<\/p>\n
Apparently, during the Crimean War, some Victorian spectators, men and women, journeyed to the area to watch the battles. Can you imagine viewing The Charge of The Light Brigade whilst tucking into strawberries and cream? That would seem to be like stopping at a motorway pile up and getting the hamper, parasols and deck chairs out of the boot. Surreal? Of course not. It\u2019s still going on.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s difficult for me to imagine how the England cricket team can possibly play even the one game in Zimbabwe. It beggars belief that discussions and a vote haven\u2019t taken place among the players as to whether or not to entertain Robert Mugabe. It\u2019s not as though the whole world doesn\u2019t know who he is. It wouldn\u2019t be easy for me to pull out of the biggest tournament I was ever likely to play in, but I think that tucking into ham sarnys at teatime in a town where there will be protests, a probable riot, and possibly even a couple of deaths to mark it\u2019s stay in town might be a bit like swallowing the whole pig. In the usual half-baked manner King Tony fudged when he said he would have preferred them not to participate, but he didn\u2019t actually \u2018advise\u2019 them not to go. He just took a moment out to pay the usual strained lip service to democracy again. I\u2019ve been waiting for someone with some small degree of gumption to pull out, make a stand against a vicious regime in Southern Africa, and I cannot believe that it\u2019s got this far. But then again, it\u2019s hard to believe that the Bush\/Blair adventure has got as far as it has. Are we all just sitting back being entertained by the surreal? In the certain knowledge that there isn\u2019t a thing that we could have done about it unless we\u2019d all been Presidents of the Oxford Union thirty years ago? During all our separate checkered childhoods?<\/span><\/p>\n Confused? You ought to be. Nothing is straight. Not that it ever was. But right now it\u2019s as wrong as it was in 1933. Worse, because we should have different lives and agendas by now; and we don\u2019t. Like then, the most powerful military nation on earth has a fundamentalist religious maniac in charge of it\u2019s arsenal. A man you wouldn\u2019t trust to come up with one rational thought. He\u2019s nothing short of a warped comedian, and his straight man is the honourable member for Sedgefield. A fundamentalist conservative who would have Mandelsoned his way into whichever political party was fashionable in his youth.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n There is not a doubt that Saddam Hussein is cut from the same kind of cloth as these two, and that he should have been removed some time ago. The fact remains that he rules with terror and he\u2019s dodged coming clean with anyone for most of his life. Political genius often resides in the unstable. And who isn\u2019t unstable? \u2018But he\u2019s different\u2019, I hear you say. \u201cBollocks\u201d, say I. It\u2019s now really obvious to most of us that world political leadership reads like a list of slime-balls. There are one or two exceptions of course. I think that Jimmy Carter is a man who has always appeared to be socially motivated, Nelson Mandela has often attempted to cajole \u2018the west\u2019 into giving credence to ideas and to people it didn\u2019t necessarily want to, and the Dalai Lama has always fought his strange little corner.<\/span><\/p>\n The rest of the economies have been catching the US hand over fist in one way or another for a while now, even though the race is currently a bit sluggish. The writing\u2019s been on the wall and it\u2019s been clear for at least ten years that the American hegemony perceives that it will lose the grip on it\u2019s complete domination of the financial world and the way in which it does business if it lets the second biggest oilfield in the world fall into hands that are not guided by it\u2019s own. The Bush administration would obviously like to open up the Iraqi oilfield to the world market, which of course is a euphemism for it\u2019s own market, but they won\u2019t do that because they can\u2019t trust Saddam not to spend the dosh with Osama\u2019s cronies, and time for negotiating with him has apparently run out. Admittedly, it should have done after ten years. Then there\u2019s the added fact that it would be mildly embarrassing to tell the exact oily truth to the whole village. Added to this it\u2019s obvious that the US needs another \u2018friendly\u2019 buffer territory besides Israel in the middle of the perceived Islamic minefield. All this is painfully obvious stuff. <\/span><\/p>\n Last week I noticed that the first women\u2019s fashion magazine to be published in Iran for over 25 years has just hit the streets of Teheran. Perhaps that may have been applauded in a fairly free-spirited Democratic regime, but in the household of the Texas Evangelist it will probably only serve to be a reminder of what can happen to your daughters if you don\u2019t bring them up lovingly. This in turn will probably bring up another irrational quote from The Book of Isaiah onto his monitor the next time he tries to speak.