October 7th - October 13th 2002
Sunday Just
Saturday World domination
Friday Pouch money
Thursday Updates
Wednesday Tory meltdown
Tuesday -
Monday -
Sunday 13th October 2002
There's an interesting piece in the Sunday Telegraph today - at the top of the front page no less - about two gay men being granted asylum in the UK on the grounds of the miltant homophobia prevailing in Jamaica; the story cites popular songs advocating the burning of homosexuals and refers to gay men being chopped to death with machetes.
A good strong story - except for the headline:
(The headline was dropped from later editions, possibly because someone had the wit to notice that Butchered by machete - just because they are gay was an equally just alternative.)
But, fear not, the interwebnet fairy is at hand.
The on-line version of the story carries a milder headline - 'Asylum is granted to gay Jamaicans' - plus a bundle of links to relevant sites: the Home Office, some song lyrics, two relevant news stories, two gay organisations, a thesis on 'Reggae Icons, Jamaican Culture, and Homophobia' and, of course, a link to the solicitors representing the gay Jamaicans - Wesley Gryk.
Saturday 12th October 2002
To understand the Administration's motivation, it is necessary to appreciate the breathtaking scope of the domestic and global ambitions which the dominant neo-conservative nationalists hope to further by means of war, and which go way beyond their publicly stated goals.
The basic and generally agreed plan is unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority and this has been consistently advocated and worked on by the group of intellectuals close to Dick Cheney and Richard Perle since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
The idea of pre-emptive defence, now official doctrine, .. can be used to justify the destruction of any other state if it even seems that that state might in future be able to challenge the US.
To understand the genesis of this extraordinary ambition, it is also necessary to grasp the moral, cultural and intellectual world of American nationalism in which it has taken shape. This nationalism existed long before last September, but it has been inflamed by those attacks and, equally dangerously, it has become even more entwined with the nationalism of the Israeli Right.
The indifference of the US public to serious discussion of foreign or security affairs, and the negligence and ideological rigidity of the US media and policy community make searching debate on such issues extremely difficult, and allow such manipulation to succeed.
To destroy and occupy the existing Iraqi state and dominate the region militarily would remove even the present limited threat from Opec, greatly reduce the chance of a new oil shock, and eliminate the need to woo and invest in Russia as an alternative source of energy.
Much more important for the future of mankind, it is also part of what is in essence a strategy to use American military force to permit the continued offloading onto the rest of the world of the ecological costs of the existing US economy - without the need for any short-term sacrifices on the part of US capitalism, the US political elite or US voters.
What we see now is the tragedy of a great country, with noble impulses, successful institutions, magnificent historical achievements and immense energies, which has become a menace to itself and to mankind.
Some nutty Euroid? No, it's Anatol Lieven a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC, writing in a recent issue of the London Review of Books.
Friday 11th October 2002
Conversation at the office: an ongoing series
A: "What is a wombat, exactly?."
B: "A small amphibious mammal somewhat like an otter."
C: "But with a beak."
D: "And a pouch."
A: "Not like a bear, then?"
B: "No, nothing like a bear."
D: "Though who knows what they do in the woods."
A: "What do they keep in their pouches?"
B: "Their pocket money."
C: "I think you'll find that's pouch money."
Thursday 10th October 2002
Updates
Will Self on the gay self is now online.
Lance Bass is back in training.
Jeffrey Archer gets off more or less scot-free.
Adam Ant (aka Stuart Goddard) cleared.
Brian Paddick says I shall not be moved.
Wednesday 9th October 2002
Apologies for slow blogging lately: I've been utterly mesemerised by - of all things - the Conservative Party. The way they've managed to co-ordinate what may be their final meltdown with their annual conference showcase demonstrates exquisite timing.
It's not just the sudden revelation that one of their most nondescript leaders was, prior to his elevation, shagging one of their most unattractive female MPs (though, Lord knows, that has had its own curious appeal - like watching toads mate.) [Currie/Major]
Nor is it the predictable shamelessness of their sometime Chairman as he flouts the terms of his prison sentence to take a leisurely Sunday lunch with a Tory MP before returning to his cell to await the publication of his (banal, snobbish, badly-written, almost certainly illegal) prison diaries. [Archer]
For a moment, it looked as if they might be able to season this double body-blow with the putative triumph of the Countryside March, an event that - by dint of combining farmers and fox-hunters with a motley rabble of rural discontents - managed to inconvenience the capital for all of four hours, an inconvenience immediately over-shadowed by a 30 hour tube strike and calls for the head of the editor of the Today programme who, foolishly, failed to resist the temptation to expostulate on how the massed marchers served very little purpose other than to remind the rest of us how remarkably unattractive Conservative supporters are when lumped together en masse in wellington boots. [Countryside Alliance/Liddle]
What joy they found to be taken there rapidly evaporated under a welter of internal recrimination as the Tory leader attempted to shift the burden of blame by denigrating the achievements of the last Conservative administration, only to be very promptly reminded that members of said administration still served at his side and still commanded a considerable following in the party. [IDS/Clarke]
Amidst all this low comedy, Invisible Duncan Smith - faced finally with the prospect of the Liberal Party becoming an effective opposition - summoned his full reserve of rhetoric to denounce Liberal leader Charles Kennedy as boring.
And across the nation, in towns, in villages, on estates, in mansion blocks, behind newspapers crumpled with laughter or by the light of television sets tuned to news, the words pot, kettle and black sprang spontaneously to a million minds.
I'm surely not the only one to be reminded of Leo Amery's magnificent and spontaneous conclusion to his speech at the opening of a confidence debate on 7th May 1940, a peroration that is widely held responsible for the fall of Conservative leader Neville Chamberlain:
"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."
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