Month: August 2009

A major headline this morning, both on the TV and the BBC website, proclaimed the [probable] death of Baitullah Mehsud.^[1]

At the announcement, it was not hard to imagine twenty million people worldwide staring perplexedly at each other, and asking, “Who?”

So, the Americans may have got lucky and assassinated a Taliban leader on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, from their control center in Arizona, or Texas, or from wherever it is they coldly sit and direct their pilot-less drones. Is it truly so big a deal as to warrant ten minutes discussion out of a half hour news broadcast? No doubt Mehsud’s second-in-command is ready to step adroitly into his shoes.

There’s something terribly menacing about a group of people sat in an underground bunker somewhere, calmly picking off individuals from any point on the globe they wish to direct their hellish missiles.

It smacks of the worst kind of science fiction. Yet, we now accept such news over our morning cornflakes without batting an eyelid. Well, they’re the enemy, after all, aren’t they?

And that’s the problem. As soon as we rate them as “enemy”, they stop being human beings and metamorphose into some ugly, stinging, insect we have no qualms about exterminating. Even when the methods we use to do so are far more inhumane than they are.

We, the people, are to blame. We will readily believe in the necessity for war, so long as our politicians tell us it’s just, but let one member of the military get hurt, or worse, and we give our leaders hell. Can we blame them, then, for developing remote-controlled technology that can assassinate the enemy from thousands of miles away?

Millions of men died in the last two world wars. That sacrifice helped humanity comprehend the God-awful futility of war. It took generations for whole nations to recover from their loss – the winners as well as the losers.

The only way to end war is by generating unacceptable sacrifice. It’s why each of the world wars was labeled, “The war to end all wars.” And they may have been, if technology had not intervened.

Like most species on the planet, we need to feel suffering before taking action to alleviate it. Remember the last time you were ill? You’d do anything to feel better. Once the malady had run its course, however, it was as though it never really existed. One can’t imagine ever feeling ill again – until the next time.

It’s the same with war. When we suffered, when our menfolk died by the millions, we’d do anything to stop it happening again. Now, we have a vaccine against war. We really don’t suffer anymore. By comparison with those dead millions, hardly any of our military are killed or maimed in wars today, and because of the technological advantages held by America and its dubious allies, the outcome of war is rarely in serious doubt.

We’re losing our humanity to the pilot-less drones.

Today, we can hear the news that Baitullah Mehsud is dead while eating our cornflakes, and with bored indifference switch channels to something more titillating.

SOMETHING MORE TITILLATING.

A 26 year old Greek woman is in custody on the island of Crete today after setting fire to the genitals of a British tourist, according to a BBC report.^[2]

Apparently, she poured alcohol over his nether regions and ignited it.

Good.

British tourists are the most disgusting, badly-behaved, depraved individuals on the planet. This woman deserves a medal. The Greeks have suffered too long the invasion of their homelands by drunken British marauders intent on causing mayhem for the purpose of their own selfish pleasure. Frankly, the only reason the Greeks don’t lock them up and throw the key away is because monetary interests in the country won’t let them.

This man exposed himself repeatedly and harassed the woman sexually. Hopefully, he’ll be in intense agony for days. Personally, I hope his balls drop off.

There are times when my countrymen shame and disgust me.

NOTE: If you doubt this latter story is more interesting to the world than the death of Baitullah Mehsud, please note that on the list of most popular stories shared by BBC website readers, the flaming Brit ranks number one, while the deceased Taliban leader fails even to be listed.

^{[1] “Pakistani Taliban leader ‘killed'” BBC, August 7th 2009}

^{[2] “Woman ‘torched Briton’s genitals'” BBC, August 7th 2009}

Filed under: Drones and fiery penises

The ugly face of America is once more in evidence as politicians head off for their summer break and the traditional ‘Town Hall’ meetings prevalent at this time of year.

Already reports are coming in of organized intimidation by far right activists who, at the behest of corporate lobbying companies and the health industry, are only too happy to swamp the public meetings of pro-health reform politicians, barrack and heckle the speakers so they can’t be heard, and threaten any who dare stand up to them.^[1]

Is this democracy in action? Certainly not. The Great Power, so keen to spread its doctrines around the globe, acts surprised when those on whom it attempts to force its ideals rebel with fury and outrage. Is it any wonder? American democracy is a failure for all but a relative few of its citizens. The only winners are the rich and powerful corporates, able to dictate terms and manipulate masses to achieve their lucrative ends.

Foreign governments may bow the knee to US imperialism, aware of the wealth benefits to be accrued, but to ordinary folk the only reward is the obliteration of culture and enslavement to a foreign power.

Hardly surprising, then, that rebellion against the US produces factions such as al Qaeda, al Shabaab, and Hezbollah.

