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May-June 2004 archive
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Sadman Hussein
Old
news. Bogey Man captured by Superpowerman
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After Euro '04 Beckham heaps blame on himself
Read
Japan's
hostages get chilly reception home
Released
hostages are scolded and billed by the Japanese government.
No link between Saddam and Al Qaida: gosh!
In
case you missed the interim US report into Bush's bullshit, click here.
If
I lie to my friends and colleagues, people lose faith in me.
When Bush and Blair lie, children die.
Mad old git pops his clogs
Ronald
Reagan has sadly passed away. His long life was tragically marred by
a chronic mental degenerative disorder, which at its worst led him
into the delusion that he was president of the United States and made
him unable to tell the difference between reality and his own speeches.
The mental degeneration led him to believe that he was standing tall for freedom
and democracy at the same time that his army and intelligence services were
fighting covert and proxy wars against popular and elected leaders in Chile,
and Nicaragua, propped up despots in Guatemala and Honduras, trained death
squads and torturers within the US at the School of the Americas and funded
Pol Pot in his war against Vietnam. Mr. Reagan himself laid flowers on the
graves of Nazis.
He claimed to be maintaining peace and security on the planet but at the same
time absent mindedly brandished nuclear weapons at us.
In one of history's worst cases of contageous mental disorder, he and many
others like him, believed he had brought an end to the Soviet Union. The reality
of course was that the leaders of the USSR brought an end to that system. The
extravagance of his claims to have reformed the USSR can only lead us to the
unhappy inference that he thought he was leader of that country rather than
the USA or was unable to distinguish the two. Given the two countries' disregard
for truth and freedom and given that they both began with the letter U, perhaps
the error was understandable.
He believed he was a statesman, but to the rest of the world he was a confused
old man wandering a golf course looking for a monkey.
Undying Faith in Humanity
One story that stuck in my mind from
the Israeli assault on Rafah. Probably you read it, so stop me if you've
heard it before.
This old Palestinian bloke finds his house is in the path of the Israeli bulldozers.
There's shooting all around. People are being injured and killed all over.
His family and friends tell him to get the hell out. He tells them, no, it's
his home. He's not going.
He says that if he stands outside his house with a white flag, the Israelis
won't dare hurt him or his house.
With all that's gone on since 1947, with all that's going on in the world,
with all that he's experienced in his life, after living in Gaza for so long
and with the bombs and bullets flying, he still has enough faith in decency,
and enough faith in humanity in general and the Israeli army in particular
that he will bet his life on a white flag on his doorstep to protect his house.
So he steps outside with the white flag, the Israelis shoot him right away
and bulldoze his house over his dead body.
That is the world that Bush and Blair and Sharon have made.
May 27, 2004
US press cuts its own balls off
May
20, US forces bomb an Iraqi wedding party killing more than 40 people.
Israeli forces push into Rafah and fire on a protest march killing
many, the majority of whom are children. The UN censures Israel and
tells the country that bulldozing houses is a crime.
These stories are front page in the Guardian, the BBC, The Independent and
Aljazeera.
The US press are more coy. The New York Times mentions the wedding massacre
on its front page but makes sure to call the attack 'disputed' in the headline.
Fox brings itself to mention the bombing of the wedding but insists too in
its headline that it is disputed, then tells us another US soldier is killed
in Baghdad, but no front page mention of the UN resolution condemning Israel
or of the protest march attack.
USA Today is pretty much a clone of Fox.
CNN mentions none of the above on its front page.
All the US sources give prominent mention to the entirely neutral story of the raid on Chalabi's residence.
May 20, '04
The Rumsfeld Apology — full text
Donald
Rumsfeld: I am deeply sorry.
Deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply,
deeply, sorry. Not only am I deeply sorry, I am sincerely deeply sorry
for ... [to aide] What am I sorry for? OK.
I am deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply, deeply,
deeply, sorry and sincerely deeply sorry for dropping my marmalade toast on
the carpet. In dropping this marmalade toast I brought a stain on the carpet.
And for this I am deeply, deeply, deeply, sorry.
It is true that I knew as long ago as last January that I had dropped my marmalade
toast on the carpet, and I knew, moreover, that it landed sticky side down.
I didn't see any need at the time to tell Congress or the President because
I immediately ordered a wet cloth.
It seems that despite this some members of the government and the President
have marmalade impregnated fluff attached to their socks. I will of course
order my staff to clean the socks at no extra charge.
It is also true that I had received explicit warnings about the marmalade toast.
The Red Cross did in fact tell me that twirling toast on the end of my finger
could result in it falling to the carpet, but the CIA told me that in such
cases the toast always falls dry side down. In the event it fell sticky side
down.
