27 October 2003

AND ANOTHER THING...       On the evidence of the greater part of the news data collected & displayed on Salon weblogs, insanity would seem to be the defining condition of humankind.  Sadly, most of that data is concerned with humanity in its most degraded form.  However, a few items that have come my way might help to redress the balance a little. Much as I’d like to, I can’t, of course, provide data that will indicate that humanity has recently ‘gone sane’.  Little chance of that happening after so long in the booby hatch.  But at least these examples from my friends at The Independent display the world as deliriously, ecstatically & above all harmlessly insane.   ·         A mayor in Equador got so pissed off with ‘undesirable questions’ from the media that he purchased a talking parrot, which now answers any queries that they may have… ·         A broadcast recording of a Mormon preacher inveighing against the evils of lust got stuck on one word for 24 seconds before a technician corrected the fault.  The word was ‘sex’… ·         A senior Philippino civil servant travelling on President Gloria Arroyo’s personal aircraft mistook her private quarters for the toilet &, such was the urgency of his mission, he peed against the emergency door.  When the story got out, the press release described the situation as having gone ‘beyond everyone’s control’… ·         Yasayuki Kitano, a Japanese conman, has spent the last 10 years passing himself off as a member of the royal family called Prince Arisugawa.  He climaxed this spurious career by mounting a ‘royal’ wedding at a Tokyo nightclub.  In excess of 350 assorted toadies, arselickers & general sweepings from the celebrity demi-monde paid up to £1,600 to attend& a further £60.00 to be photographed with the happy couple.  Kitano trousered a cool £76,000 from the event…   #   Meanwhile, back in the real world, the first tail-flickings & teeth-barings of a mighty feeding frenzy are evident within the upper echelons of the Conservative Party.  Spectacularly ineffective ex-army officer Ian Duncan-Smith is about to fall on his sword after managing to lead the Tories boldly & confidently through one Valley of Death after another.  Staggeringly, only 13 years after the Party’s zenith under the Iron Lady, three utterly drab & inconsequential leaders on the trot have reduced it to a shambolic, divided, virtually ignominious presence on the political scene.   Particularly pleasurable is the sight & sound of men in dark suits falling over themselves & each other as they walk backwards away from any claims of succession.  All of them are, of course, unimpeachably loyal, standing shoulder to shoulder with the embattled leader.  And, of course, the moment that it is announced that Mr. Duncan-Smith has done the decent thing, each will fall over the other in the rush back up the corridor towards the seat of power.    Hot tip for next King of the Middern is Michael Howard, the only Tory with Cabinet experience.  Few will forget his firm & principled stand as Home Secretary under John Major against early asylum seekers.  And, hopefully, few will forget either that Michael Howard’s father was a Jewish refugee fleeing Nazism who - entirely appropriately – received hospitality here during that earlier time of persecution in Europe.   All good news for the equally embattled government.  For as long as the clumsy indignities of the selection two-step are going on within the Opposition, fewer commentators will be accusing Downing Street of dissembling & downright lies about Iraq.   #   And while we’re on the subject, some of my favourite comments on politicians:   ·         A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth. ADLAI STEVENSON ·         I know what a statesman is.  He’s a dead politician.  We need more statesmen.  Attributed to ROBERT C. EDWARDS ·         In our time, political speech & writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.  GEORGE ORWELL ·         The reason there are so few female politicians is that it is too much trouble to put make-up on two faces.  MAUREEN MURPHY ·         He was a man of splendid abilities but utterly corrupt.  Like rotten mackerel by moonlight, he shines & stinks.  JOHN RANDOLPH on Edward Livingstone. ·         I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top. FRANK MORE COLBY         6:15:09 PM    Mmm? []   AND ANOTHER THING... Whilst in the process of rushing a fractious, teething Reuben out of Border’s in Cambridge this afternoon, I stopped for long enough to buy John Pilger’s book, The New Rulers of the World, which is just out in paperback.   The most cursory glance at it reveals exactly the kind of information that you most want to know but would really rather not believe.   We are informed, for example, by the implausibly but entirely appropriately named Brigadier General William Looney, the USAF director of the bombing of Iraq that, “They know we own their country…we dictate the way they live & talk. And that’s what’s great about America right now.  