9/11/2001 was only ever a matter of time.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright almost cost President Obama the election when he spoke of ‘America’s chickens coming home to roost’. The public outcry, nationwide across the whole spectrum of media, was deafening. US citizens were, as always, quick to defend their glorious nation – even against a naked, obvious, truth.

Democracy is a great and just concept, condemned to fail by homo sapien fallibility. Like every other system of government ever invented on this planet it falls victim to man’s inherent greed and lust for power over his fellow beings.

In the 21st century America controls that power. How much it is abused varies depending on the powerbase of the moment. In the first decade of this new century a single terrorist attack caused an outbreak of rampant imperialism under Bush that Obama will never fully counter, even if he manages to equal Bush’s two terms.

The damage is done. Iraq won’t go away and if there is ever a ‘victory’ in Afghanistan it will be, at best, equally inglorious.

Meanwhile, the ugly face of America continues to turn outward as left and right draw further apart over irreconcilable issues, previously only ever settled by the gun.

How long before someone in a Town Hall meeting somewhere resorts to that inevitable course?

^{[1] “Health Industry Sabotages Town Halls” MSNBC, August 4th 2009}

Filed under: Democracy in action

Justin Webb, the BBC’s “North America editor”, has long been an irritant to me. His reports, as featured on BBC News America, were fawning, establishment-toadying, and left one with an unpleasant after-taste reminiscent of the morning after a heavy bout of absinthe assimilation.

Listen to Webb, without the necessary knowledge only obtainable from permanent residence in this nation, and you’d be left thinking there was no greater place on earth; that America was coast-to-coast Disney, an enchanted land ruled by benevolent Congressmen dedicated to providing their citizens with every comfort and convenience.

Justin Webb, at best, was a dedicated Americophile; at worst, just another media piglet suckling at the doctrinal teat of its fat corporate master.

Webb’s tenure in the United States is coming to a close. He’s done his stint and is returning home to Britain. As a finale to his eight years in the States, he’s written a final piece for the BBC radio series, “From Our Own Correspondent”.^[1]

I approached it with some cynicism, expecting the usual overdose of sugary American sentimentality I’d come to expect from this reporter. By the time I was halfway through, my opinion was totally revised. No longer answerable to his US media masters, Webb was finally writing from the heart, and his words could as easily come from my own keyword.

It [Charleston, SC] gives a wonderful insight into hardscrabble American life, the sleazy glamour of the road that repels and appeals to visitors – and indeed Americans themselves – in roughly equal measure: gas stations, tattoo parlours, Bojangles Pizza, $59 (£35)-a-night motels, pawn shops, gun shops, car showrooms, nail bars, and Piggly Wiggly, the local supermarket chain which, in my limited experience, smells almost as odd as it sounds.

It is a panorama of the mundane: Doric columns a-plenty but all of them made of cheap concrete and attached to restaurants or two-bit accountants’ offices. On and on it goes, encroaching into the palm forests with no hint of apology………

……On the last day we spent in our home in north-east Washington, they were holding a food-eating competition in a burger bar at the end of our street. The sight was nauseating: acne-ridden youths, several already obese, stuffing meat and buns into their mouths while local television reporters, the women in dinky pastel suits, rushed around getting the best shots.

America can be seen as little more than an eating competition, a giant, gaudy, manic effort to stuff grease and gunge into already sated innards……

………There is an intellectual ugliness as well: a dark age lurking, even when the president has been to Harvard………”

Webb’s essay isn’t all negative. For all the “intellectual ugliness” and “dark age lurking”, he admits he’ll find it hard to leave America:

More than 300 million people live here now, settlers from all over the world. From Ho Chi Minh City, from Timbuktu, from Vilnius, from Tehran, from every last corner of the earth, they have made America their home and they are still streaming in.

I feel crazy going back to the old world. My five-year-old daughter Clara, who is the proud owner of an American passport, agrees.

She says she intends to leave home, at around 12-years-old, and return to her native land. I do not blame her.”

Time will tell if Clara still feels that way by the time she reaches her twelfth birthday.

Webb’s essay is worth a read, if only because it’s the first time he’s been able to tell the unfettered truth. I know exactly how he feels. America is ugly. It does still linger in the dark ages. Much of it is repulsive, unappealing, dreadfully boring.

Yet, like Webb, I would find it hard to leave the US after seven years of residence. There is something about this country that endears, despite its numerous faults. Perhaps I just haven’t lived here long enough to define exactly what it is.

Justin Webb says America “shines a light on the entire human condition”.

God help us all, if he’s right.

^{[1] “Checking out of ‘Hotel America'” Justin Webb, BBC, August 1st 2009}

Filed under: Telling it how it is