Control of what, exactly?

Since Article 50 will be likely triggered any time now, with no plan beyond demanding the impossible, pointless aggressive posturing, the failure of which is being blamed on the negativity of those of us who are, correctly, saying that what the plan wants to accomplish is blatantly impossible, I’m still wondering what it is we’re actually going to be taking control of. Straight bananas? Seems to me that the loss of workers’ rights, the Good Friday Agreement, higher standards of food and environmental protections, millions and millions of pounds in investment in infrastructure and a place at the table of a coalition of countries with a vested interest in peace is a high price to pay for straighter bananas.

I suppose there are our arms sales to consider. As Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen with bombs built by us and sold to them, it is possible that the EU might have stepped in and told us that, you know, selling bombs to nations that are dropping them on schools, villages and other targets full of innocent people isn’t something a supposedly advanced nation should really be doing. But hey, guess what? If we split from the EU we can keep on selling! Death to Yemen school children if it means profit for us, right? Is that what taking back control means?

Trump-mania in the US is also cause (apparently) for Farage & co to celebrate. I mean, climate change? The single biggest threat to our species? Well, putting a collection of people who will happily tell everyone it doesn’t exist in charge is a great way of forgetting all about it…until it’s too late to stop Florida going underwater, that is. Resources are getting scarcer. There are occasional shortages of food, that, at the moment, are still cause for joking around – there’s a shortage of Iceberg lettuce, isn’t that funny! It’s going to get worse, you know. While the reasons may have been a mere coincidence of unfortunate weather conditions, what effect do you think climate change has on the weather? More uncertainty, more freakish coincidences. More shortages, for longer until, inconceivable as it is right now, you and your children may actually be in danger of going hungry. And what then? Will it still be funny?

It really is getting harder and harder to convince myself that within decades, war won’t engulf us all. Still, try making a suggestion that we need to make some large changes. For example, stop selling bombs and other arms to other countries, stop digging up carbon from underground and shitting it into the sky, work together with other countries instead of pretending we’re still an Empire that runs half the world (and causes untold suffering while doing it). Try that and you get told that you just don’t understand, your position is just childishness, lacking in understanding in how the world really works. No, I understand just fine. I understand that that those on top will commit and endorse any atrocity imaginable as long as they stay on top. I understand that they can go fuck themselves, and that there will always be a resistance. There will always be those of us that resist the idea that the only way to get on in life is to turn away from the suffering of others just to protect your own position and wealth.

Orwell’s vision of humanity’s future, of a boot stamping on a human face, forever, has not yet come to pass, and there are those of us who are still determined to jam a knife right through that fucking boot.

New occasional feature: Ending with a song relating to the post:

Jeff Buckley: Eternal Life. “While all these ugly gentlemen play all their foolish games, there’s a flaming red horizon that screams our names.”

I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Terrorism. If one were being cynical, one might think that the ill-conceived ‘War on Terror’ was nothing more than a marketing ploy on behalf of the arms trade, with the ultimate aim being to keep volatile situations unstable to perpetuate weapon sales. It’s obvious that a war on terror is unwinnable – you can’t declare war on a concept. May as well declare war on smoke, or time. Perhaps a war on quarks? Or Donald Duck?

The whole point of terrorism is to promote terror. To make people so afraid of you they’ll do exactly what you want. So if we’re too scared of an attack to see people as people first, before all other things like, in this case, religion or skin colour, and, acting on that fear, we refuse to help humans in dire need of our help, or actively seek to hurt (or terrify?) those of a similar religion or skin colour, then, logically, they’ve already won and we’ve already lost.

On the other hand, if we continue to recognise that grouping people together and giving them a label is always the first step on a dark path to dehumanising a whole section of our society, then we’ll never be beaten. That path did not end well the last time it was travelled. It’s fine to be afraid. I’m afraid. But I’ll tell you something. I may be afraid of weirdos with guns murdering gig-goers to impress their made-up god, but I’m much more afraid of a popular Presidential candidate assuming that banning everyone who happens to worship that same made-up god from his country will actually help the situation, while at the same time proposing a wall to keep Mexicans out.

All I can really take from the fuckery that passes for the world stage at the moment is that people make absolutely no sense at all.

Some questions (not exactly Keats).

Widowmakers, are you pleased at what you’ve done?
Are you celebrating, having fun?
Mission accomplished.
Many hundreds dead.
Many lives extinguished.
The fires of hate well-fed.
Your war you can’t ever expect to win, defeat is all you are,
Nous sommes ensemble dans la lumière, pour brûler le noir.

Orphanmakers, what drives you to such hate?
Some deep-seated fear, fear of your fate?
Murdering innocents.
For your made up god.
Do you think that’s what he wants?
Is he really such a sod?
We’ll beat back every one of your attacks; beat back all you are.
Nous sommes ensemble dans la lumière, pour brûler le noir.

Beautykillers, how do you think this will end?
Our death? Your death? The death of all we defend?
You want to make us afraid?
We already were.
Did that ever stop us?
Not bloody likely, sir.
Just a modern day inquisition; that is all you are.
Nous sommes ensemble dans la lumière, pour brûler le noir.

Motherfuckers, what right have you to do this?
Is it still because cartoonists took the piss?
You do not have the right.
No-one has the right.
The hundreds you have killed:
They did not start this fight.
Cunts like you try to drown us in terror, but you only light the spark.
We stand together in the light, to burn away the dark.