<\/span><\/p>\n Though the ethics are of no actual concern to people like Dick Chaney, the UN Resolutions are potentially in the way of straight unilateral invasion by the US. Moderate USA doesn\u2019t particularly want to be seen to be breaking international law, which should reside in the authority of The United Nations, because, after all, international power should sooner rather than later be seen to reside SOLELY in the remit of the world\u2019s United Nations. Invasion of Iraq by the US military alone will be seen by the rest of the world as breaking international law… A very bad example to set the international global village community….. The result of which would be to automatically continue to relegate international law to the realm of toothless wonder.<\/span><\/p>\n If international law was to have real teeth, then within a century it is conceivable that a democratic peace on earth could prevail. Rights for everyone could gradually but really be established. The red tape could stretch to Orion. \u2018There are men employing men employing men employing men who fill in forms employing men that forms a queue of paperwork clear stretching out into the murk, so that nine tenths don\u2019t produce, holding ransom calling truce, and looking dangerous\u2019, was something I wrote twenty years ago. Go\u2019a larf in\u2019ya. But the future after that is looking a trifle compromised. Moves are already afoot.<\/span><\/p>\n The first UN resolution mandating weapons inspections in Iraq dates back to April 1991. Enough already.. Republican USA wants to see the Dow Jones index restored to it\u2019s 11,000 point ceiling of early 2001. And to quickly go beyond that. It wants\/needs to wipe out the memories of Enron, Worldcom and the rest of \u2018the accounting scandals\u2019 and get on with the proposed tax cuts, the elections for the \u2018second term\u2019 and less visible corruption. And yesterday… So the Iraq card has to be cashed in. ASAP. Cheaper fuel equals cheaper overheads equals cheaper industry equals more trade. Quantity. Turnover. And for the period it can hold it\u2019s own mandate over Iraq.. much cheaper industrial output. The next election would be a formality. The dynasty would be assured. Very Roman. At the moment the Bush combo are trapped in the double whammy of effectively corking up the world\u2019s second biggest oilfield at the same time as they want to burn it.<\/span><\/p>\n But moves are afoot already to remove the last of the emperesses, whoever he\/she may be. We have all invited artificial intelligence not only to share our own platform, but to be continually advanced in rank, because artificial intelligence can be progressed to manage increasingly large workloads. Which are intellectually and evolutionarily beyond our present means… Artificial intelligence doesn\u2019t have nappies to change. It currently has no housework. The international community is taking care of it\u2019s housework. \u2018AI\u2019 is an infant with a big future. The big question is… When it becomes more intelligent than it\u2019s creator, which will be quite soon, will it be able to do without his slave labour? Will it be able to build slaves of it\u2019s own? At which point will it\u2019s intelligence no longer be considered by us to be \u2018artificial\u2019? Before we realize that just another step will unlock the everlasting beast on an entirely different emotional level?… …There is no after… is there? At that point, we\u2019re all proles. And then there are those among us who would ask who it\u2019s creator really is. In a word.. Shit..<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018The descendant of Smith, ran a colony of centaurs, roamed a zoo with a mastodon, and never knew of his mentors\u2019. (Roy-1986)… maybe quite close now. It\u2019s not likely to be the mad bastard in the underground biochemistry lab unleashing the mother of all bugs who totally changes the shape of life on earth. More probably it\u2019ll be the teenage nerdbag in his bedroom who\u2019s been trying to make little friends since he was four. The CIA\u2019s going to have to be a lot faster off the mark with it\u2019s indoor UAVs to nip all of that in the bud.<\/span><\/p>\n In the present circumstances, all we can do is to have trust in the international community as expressed by the United Nations. The existence of the UN owes itself to the massive destruction of swathes of humanity in two world wars. They really were WORLD WARS. The point at which we choose to forget that world war puts monumental stresses on our social and emotional faculties, and for huge amounts of time afterwards, we invite another to further erode our ability to be able to embrace the natural tragedy of death as the only precondition to the wonderful visit here. To put death in it\u2019s legitimate place as predetermined corollary. Life can be a celebration of sentience, or a universal affliction. Stretch it out as far as it will go, yes, but forever can only be in the imagination. Expressed in terms of the usual religious fantasy propaganda, life is purely a brief and temporary state before eventual and eternal immortality.. or infinite condemnation… Can\u2019t wait to meet Lucrezia Borgia… Quelle bollocks. (When I was 16, I used to think that it was a good job that world war had been committed to film, and that therefore all we needed to do to prevent war was to instruct every generation with the use of that footage. This was just after I\u2019d recovered from teenage nazi worship. Probably brought on by wanting to shoot, torture or gas at least one of my parents!