Loose Cannon

It has been reported that News watching has decreased in favour of internet surfing. It does not surprise me – while all you can do on the News (on a good day) is to watch someone you do not know kill someone else (whom you also do not know), on the net you can yourself do the killing and let others watch it. You get a piece of action! Then, if you are a practical person, upon having practiced extensively on the net, you can go out and do the killing for real in the streets of some leafy suburb of Liverpool. If caught you can always plead mistaken identity or that you are under age, whichever comes first to mind. But you are not likely to get caught because no one saw you do it as everyone was internet surfing or MSN-chatting. Incidentally, did you know that it has become quite common these days for parents to communicate with their children via MSN? And it isn’t because the children are away on gap year in Afghanistan poppy harvesting. In fact, they sit upstairs in their bedrooms while mum and dad are downstairs in the lounge multitasking between Coronation Street and their offspring. Yes, it is pathetic.

Being an old-fashioned woman, I watch other people kill one another on the News, and this is how it goes:

Another bunch of British soldiers killed in friendly fire by the trigger happy Americans. With allies like this who needs the enemy?

Then wild fires engulfed Olympia where Zeus and his lot had been residents for the last 4000 years without so much as a spark. At last we got them! Let them suffer as we mortars do on a daily basis. Arsonists are blamed for those fires which conveniently takes our attention away from the global warning issue. Just like we blamed Gordon Brown for failing to prevent our mid-summer floods, which were as out of character for Great Britain as mid-summer snowfalls for Ethiopia.

I would say Greece could do with some flooding right now too, but they got the wild fires instead and we can’t blame the Gods because they all fell victim to it so unless they are suicidal they could not have had a hand in it (not even Zeus’ finger!).

Well, we all know it is global warming and I would venture a suggestion that global warming is the best biological weapon launched to date by the post Cold-War superpowers who refuse to conform to the Kyoto Protocol. Are they in on it together? Sneaky bastards!

Then it was reported that half of the nursing staff in old people’s homes would not report the abuse of the old that goes on in those places. What about the other half? Well, they must be doing the abusing.

Finally, on the cultural front, Bruce Willis is starring in yet another Die Hard movie. I cannot recall any resurrection movies in between the different sequels of Die Hard so it seems like Bruce Willis has at least nine lives to spare. I wish I was a dog, at least I could do some howling or… cat chasing. Or maybe I should opt for internet surfing?

The US had an actor for a president at some point, and they still have a terminator for a governor. I am expecting their next president will be Archie the Clown.
But hang on! Their current president is a clown! So the next one will be an ameba - that is the only species standing lower than Dubya on the evolution ladder.

Yesterday morning Dubya mastered the art of speech and by afternoon gave one in public. It was one of his funniest offerings. He had me in stiches.
Amidst salivating, snarling, grinning and twitching, Dubya the Devolved Clown informed the world that:

1. Had it not been for the withdrawal of the bloodythirsty, psychopatic American army from Vietnam in the sixties, all those millions of Vietnamese sods would have lived to a ripe old age.
This statement implies that while taking his abridged, internet course in fast-track evolution from ameba to a clown, Dubya must have skipped the webpage with pictures of a little Vietnamese girl running naked with her body napalm burned, curtesy of the psychopatic American army.

2. The genocidal US troops shall not withdraw from Iraq because by staying there they are protecting the safety of the braindead American people in... Iraq, er.... Middle East, er.... AMERICA! Yes, you heard him right - by keeping his army in Iraq, Dubya is ensuring security of the American people in America, despite the entire collapse of his original excuse to go into Iraq based on fabricated Intelligence of links between Saddam and Al Qeada.
Again, while maturing his brain in an alcoholic sarcofagus, Dubya had overslept the entire episode of the last 2 years when it was shown beyond reasonable doubt that Iraq had never and could never pose any direct threat to the USA.

So here we go: another speech - another giant step for humankind...... towards extinction self inflicted by stupidity.

I was driving again (the cows were there as always -I note that cows are the most reliable creatures on this planet: woman's best friends, they are!)and listening to the radio in between blank moments of total cognitive withdrawal from which I suffer on the road when there is nothing but cows to watch out for. So when you see a woman behind a wheel of a battered car, looking as if she was in coma, please make room and approach with caution. She may drive into you, and right through you without realising it (for which I apologise in advance).