Was it worth it? In which I stick my oar in where it’s probably not wanted.

So. The very bad man is dead. Super-Barack got the guy after a couple of years, while Bushtucker couldn't do it in eight. Apparently Bill Clinton got closer to killing him than Bush. Probably while getting his dick sucked. America celebrated loudly and proudly. "I'm pleased that the last thing Osama bin Laden saw was the power and might of the American military" tweeted Rose McGowan. Street parties materialised instantly, with smiling faces reminiscent of the jubilation some Middle Easterners exhibited one devastating September day.

To be fair, you can't really blame the US. The loss of the towers was one of the most shocking events to happen in my lifetime. I remember watching it with a feeling of spaced out detachment - seeing the buildings go was like seeing some impossible vision dreamt up for a new Roland Emmerich movie. Then you start to think about the number of people dying, about the panic and terror they must be feeling and the tears start to fall. Those of us not directly affected cannot even begin to imagine how it must have felt. I have read several accounts from people retelling their view of events that day, most recently this one which never fail to bring the tears back unbidden.

It's just, in the joy, some of the cost seems to have been forgotten. This isn't Kill Bill, after all. Rip-roaring rampages of revenge aren't really appropriate, and to me this certainly smacked of pointless vengeance for the sake of closure. On the whole I don't think we British go in quite so much for closure and therapy. Must be our stiff upper lips and habit of bottling everything up. It's not going to improve things in Iraq or Afghanistan. It's not going to stop Al-Qaeda being arseholes. It may even make things worse in the long run by provoking a further counter-attack in the way revenge for the sake of revenge tends to do.

I understand the lack of objectivity from America, I really do. What the country suffered was gut-wrenchingly awful. A body count in excess of 3000 innocent people. Who wouldn't feel even the smallest amount of satisfaction at the man responsible for it getting his unholy comeuppance? I'm certainly not sorry to see him go.

But there's still that nagging feeling that maybe it wasn't worth it. Are the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis worth it? It's normal to place more importance on your own innocent countrymen than on innocent foreigners, especially in situations like this. But more than three times as many dead than September 11 as a direct result of America's hunt for one man? Is Rose McGowan happy that the last thing all those innocent people saw was the power and might of the American military? I doubt it. And you don't just get accidental civilian casualties. There are some, in all armies and in all wars, so in no way is this the province of the US alone, that see the nationality or the colour of the one they are trying to kill, and assign the 'enemy' tag to everyone of that nationality or colour. That's why you get a group of soldiers gang-raping a 14-year-old girl before murdering her, her six-year-old-sister and their parents. Assuming this is true (the place I read it didn't seem to quote sources), I would imagine Ms. McGowan would be rather ashamed of this small minority of the American military.

The September 11 atrocities, dreadful and indefensible as they were, were attacking a symbol of Western capitalist dominance over the rest of the world. It seems to me that the trail of dead left by the invading forces is every bit as inexcusable. Should we not weep equally as hard for the loss of life on the opposing side, which seems more personal and hate-fuelled? I think we should.

I guess the truth is I don't really know how to feel. I'm not sad he's dead, but I'm sorry so many others had to die on both sides of the conflict to achieve that end.

“Excuse me; aren’t you all fuckin’ hired killers?” (Bill Hicks)

Like everyone, I tend to overhear parts of other people's conversations in a number of different places during the course of my daily life. Occasionally I hear something that makes me smile ("Don't give me that Star Wars bollocks - it's totally over-rated. No way is it the greatest film ever made. Not even top ten.") Some of it makes me incandescent with bottled-up rage ("I stopped watching Eastenders ages ago - too many fucking foreigners. They should call it Wogstenders.") And sometimes I fail to understand it at all.

I recently heard someone talking, and talking, and talking about the army - someone in their family is in the armed forces. In the Middle East somewhere I think. They hear first hand about how bad it is out there - the death, the underfunding, the crippling tension, the pressure. And yet they appear to believe unthinkingly that whatever our army is doing out there, there is no question about its validity, its inherent rightness. Surely there's a need to question the obvious point of contention regarding the doubt about the reasons and the need to invade and occupy land out there? I guess if someone you love is involved in it, you would want to be convinced the conditions and the risk of death was a necessary evil to help the oppressed, and not an attempt to control resources and make money.

I don't question this person's obvious love for their family, and I accept that everyone should be permitted an opinion and the freedom to express it. What I do question, a little, is the wider issue of this blanket acceptance that every single member of the armed forces is a hero and the pressure to fall in with this propaganda-like generalisation. To express the kind of sentiment shown by the great Mr. Hicks is to be guilty of betraying your country and to become outcast. Just because I don't donate to Help for Heroes, read The Sun or hang the St. Georges Cross out my bedroom window with a patriotic tear in my eye (I wonder sometimes if some of the people doing this are simply so stupid they need reminding every morning what country they live in), and just because I don't consider killing other people necessarily heroic, it doesn't mean I side with the poppy-burning uber-fucks who like to scream loudly that the husbands and sons of grieving family members are burning in hell. Clearly the poppy-burners missed the point of Remembrance Day, which is to honour the sacrifice of an entire generation to keep us free of fascism, and not to support a misguided war effort in an attempt to lead the country down a route that will likely lead to ... fascism. So the poppy-burners are wrong, but so are the people that use Remembrance Day to support our current war effort (which couldn't be more different than WW2, and less essential).

Bill? Bill was, as ever, spot on.