying, and meaning, things like this. I have no doubt received some support in the past from Labour activists who were, and perhaps still are, tied in with this ruling party. And by that I would mean economically tied in. Working to keep this government in power, and on the payroll. To them I would just have to say, be honest. Regardless of where you perceive your wage to be coming from, there will be another wage to be earned in a more honest support of things which are closer to your heart than continuing to support a dodgy pop star who has had his day.
Saddam is from the pit of humanity, and had to go, but David Kelly didn’t. Our remaining trust in our own government went with David Kelly. Be firm, be honest, be resolute about mass murder by empires. And remember this. The empires are still not in a position to admit to the freedoms that have allegedly been won (recognised) since partial emancipation (1917). Republican (misnomer) forces still retain control of who is and who isn’t said to be free. By various degrees this force must be reduced and a peaceful resolution to these contentious issues sought. Universally. ASAP. If it is not, then it will be resolved in the same old way. By massive amounts of blood-letting in revolutions. When and if equal rights are finally and properly addressed, then a benign capitalism will only be able to be achieved through the effect of the decisions of all of it’s participants. We have not yet significantly moved on from 1917. In order to defeat Big Brother and the empire, we all have to move on from there. To imagine that the world can be held, as it is, is to be a believer in a permanently deferred judgement day. And to be caught up in trying to permanently defer it. Judgement day is today. And ongoing.. teach the children.
This is the most serious issue of our times, and the most serious issue you will ever face. At issue is whether you are going to continue to allow two profoundly dishonest men to continue to ‘lead’ the world, or whether we are going to begin to treat the planet we live upon with the amount of respect that may yet help us to survive it’s reaction against the wholesale destructions we have already wrought. …..and it’s your choice, as of now.
TBC….
Copyright 2003 Roy Harper