In my rare moment of awareness I picked up on the news from a small Pacific island located nearby Fiji, the name of which escapes me (like a lot of important things in life). The news presenter announced with great solemnity and a dash of self-satisfaction that the descendants of cannibals hailing from that island had apologised to the descendants of missionaries whom they had happened to well... erm... um... eat. How very nice of them (not the eating part, the apologising part of course)!

I heard (and that was not said on the news in so many words) that the descendants of the aforementioned cannibals had invited the descendants of the aforementioned missionaries for a reconciliatory feast, during which they well... erm... um... did not eat them, which was a great achievement in itself. It's not easy to shake off a bad habit, I should know, I have had many of them and well... erm... um still do (apart from smoking - I just don't smoke out of respect for the environment. I wish George Bush took my example and started chewing tobacco instead of smoking people alive in the Middle East, but that's another matter altogether).

I immediately rushed home and pulled frozen chicken out of my freezer so that I could let him (I think it was a boy) defrost and apologise to him for eating many of his ancestors. He blinked at me several times with his eyeless eyeholes and told me to get on with roasting him because he was damn cold and frankly, didn't give a monkey about his ancestors. Healthy attitude! I thought with admiration.

I just will never comprehend why the descendants of some starving Pacific cannibals should apologise for an act of flesh consumption which they neither committed nor benefited from in any tangible shape of form. I guess they just jumped on the bandwagon full of contrite do-gooders: the descendants of Germans who put Jews through the horror of crematoria, the descendants of Liverpoolians who dealt in slave trade, the descendants of Norwegian Vikings who raped, pilaged and murdered into extinction all the Celts, the descendants of...

I do not understand that entire apologetic movement. It is in conflict with the principle that only the perpetrator can be held to account for his crimes - there is no vicarious liability in our modern world, or is there? When Osama bin Laden dies before being captured, are we going to eradicate half of the Middle East for his crimes? Well... erm... um... we are doing it already while he is alive, so what's new?

PS: Is it normal that hardly 20 viewers of my humble blog would have generated 536 pageviews? I am a bit puzzled by these statistics. Maybe I am being invigilated by the Authorities? WOW!

There are some principle values that we share: equality, human rights, rule of law and democracy.

I like that expression: "sharing values". By definition it has to be a good thing. The problem arises however when we decide to share selectively or unilaterally. It somehow takes away from the whole idea of sharing and devaluates the lofty principles we purport to share.

Let’s take a look at the process of selection we employ in deciding who to share our values with. Why, for example, we choose to share our values with Afghanistan but not with Saudi Arabia? After all, they are equally oblivious to our values of equality. We have selected to bestow our values of democracy and human rights on Iraq but not on Libya. We have toppled the dictator of the former, but failed to do the same with the latter. Why one and not the other? We are lecturing the Sudanese about the evils of religious chauvinism and nationalism but have failed miserably to impart that same knowledge to the Israelis. We have rushed to protect human rights in Sierra Leone, but somehow overlooked Zimbabwe.

It puzzles me. What motivates our democratically elected leaders in choosing the victims/beneficiaries of their favours? It is a mystery of our modern day world – the same mystery as it was in the Middle Ages when absolute rulers made their decision on a divine whim. Little has changed since then and the idea of accountability to the People still has not dawned on our leaders.

Let’s now take a look at those who did not ask for the benefit of our values. They are simply not into sharing. They have different mentality, their own values which they consider as unassailable by evil as we consider ours, they feel as superior in their ways as we feel in ours. Do we respect their choices? No, we don’t – we insist on sharing ours with them! So at this point we add insult (i.e. unilateral coercion) to injury (i.e. selectivity of treatment) and suddenly our noble values turn to filth.

Values are only valuable when they are freely accepted. Shoving anything, no matter how valuable, down an unwilling victim’s throat is called grievous bodily harm. If someone pushed a 21-karat diamond down my throat and caused my premature departure from this beautiful world of ours, believe me, I wouldn’t be grateful. I would seek revenge on the bastard from beyond!

And then there are the methods of sharing. Sometimes we share our high-flying values by sword and fire (as in Afghanistan and Iraq), sometimes by empty rhetoric (Zimbabwe) and sometimes we just don’t bother at all, like with the People’s Republic of China. To the contrary, we choose to respect their awry ways but awarding them the privilege of hosting the Olympics to be held in celebration of humanity that China blatantly abuses. Our business syndicates such as Yahoo collaborate merrily with the Chinese government in tracking down, imprisoning and torturing Chinese freedom fighters, but other than that … life goes on (unless, of course, it is extinguished early and tragically through our united efforts).

