This is mostly for Mogwai, who is ill and the next few days will show if she will start to get better or deteriorate further.
Chirs Grayling was asked if the deaths caused by his department could be considered corporate manslaughter, he ducks the question and his message is clearly- we will continue causing deaths. Well that’s no longer manslaughter, that’s murder, which begs the question what would be considered reasonable self defence in stopping such homicidal structural violence?
Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye is an old Irish anti-war folk song, I first knew it though as the children’s song about animals going ‘into the ark’ two by two. I seem to remember I had a toy Noah’s Ark, a big plastic boat with lot’s of pairs of animals, even then as child I was skeptical about this who saga, I mean I had some giraffes and lions in the set, but where where all the whales, insects, spiders, rats, chipmunks, marmosets, monkeys and duck billed platypuses etc etc. Hmm, something was wrong here, also if all the animals went into there ark I pondered where was the bit in the Old Testament where Noah goes to the Poles and gets the Penguins & Polar bears, whither Pingu? And if it was so comprehensive and was, y’know, true how come no mention of animals that at that time in history had hitherto not been discovered and classified by humankind? I mean god would be nudging Noah all the time and saying ‘and now the Lemurs’ ‘The what?‘ ‘Lemurs, you ‘eard me now get on with it boat boy’. Surely if true Noah would be the year zero of natural history, his passenger manifest a catalogue of all life on earth, and all the land masses, suspiciously lacking in mentions of them for my liking? Almost as if- no surely not- this was all made up by blokes a long time ago as sort of indicated by its ‘respect older men’ slant and lack of any information beyond what was known at the time (no ‘and verily one day thou shalt be able to read my words on a iPad’ ‘A what now?’ ‘Just write it down, it’ll well impress people in time’ ‘Well alright but I’m still don’t understand any of that -Mars colony shall welcome the Alpha Centaurians- stuff from yesterday’). And what about a god who genocided humans except for involuntary zoologist Noah Family Arks Limited? Seemed a bit of a git. Hmm, I generally thought it best when taken to church by my parents that I slowly sneak down between the benches and play spaceships, I could see it going badly for me if I kept interrupting services with such questions. Anyways, I digress…
Eventually I knew the song for its original incarnation (along with a mysterious cassette tape of 70′s Irish ‘rebel’ songs my militaristic brother had sourced) but what I find of interest is that the song turned up in the USA with new lyrics as a pro war song during their Civil War ( what’s civil about war surely it’s one of the least polite things to be doing? Try the veal). And as if to confirm the lesson- militarism/imperialism will always corrupt everything- a Dropkick Murphys punky folk version has a YouTube (I know) commenter say they have gotten their whole Marine unit singing it. The anti-war one. Not the American reworded pro-war one. The anti-war one. Marines… So Semper Irony…
Lyrics below:
An Excited Oil Prospector Praises The British Queen
Noted PM & Nobleman David Cameron has bravely called out Argentina’s evil colonialist ways for its coveting of Islas Malvinas, er sorry The Falkland Islands (named after Anthony Cary, 5th Viscount of Falkland). At long last someone has had the courage to stand up to Argentina’s global dominance and imperial ambition, who can’t forget its expansive empire spanning the globe as capital was ruthlessly expropriated from indigenous peoples and used to enrich the Ruling Class and buy off domestic dissent. Why even now the Argentinean Royals travel the world having tributes payed to them by former colonies and tax shelters while back home the enriched elite build them a new yacht while engaging in mass programme of public cuts that will kill disabled and sick people.
I mean for a start if ownership of land (and islands are pretty well much the definition of land, as in they are not sea) is decided by who discovered it first and what nation it is nearest to (erm …) we can see the islands clearly belong to GREAT Britain because we discovered them first and it is right on our doorstep. Now you may hear scurrilous lies about the islands being discovered by Patagonian Indians or the Dutch and they are 12,349 km / 7674 miles / 6668 nm from the nearest British town (Truro). But these are, indeed, all lies. The sinister power of the sly Argentineans has even extended to all maps ever produced and even more alarmingly, all satellites and aircraft mapping the earth. And they have rewritten history so we are not even the first people to discover and name the FALKLAND islands (wot ho Viscount -who later invented the eponymous minty biscuit, TRUE) preferring a Spanish name Islas Malvinas (Spain, a nation suspected of poncing around the seas nicking peoples’ countries, unlike the charitable work of GREAT Britain’s overseas aid programmes, building schools, hospitals and roads for a thankful local populace).
So what next? Our plucky Bullingdon Boy has drawn a line in the sand, a line inspired by previous great leader and mother of Tony Blair Meryl Thatcher -star of her own documentary currently in cinemas everywhere- that when you are enacting great policies of social justice like saving miners from coal pits and children from having gayosity mentioned to them you sometimes need a lovely exciting adventure on Navy ships to make the population even more excited about how great your government is. So how will the swarthy dishonest Argentineans react? We have already seen they will hide their globe spanning imperial ways by accusing GREAT Britain of being colonial. Furthermore they will continue to oppress their own heroic former leaders, brave Generals who offered citizens exciting once in a lifetime nigh-time excursions to tour military facilities where they could take advantage of adoption services, free electricity and erotic adventures free of the politically correct tyranny of ‘consent’ with a variety of implements and soldiers. Now some say these former leaders made mistakes and it is true they did try and distract the domestic audience with an ill advised adventure to the Islands (but it’s bad when foreigners do that, ok, remember- bad when foreigners do it, really really good when GREAT Britain does it, ok got it?) but GREAT Britain would never deny their record on law & order as after all most of our senior government figures approved of them when applied by the visionary General Pinochet in neighbouring Chile.