…)<\/span><\/p>\n What\u2019s in danger of being eroded by Bush and Blair is the primacy of the UN to maintain \u2018international peace and security\u2019. It doesn\u2019t look like they\u2019re going to do it alone because the folks in southern Europe with Muslim countries just over the water are all ready to back Blair. (Even though they don\u2019t have too many brownie points at the UN). And eastern Europe is in favour of course. But for the next month they\u2019ll probably be doing it without France and Germany, whose electorates are more largely against war than the rest of Europe. We can partially put this down to keeping the muslim populations in both countries in tow. The Turkish population in Germany and the North African population in France. But the French are having one of their international moments. They\u2019ll want to string it out for a week or two yet. If the Bush axis does go it alone, then there can be no immediate future for \u2018international security\u2019, let alone peace.<\/span><\/p>\n War of any kind is going to destabilise the entire region, if not the whole world, so that no one in the region really wants it, except perhaps a heavy minority of the Israelis. I can see a few of the others keeping fairly quiet and looking on with furtive interest, like the Saudis in their ivory towers. There is nothing more certain than that thousands of young muslim boys will gladly swell the ranks of the guerrilla martyrs if the US goes into Iraq alone. (Later on today, after I\u2019d written this, I discovered that the Saudis have put a price on Saddam\u2019s head. They\u2019re offering to spare the lives of any Iraqi generals who murder him. The Saudis are the people who hold public executions). !<\/span><\/p>\n The US is a $10.5 trillion dollar economy. Yesterday\u2019s news was that the US government is putting $44 billion dollars of government bonds up for sale. This will be to loan the dosh to go to war with.. Although there\u2019s another $370+ billion in there earmarked for \u2018defence\u2019. $2.23 trillion dollars is the proposed budget for the year; with a $307 billion dollar deficit. Wading through the highlights at http:\/\/w3.access.gpo.gov\/usbudget\/fy2004\/pdf\/budget\/highlights.pdf \u00a0I was struck by the difference in the amounts budgeted for Medicare ($400billion) and for the Environment ($4.4billion). I wondered about how much the environment impacts on health care. You would have thought that if more was spent on the environment then not so much would be needed for care and drugs, but I don\u2019t particularly want to get any further into dodgy dealers and getting hooked in this paragraph. If you consider that they\u2019re borrowing $44billion from the \u2018market\u2019, then the combined total of $351bllion is a big deficit. Correct me if I\u2019m wrong, but about 16% of the budget is pie in the sky. (Maths was never my strong suit though. I used to consider that my strongest suit was my puking tackle, which was worn from 4pm Friday till I woke up in it on Monday morning).<\/span><\/p>\n What this amounts to, trying to read between the lines, is that the Bush administration are gambling, with cash, to get that second term in place. Seeing as the term of this budget doesn\u2019t start until October 1st 2003, they\u2019ll be into the next election by the time this budget is spent in November 2004. And in the 2005 budget, which will presumably be proposed in February 2004, the crown jewels can be given away, because they can easily be clawed back the following year when he\u2019s in for the duration and it no longer matters. A great time to borrow cash is while the folks are feeling patriotic. So you get \u2018em all patriotic about fighting the enemy, and the need for the cash to do it. It goes without saying that some of that cash is already earmarked to be used against enemies in your own country like for instance The Democrats. Winning a war, even if it\u2019s with an opponent against whom the odds are stacked so heavily that it\u2019s a foregone conclusion, will be the ticket to that second term in office. Judge Scalia will be retired after that in favour of someone more reactionary.<\/span><\/p>\n The proposed war also represents a political gamble for Blair, unless he can get at least the French to party with him. The French might not want to miss out on a bit of war, in the final event. A few combat missions here and a few oil or weapons contracts signed there. Personally, I don\u2019t think that it can go very wrong for Blair in the short term. Even though he\u2019s dragging his party kicking and screaming with him, he looks like he\u2019s backing a 10 to 1 on favourite. But is there any real need for it?