This is my lover
I don't need another
He carries an axe
and makes me relaxed.
He never talks back
and although he's stuck
and has bird poo in his hat
he is strong and rock-hard.

Officially it is called “positive action” and is intended to affirm ethnic minorities and give them the confidence to make British Isles their own. For all other intents and purposes it is plain discrimination in reverse, and it has become one of the entrenched features of the British political and social makeup. I am therefore compelled to mention this phenomenon in my “Modern History –revised and revisionist version”.

Case study:
As I was driving to work this morning, gazing upon a cattle of cows and sharing in their tranquil, oblivious to danger state of serene being, neither of us – neither the cows nor me – were aware of some imminent dangers coming our way. The cows are in real shit, and I’m not talking bullshit for which they at least could be held responsible. There is some conspiracy going on against cows: if they’re not being slaughtered for their persistent atmosphere pollution, then they slaughter them because of dirty foot and mouth, which is hardly fair considering they’re hooved -not footed- animals! Someone has really put his foot in, and I blame Hinduism and their unholy fascination with the cattle…
Anyway, I’m driving, worrying about the cows and my endangered penchant for medium-to-rare steak in mushroom sauce, when my attention is brought to a young English woman who had been denied employment with the Environment Agency because she was English and white. Was she Japanese, Indian, Black or Hispanic, she would have been welcome with open arms. Even if she was white but NOT English for God's sake, she would have been considered. As an underprivilaged Irish, Scottish or Welsh person, she would have at least been sent an application pack. But as it were, she had the misfortune of being white and miserably English, which is adding insult to injury as far as your employment potential goes in this green, English country populated by cows and English people, both of which should have the decency to leave and make room for others.

I am glad to have been born in Poland, of Polish-Prussian descend, you see, because my chances rise considerably above those of your average Englishman/woman with less diversified background. In addition, I have discovered that to make me feel more welcome, the British government affords me an opportunity to claim a non-domicile status in the UK, thereby limiting or totally eliminating my tax liability here! Apparently, if you can find a grandmother or some other forebear of foreign descend on your genealogical tree (Neanderthals inclusive), then you can call yourself non-domiciled here even if you’ve lived here for years if not generations, and based on that, you will only pay tax on income earned in the UK. If you set up an offshore company to do the business here for you, then you personally don’t earn any income here and thus have no tax responsibility to the country where your rubbish is being collected every week. It’s not only the Greek or Russian magnates who do that, but our very own British citizens, some of whom sit proudly in the House of Lords… but pay taxes elsewhere.

So there, don’t you just love it! I do.

I was commissioned to write a textbook on “History of Europe” soon after they scrapped the first draft of the European Constitution and replaced it with the multilateral Treaty of Unwilling Parties. It is still the same document of course but they had to change the title and signatory pages to make it look authentic. They’d also changed the font and increased margins. Consequently, the funding ran out faster than water in a leaking loo and there wasn’t enough left in the piggy bank for a whole, comprehensive compilation of European history, which is a shame as you may well imagine.
As I began my first chapter on “The Underlying values of being European”, they kicked my door in, confiscated my pc, my shredder, mobile phone and even my hamster, Winston (he had just stuffed his cheeks with the first draft of my manuscript and had to have his stomach pumped). He was returned to me two days later and is currently on hunger strike, refusing to eat any of daily newspapers for fear of indigestion.
Anyway, going back to my opus magnum on “European History”, I have no idea why my first paragraph referring to Christ inspired Paganism as the founding stone of European mentality has evoked such hostility in the Authorities, but I was momentarily banned from writing one more word on the topic, threatened with burning at stake a la Spinoza, and the entire project was abandoned. One of the officials mentioned heresy and politically inflammatory propaganda but he didn’t finish the sentence – they gagged him and put him in a straight jacket. They said he was under a lot of pressure, and I would soon receive a suitable explanation.
Later I received an official letter from the European Commission on Politically Correct Distortion of Facts and Fiction advising me that the raid and confiscation of “History of Europe”, including the content of Winston’s cheeks, were due to lack of funding. The project was closed.
I have now been commissioned to write “History of Modern Britain in under 80 words”, so here it is, starting with the most recent developments:

Gordon Brown starts his reformatory reign
With climate changes and torrential rain.

Tony Blair’s wisdom, practice and lore
Was about loss of face and unjust, greedy war.

John Major – ahhh, those peaceful days of his
Scented with moth balls and mushy green peas!

Maggie Thatcher’s statistics and primary facts
Were about iron rule, privatising and poll-tax.

That about sums it up for now.