You see the dark empire of Argentineness is full of great dangers to our way of life, they showed utter ingratitude to the IMF when it offered to help them have lots of lovely debt (not a mistake our top notch Chancellor, aristocrat George Osborne would make) and allowed slightly LEFTWING ideas to inform some government policies. Thank God (who is British by the way, nice Mr Gove’s new bible will clear that confusion up) they are a several thousand miles away, unlike the Falkland Islands which are of course ours by divine and right as they are really on our doorstep. It’s laughable really that GREAT Britain could even for a minute warrant a slur of Imperialism just look at the nearest island to us- Ireland. Now if we were colonial or interested in empire building Ireland’s history would be littered with endless atrocities committed against the Irish people by implanted British aristocrats with military support from the mainland. I dare any Argentinean to find a single inch of Irish soil that has any British interference whatsoever, and no, just like the Falkland’s population the plucky Northern Irish, well some of them, are not translated colonies but indigenous GREAT Britain loving locals who simply admire our fine traditions, sense of fair play and the Parachute Regiment.
So I ask you all to join with me in supporting our beloved Prime Minister and perhaps to donate some money to the lovely Queen’s new ship (it could make the subject of a future blockbuster like the King’s Peach or Iron Lady 2, British God Bless out brave film industry for standing up to Argentinean treachery and making films about ordinary Britons who rose from humble beginnings to lead our great nation into wars).
And if worse comes to worst and invading Argentineans swarm over our beloved Falkland Islands in the channel, I’m sure you, like me, will look up from our ration of Tesco gruel in our work re-education camp, smile at the G4S guard and join together in singing Rule Britannia and hope the press gangs will soon come and give us employment opportunities in the being burnt and then drowned fields, as we fight Brave Dave’s war of liberation.
[I would like to thank Niall Ferguson for historical help and John Humphrys for his independent journalist's eye in writing this wonderful article.]
Today’s carefully media managed torture show told us 3 things:-
- Our and the US security services are above the law with the connivance of this and previous governments, what happened is not so much no prosecutions but that the investigation was stonewalled and the govt & spooks would not give information or ask their allies even for something so simple as -er what was the name of that guy we tortured?
- As Guantanamo, Bagram and unknown, un-named others are still operating torture continues.
- The media co-operated with the government in reporting two stories- no prosecutions | setting up of a ‘panel’- together so that the appalling truth- we will torture and no one shall be prosecuted, had the bitter sting taken off it by instead focussing on the ‘panel’ which sounds all lovely and like we are doing something.
There have been no headlines like my headline, thus mission accomplished for the media machine.
NB. Craig Murray is less happy with the police than Clive Stafford-
Responding to today’s joint statement by the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan Police on investigations into UK complicity in the torture of detainees, Reprieve’s Director Clive Stafford Smith said:
“I have nothing but praise for the line police who have been investigating the case, but they are being hobbled, just as they were in the hacking inquiry. They know as well as I do that Shaker Aamer is key to this case, and it goes without saying that they need to interview him. But there seems to be political pressure to move forward with the sham Gibson Inquiry, at the cost of a proper police investigation.
“Today’s statement by the Crown Prosecution Service and the Metropolitan Police on the abuse of detainees makes a number of things clear:
“First, it shows that evidence of British complicity in the torture of Libyans Sami al Saadi and Abdulhakim Belhaj by the Gaddafi regime is so blatant that a criminal inquiry must go ahead before the Government’s deeply flawed Gibson Inquiry can get started.
“Second, the decision to set up a panel to look at other allegations is clearly aimed at the case of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantanamo Bay. Reprieve has provided the Police with information on his abuse.
“Third, this is the first time any official in any country has conceded that Binyam Mohamed was tortured – and it is clear from this statement that the CPS accepts that Mr Mohamed was tortured and it was a criminal offence.
“Finally, it is unsurprising that they have decided not to prosecute ‘Witness B’. MI5 and MI6 should of course discipline any staff involved, even if there is no criminal inquiry. But the main focus of all this should not be the rank and file, but those who were signing off the torture policy at the top. In that sense, there remain very real questions for Tony Blair, Jack Straw, and David Miliband, who were in power when these dreadful abuses took place.
“Sadly, the current Government’s Gibson Inquiry simply has neither the clout nor the independence it needs to get to the bottom of this, and as a result is set to be little more than a whitewash. Meanwhile, current Government proposals to bury our justice system under a blanket of secrecy when intelligence issues are involved look set to hamstring any future accountability in the courts.”
The frame for the neoliberal discourse on welfare and benefits is that unemployment, disability and sickness are caused by benefits rather than the business cycle, social disablement and ill health. It is a consumerist political marketing campaign to fraudulently locate the blame for structural problems onto the individual and to assign these failures to personal shortcomings. This becomes bile filled blame originating in DWP briefings and echoed in populist corporate media whose parent conglomerates will benefit greatly from the downward pressure on labour costs caused by the dismantling of welfare provision.
In a functioning democracy an opposition party would not subscribe to this frame it would offer an alternative choice to neoliberal dogma, thereby giving people who did not believe in this failed ideology a chance to support a party and in time a government that did not simply repeat the same trickle up scams of previous neoliberal administrations. Liam Byrne proves we do not have a functioning democracy, by using a dishonest fallacy of composition rhetorical scam beloved of Austerinomics shills he has necrophilically fucked the corpse of WIlliam Beveridge. Making it appear his counter factual ejaculations are Beveridge supporting polices in the now rather than him and his banker MBA chums (for Byrne is also both of those, a well drilled soldier of the financerati) using the dead leftwinger’s reputation as a rotting puppet prophylactic to obscure & protect their simpering right wing electoral realpolitik.