It was only when I saw all the sticky fluff attached to the stain on the carpet
that I understood the full extent of the marmalade.
As for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners ... fuck 'em, they're all a bunch of camel
jockeys.
May 9, '04
Abuse photos are blatant fakes
Military experts have cast doubt on
the authenticity of the photos of abuse allegedly commited by US and
UK troops in Iraq.
US
General Donald Rumdoings and UK General Emperor Franz Joseph
told us about their doubts.
" There are lots of inconsistencies in the photos," said Gen. Franz
Joseph. "Firstly, we don't use that kind of urine in the desert. We use
a dry, powdery kind specially developed for hot places, so this photo cannot
possibly be real.
" Secondly, soldiers have much bigger willies than that. This is obviously
a journalist pissing on the towel-head because the willy is so small.
" Third, we don't have victims like that. This guy looks like he might be
able to take care of himself if unshackled. We prefer to brutalise women and
children. And then we do it by remote control by use of cluster bombs and the
like.
" Finally, the uniform is all wrong. Our combat soldiers in the desert wear
sandals on their feet and flowers in their hair and they never carry guns. Chihuahuas.
They carry chihuahuas, not guns."
" And there's another important point people have overlooked here," explained
Gen. Rumdoings. "Making piles of naked men isn't abuse, it's fun."
" Yes. When I was at boarding school, we used to do it all the time. It's
especially good if you are in the middle, because then you have naked men all
around you," elaborated Gen. Franz Joseph.
Gen. Rumdoings went on to explain that the US uses very advanced forms of interrogation
and has no need of physical coercion. 
" Cream buns. Lots of them. And hamburgers and hot dogs and fried chicken.
We feed them till they're stuffed, then we feed them some more. Then we track
down their families and leave picnic hampers outside their door and big boxes
of cream buns and vats of Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Then we go back and make
tea and sandwiches for the inmates and give them a good rub down with a hot towel.
In no time at all they are telling us what we want to know out of sheer gratitude."
" So these pictures are blatent fakes. In fact, the whole war is a fake.
We have never invaded Iraq. It's all a tabloid ploy to boost circulation."
The press conference broke up in sighs of relief and cries of "Back to
abuse as usual, then."
May '04
May 27, 2004
Double Finks
Soon after the official end of hostilities
in Iraq a year ago, I remember George Bush declaring with a completely
straight face that the occupation forces were providing electricity,
water and food to the Iraqi, things, Bush told us, Saddam was unable
to provide. My jaw didn't so much drop as fall off my face. As reasonable
statements of fact go this was on a par with hearing him say that hamburgers
grow on trees and are harvested by fairies and then seeing the US population
nod their heads in serene agreement as if they were all familiar with
the sight of fairies plucking quarter pounders from the boughs of trees.
The truth is that the Iraqi people under Saddam had electricity and water and food. The invasion took all that away.
In fact, international aid agencies told us that Saddam's oil-for-food distribution system was the most effecient they had ever seen. No one went without.
Then the bombs put an end to all that.
Remembering this, I was pleased to see an article in a recent edition of the Guardian by Johnathon Freedland collecting together lots more examples of these fantastic assertions from our glorious leaders, champions of truth and democracy and ... bollocks.
Freedland calls these unsupportable statements 'doublethink'. I call them big, blatant, stinking lies. Read the article for yourself.
Is it only me that wonders how it is that these pathological liars and cheats are not behind bars, and that they are still in charge of whole nations.
May 15, 2004
Little Angels: Nuffink
to do with us, guv. We was in church,
honest.
Once again I am astounded at the
simple mindedness of my fellow humans.
Quite
rightly there has been much anger and anguish over the images of prisoners
abused by US and UK soldiers.
People are worried that the revelations will make us look bad.
Let's stop and think about that one. We invade another country under false pretenses, kill thousands of civilians, destroy the infrastructure, besiege cities, imprison thousands of people without charge or due process, attempt to install a puppet government, and keep the reconstruction contracts for ourselves. And we worry that the abuse of prisoners is the only thing that makes us look less than angelic?
The
invasion and occupation has already killed more civilians than Hussein
did with his US-supplied WMD. History is going to judge the US and UK
as the most belligerent powers since 1945.
Furthermore, why are people surprised? Give a man a gun and a uniform, throw in a big fear for his own safety and resentment at being away from home, and he turns into a monster. This has always been true. Look back into history. The behaviour of men in response to power and fear has always been the same. And neither have the supposed good guys ever been immune. US soldiers raped and razed and murdered their way through Vietnam, and more recently UK troops training in Kenya have raped and brutalised unknown numbers of women.
Stark evidence, if it were needed, that humans
are incapable of learning from their own experience. We have no right
to be surprised by these images. We had every reason to suppose it was
going to happen.
May 3, 2004