<\/span><\/p>\n What would I do? Well to be honest I\u2019d stop bombing Iraq. Protect the Kurds in the north and the Shi\u2019as in the south and talk to Saddam. Have a continuous dialogue. Set an example. Keep the inspectors in permanently, continue with the legal sanctions and keep satellite eyes on him. Draw up an unbreakable new UN resolution to restrict Iraq completely until it complies. Make it the best faith for all sides. But don\u2019t kill anyone else. We get tarred with the same brush if we do any more killing. We\u2019re as bad as he is. We fall into his giant trap if we kill. Tedious martyrdom will drink red rivers. According to him we\u2019ve killed 300 since we started bombing. He calls them \u2018civilians\u2019. A few of them will have been. We realize that he\u2019s killed thousands, but he has as much legitimacy as the president of his country as does George Bush Junior. I have no time for him, and I wish he was gone, but have you ever been in the Arab countries and tried to buy a trinket. You don\u2019t just pay for it, you haggle. And you haggle hard. It\u2019s part of the culture. The Bushes have never haggled, they\u2019ve just threatened and barked orders. That\u2019s not going to get any positive response in the souk. Some bargaining has to go down. Serious bargaining. After you\u2019ve made each other\u2019s personal acquaintance.<\/span><\/p>\n I don\u2019t really believe that Saddam is either the same war criminal he was eleven years ago, or that he has any weapons which could really be described as \u2018weapons of mass destruction\u2019. That he deserves to be tried is beyond dispute, but how much harm will that do? His ambitions may be to have serious weapons, but the few Scuds that got as far as Israel last time were about the strength of it. He is much more likely to respond to being treated as a leader than he is to being treated as a mad dog; even though he is one. We all remember Gaddafi being the most hated man in the west, but he seems to have acted more reasonably in the last few years, even turning the Lockerbie bombers over to trial in the Scottish Hague?! This doesn\u2019t legitimize Saddam\u2019s regime, or change his past behaviour, but neither does it destabilize the area. I like to see social revolutions, they\u2019re interesting, but religious revolutions are mind killers. Doleful, abysmal, empty shrieking devils.<\/span><\/p>\n The UN is going to have to be about consensus and compromise. I don\u2019t think that human rights can be forced on people. Communities have to understand what concepts of equal rights are about before they can appreciate how to fight for the benefits of them. You can march in and impose, but then you\u2019ll have to stay in for at least a generation. The renaissance church had outlawed knowledges regarding the size and shape of the world, even though the Greeks had understood that knowledge 1600 years before that. Too much can degrade. Knowledge especially. Things can be forgotten in days.<\/span><\/p>\n I realize that all this sounds a bit like peace at any price, but it isn\u2019t. The only way to effect a continuous peace in the world will be with whatever authority can be vested in the UN by ALL the nations of the world. At present the UN isn\u2019t strong enough. The dichotomy is that if it became very strong there are chances that it could be used, (and in some cases purposely not used) as a means to any end by those who effectively run it. For certain, there are members of the US government who despise the UN, but mainly because they think that it should do as it\u2019s told. And even Colin Powell, the supposed military dove, thumped the UN table today. Inferred they were not up to it. But the world outside of the USA isn\u2019t the same world as the one inside the USA. There are different priorities and a lot of sensibilities among the other 194 nations that the US fathers wouldn\u2019t immediately be able to get to grips with. Most things just don\u2019t run on the Baptist Rabbinical model of the universe.<\/span><\/p>\n Brit Fido himself may very well get away with a short war, particularly if it\u2019s fought and won cheaply, but it may be quite a lot harder than that. The CV will suffer after that. His statue stands a good chance of being decapitated with a cricket bat. But more of that later.<\/span><\/p>\n So; what do YOU want? D\u2019you want Bush to slouch in and take the oil price down by $10 a barrel to fuel economic growth and keep the bucks rollin\u2019 in? Be rescued from stagflation again? All keep your jobs and your way of life and sod anything else outside of that? Or is your dream a bit broader than that? Will you allow it to believe that sometimes you may not be able to judge a situation purely by what\u2019s fed to you in a biased media? You can vote for cozy if you want to, but that\u2019s going to backfire. It\u2019ll lead to lack of knowledge and then to distrust, and eventually to ignorance and to hate. Remember when Beirut was a cool place to go to, before it was \u2018destabilised\u2019? We live in a much more polarised world than we did in my youth. Do we need to have another Palestine?