Monday, May 17, 2004

Give me your hungry, your tired, your poor

OK, before we move to the business of today's tedious rant, a word, please, for Mr Eric Goulden, aka Wreckless Eric. Saw him in Walthamstow on Friday, and, like every time I've seen him, he was superb. I don't know if there's a better chronicler of that low-rent, suburban-England sprawl currently living. Imagine Roy Harper becoming angry after spending too many years living in the Medway Towns. Quintessentially English in a way that tends to be overlooked in the rural, green-and-pleasant land mythology, and a true delight. I, for one, cannot wait for his new album - probably anticipating it even more than the forthcoming Hawkwind one (which, I suspect, will turn out to be a disappointment. They're re-doing a version of Silver Machine for it, for fuck's sake. I mean, fine song and all, but it's over 30 years old. Move on, boys. Move on.)
As, indeed, I will move on. To areas we've covered before, but need to keep returning to. George W. Bush, for example, and his pet poodle, Mr Tony Blair. And Dubya's insistence that he and Donny R. didn't officially sanction torture of Iraqi prisoners. Does anyone believe him? He's violated the Geneva Convention with his treatment of the kidnapped individual's held in Guantanamo Bay (how else can they be described? Not P.O.W.'s. Not criminals. Never been charged or stood trial. They've been kidnapped). So the torture of Iraqi prisoners by the U.S. Army, the mercenaries who seem to have been hired to supplement them, and, it seems likely, by the British Army, is just an extension of current policy. Which is more or less what the anonymous CIA operative told Seymour Hersh, when writing his article.
Still, it's an effective weapon in the War on Terrorism, isn't it? Ensure hatred of the west grows, creating more terrorists, thus enabling the war to continue for longer, and everyone's happy - the US get to continue their empire building, in Syria, North Korea, Iran and anywhere the threat of democracy looks to be arising against friendly dictators. Osama Bin Laden, or whoever the next bogeyman is, gets another generation of desperate recruits who'll die for his insane ideology. And the arms companies get to sell a lot more weapons. So the only losers are the people in the third world who are on the receiving end of America's freedom-bringing bombs, and the people in the west who end up as victims of another form of terrorism (private, rather than state-sponsored, this time.)
Hey-ho, isn't life grand?

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