It’s a good thing, especially when there’s a lot of oil out there we need”.  (Presumably if this guy ever runs for state governor anywhere, he’ll get your vote.  Surely what’s needed in government in these venal times is straight talking).   But after the comedy introduction comes the kind of hard core information for which Pilger is best known – the kind of stuff that, so far, has provoked no shrill denials followed by litigation from those accused.  He writes about Basra & the desert dust that blows everywhere, which carries, according to Dr. Jawad Al-Ali, ‘the seeds of our death’.   A member of the British College of Physicians & a cancer specialist, he reports that cancer deaths in his area have risen from 3 or 4 a month before the Gulf War to 30 to 35 dying a month in its aftermath.  Studies based on these figures indicate that between 40 to 48% of the local population will get cancer.  These statistics are not cold-blooded data prepared by researchers visiting the area & then retreating to safety: Dr Al-Ali states, Most of my own family now have cancer… It has spread to the medical staff of this hospital.“  Because they were prevented by Sadam Hussein’s authorities to obtain the appropriate equipment, or even to test themselves for radiation, they could only speculate.  And they speculated that the source of infection was depleted uranium used across the southern battlefields by the Americans & the British.   Pilger describes too the children’s ward in the same hospital.  He meets children dying of cancers rendered untreatable because of lack of drugs & equipment. By the terms of the UN mandated embargo imposed in 1990, Iraq was ‘denied equipment &e expertise to decontaminate its battlefields’.  Grimly ironic is the fact that Professor Doug Rokke, the US Army physicist responsible for the post-war cleanup in Kuwait, has 5,000 times the recommended level of radiation in his body.  Referring to the use of irradiated ordinance, Professor Rokke states: “In the Gulf War well over 300 tons were fired.  An A-10 Warthog attack aircraft fired over 900,000 rounds.  Each individual round was 300 grams of solid uranium 238.  When a tank fired its shells, each round carried over 4,500 grams of solid uranium.  These rounds are not coated, they’re not tipped; they’re solid uranium.  Moreover, we have evidence to suggest that they were mixed with plutonium.  What happened in the Gulf was a form of nuclear warfare”.   All of this information relates to a war fought over a decade ago.   Plenty of time within which to gather the necessary data as the cancer rate in the Basra region rose steeply.  As the next few years pass & a combination of cynicism, media boredom, governmental change & fresh political crises blow the desert sand over the wreckage of the Iraq invasion & occupation, the situation described above will be massively compounded.  If 300 tons of depleted uranium were used during the relatively swift & surgical nature of the Gulf War, what tonnage was disposed of during the relentless bombardment of the south & then the north of Iraq?    #   We moved through an entirely different world this afternoon, heading once again towards Lammas Fields on our way homewards from Cambridge.  As we walked along King’s Parade with the Tudor magnificence of King’s College under an ice-blue late afternoon sky on our right, the ring of four bells from Holy Trinity Church on Market Street floated across the rooftops.    Whenever I hear church bells in England the constraints of time seem to lift.  Personal past & present merge & a powerful sense of those elements that endure, natural & crafted, prevails.  Some years ago a visit to the village of Dedham in Essex provoked quite unexpectedly the most potent of early childhood memories of a holiday there.   THE SUN HOTEL, DEDHAM, 1954   Awake to the hysteria of bells of bells - medieval laughter out of my stained glass dream.   Paddling Daddy's slippers across bare boards (as black and ancient as the mud   that silts up the Stour), I reach the leaded window. Beyond, the church squats on its bones,   brooding music.  Hymns are hatched stillborn; organ voices rage in vain, quelled by the crowing of the bells.   The street in both directions is innocent of cars.  Phantom mist - an atavistic veil - blurs outlines:   passers-by are cloaked and cowled, pacing the tracks and byways of their ancestors.   My child's breath smokes the glass.  Morning thickens; even the light seems ancient now.   Yawning, I curl back into a tumulus of sheets. The bells cascade, mocking the shape   of my few years.  I sleep and now, in the mapless dark, my green heart beats faster.   Mine is the steady pulse that animates this room; its beams draw new sap   from my source.  Plaster, lath and tiles expand; the house tests its roots.   The bells rejoice a continuity of mornings. This, the moment and the lost years are swallowed in their shining.         12:55:21 AM    Mmm? []

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