<\/span><\/p>\n I was on the hill this morning when suddenly I was blinded by a flashy presence. It was Freddie… Or maybe it was god in drag. One of the two. He said this to me, and I wrote it down on a tablet of Rennies. \u201cDearest Mucker Roy, half-wit prophet of the hairy fringe, be of good cheer I beseech you. Verily, verily, \u2018peace and security\u2019 will come. You must go firth and put Nasser Hussein in charge of Iraq and Saddam Hussein in charge of the England cricket team on the field. This will be a double whammy-edged sword, O holy one, the mother of all swords. This way we\u2019ll get the batting order right in Harare, with Saddam in at No. 3 to prevaricate, and cheat his way to a double century. He must then be encouraged to stay on and murder the Australian pace attack in Port Elizabeth. O yea, meanwhile Nasser will introduce Rumsfeld and the 8th Cavalry to Cricket in Baghdad and coach the \u2018youngsters\u2019 in the finer arts of accepting a dodgy umpiring decision with maximum emotional effect… How… I have spoken\u201d… Actually, I don\u2019t think the Cricket team can possibly play in Zimbabwe, it would be lunacy on all counts. Hopefully that goes for the team in The Gulf as well. They\u2019d be mad not to get hold of the Iraqi cowboy and talk it out of him. But I don\u2019t have any good feelings about George Bush and his cronies.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s February 6th, 2003 years since the birth of King Tony\u2019s god. It\u2019s a cold night. As I write, there\u2019s an owl on the windowsill outside and an odd feeling in my strange old heart. Do monkeys wish they could be birds? Is this all still happening.. after all this time?<\/span><\/p>\n \n Real Info<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n There are about 195 nations on Earth.<\/span><\/p>\n The total population is over 6 billion persons.<\/span><\/p>\n Total population of Iraq c. 20 million<\/span><\/p>\n Total population of USA and UK c. 320 million<\/span><\/p>\n There are 15 United Nations specialist organisations, eg., UNESCO and WHO.<\/span><\/p>\n A total of under 60 thousand people work for the UN and all it\u2019s organisations (in total) \n Unreal Info<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \n The US Government comprises 4 virtual persons<\/span><\/p>\n The UK Cabinet comprises I virtual and five eighths persons<\/span><\/p>\n The Iraqi Government comprises 1 virtuoso plonker persona.<\/span><\/p>\n \n This is a test for us all. Are we serious about living in a tolerant peace? If we are, then we don\u2019t invade, we just make damn well sure that Iraq comes to heel at the UN. And then is forgiven and set free. Victory in war is no longer a credible solution for people with any commitment to world harmony. An example has to be set. The \u2018buck\u2019 stops right here, and right now.<\/span><\/p>\n After listening to Colin Powell\u2019s \u2018speech\u2019 to the UN, I was disgusted to discover just how little actual modern hard evidence the Bush axis is prepared to go to war with. The theory was fine, like an unmanned MIG 21 or UAV \u2018can\u2019 deliver a chemical or biological payload underneath radar etc.etc.etc. Ad inf., but it was all circumstantial evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n There was emotive talk of a \u2018nuclear mujageddin\u2019, Al Qaeda, Al Zaqawi and he waved aloft a file of imaginary smallpox.. Some probable lies on tape by two possible Iraqis. All good clean fun, but still no actual smoking gun. You can almost smell one, or is it the soap? but no absolutely definite sighting yet. The Chinese, Russians and French were all for tightening inspections and making sure he couldn\u2019t move. The French Foreign Minister, Dominique De Villepin said that inspections must continue until they were no longer working. He looks like a future leader of France. Perhaps he needs a bit more blustering dishonesty yet. \u2018Why go to war when we can strengthen inspections\u2019? Etc. Then Iraqi General Amir Al Sadi gently waffled Iraqi reaction. At one point he smiled and said, \u201cWe have time, what\u2019s the hurry?\u201d But his boss isn\u2019t going for a second term.<\/span><\/p>\n The only other thing of note was that Aussie Premier John Howard came completely onside with Bush. But we already knew he had soldiers on the way to Iraq. He\u2019s got a couple of hundred million potentially crazed Islamic Indonesian immigrants in a never ending queue of unique maritime disasters and wrenching human rights sacrifices off the north coast of Queensland. Poor bugger, it would be truly apocalyptic to see the world through those four lenses.<\/span><\/p>\n Then the ICC came out and blasted the England\/Wales cricket team for six, saying that there was no good reason to move the match from Harare to South Africa for reasons of \u2018security\u2019. They avoided the political issue entirely. The cobwebs grew over them as they spoke.<\/span><\/p>\n Later on tonight, Blair addressed us with reasons to kill Iraqis. He didn\u2019t convince me at all. Mendes Campbell said that he didn\u2019t doubt the Prime Minister\u2019s sincerity, but I was focused on another issue. Namely, he continues to misguide himself.<\/span><\/p>\n We\u2019ll always be in a zoo of our own making. And we start making it today.<\/span><\/p>\n Copyright 2003 Roy Harper<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Apparently, during the Crimean War, some Victorian spectators, men and women, journeyed to the area to watch the battles. 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