Oh Sod Off Amerikastani

Lyrics:

Oh sod off Amerika-stani
In the hole you're so hammy
In your mind you're a hero
In the world you're a fanny.

Oh sod off Amerika-stani
In the hole you're so hammy
In your mind you're a hero
In the world you're a fanny
Uncool and staring at doom
Though you think you're so canny.
Uncool and staring at doom
Though you think you're so canny.

Flatfoot fool and only garish
Biggest bully in the entire parish
War drum tuba and scuba and your myths are all you cherish.
Anyhow you steal the plunder
Claiming your victims are terrorist jihadis
You can't hide blood shed in the bedroom
Like you couldn't in the Vietnam paddies.

You know you're a shady briber
And the source of all the baddies
In the hole you'll crouch shaking
From the rage of lasses laddies.

Oh sod off Amerika-stani
In the hole you're so hammy
In your mind you're a hero
In the world you're a fanny.
Oh sod off Amerika-stani
In the hole you're so hammy
In your mind you're a hero
In the world you're a fanny.

You thought you'd beat the Iraqi
The Afghan who crushed the British khaki
You thought you'd beat the Iraqi
The Afghan who crushed the British khaki
But things didn't go, didn't go your way
And left you broken, lost and whiny
And left you broken, lost and whiny.
The way was supposed to be easy clear
You'd make the world tremble in shock and fear
And the countries would go down tumbling
While you sat, sat drinking beer.

Oh sod off Amerika-stani
In the hole you're so hammy
Oh sod off Amerika-stani
In the hole you're so hammy
Hey nanny, hey nanny nanny
Hey nanny, hey nanny nanny.
Hey nanny, hey nanny nanny
Hey nanny, hey nanny nanny.

Ultra-dumb and bloody bungler
Hero? Hah! Just a robbing killer
In your hole you'll stumble cowering
When the world rises up in anger.

Yes, you're a cowardly cuckoo
Soon in the mincer you'll be too
Whipped and humbled by the people
You thought would be boiling in a bloody stew.
Once far but creeping ever near
Doomsday whispers in your trembling ear
Scream and fight or hide and stay mum
In just a heartbeat it'll be here.
Oh sod off you zionist too
With your white flag and your star blue
For too long you've had it your way
Now it's time to get lost and go screw.

Oh sod off Amerika-stani
In the hole you're so hammy
In your mind you're a hero
In the world you're a fanny.
Oh sod off Amerika-stani
In the hole you're so hammy
In your mind you're a hero
In the world you're a fanny.

(Lyrics and "singing" by yours truly)

Regime Change Associates, Inc.

HIGHLY SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL

From

Regime Change Associates, Inc

Everywhere, Richistan.

Your Majesty/Excellency/CEO/Mr President, Sir

I’m sure we’ve all been in a situation where we really, really needed to overthrow the government of some pesky little country which stands in the way of a pipeline, or military bases, or other avenue of profit, haven’t we? In the old days it wouldn’t have been a problem. We’d just invade the hell out of that country (or hire a nifty little mercenary outfit to do it for us), and take it over. Ah, remember those good old days?

Unfortunately, these days, invading countries you want to regime-change has become a little difficult, as I’m sure you’re well aware. More and more, these days, traitors within and enemies without gang up online and in such criminal organisations as the United Nations Security Council to denounce and block invasions. Why, for a while one might almost have imagined that this route to making an honest profit had been permanently blocked! One might have had to actually resort to trade or market rate payments to get what one wanted and deserved!    

Happily, that terrible era, with its anti-free-enterprise stance, is behind us. We’ve successfully found a way round it. Today, Your Majesty, Excellency, CEO or Mr President, Sir, we can bring you tidings of great joy; the route to regime change is open again to you, without the expense and opprobrium of an invasion. Why, it even comes with an added bonus: your own liberal compatriots, who would have condemned an invasion to the skies, will hail you as a hero for carrying out the regime change.

We at Regime Change Associates, Inc believe that with our tried and trusted model, you can simply not fail. You don’t even have to lift a finger! We will do it all for you, for a fee that is absurdly modest in comparison to all that you stand to gain. After all, the entire resources of a country are there for the asking! Imagine that!

Attached with this letter is an in-depth description of the techniques Regime Change Associates, Inc, uses in situations where a regime change is indicated, but for your convenience we will summarise them here:

The first thing is to know your target. What works in one situation won’t work in another. Remember that you are actually waging a war, shall we call it a fifth-generation war, against this other country, and that in war, strategy is all-important.

Now, if your target is a white, European nation, military invasion can almost certainly be ruled out. This is because Western populations have now been systematically indoctrinated to believe that white people are being targeted by freedom-hating brown hordes. This is, of course, correct (or, if Your Excellency/Majesty is an Arab monarch, it is not correct, with craven apologies), but in any case, the idea of invading another white nation is now extremely difficult to sell to western populations for any reason whatever, even if they are despicable Eastern Europeans of Slavic extraction.

In these cases, we use what we call a “controlled chaos” approach, more generally referred to as a “colour revolution”. In this technique, used against white nations or non-white nations too difficult to provoke an armed rebellion against, we organise massive street protests designed to completely swamp the state and remove its ability to respond democratically. The idea is to leave it with only two choices: either to cave in completely, or to crack down with overwhelming force. If it chooses the former, your regime change has been accomplished. If it goes the latter route, we can arrange for the media to taint it with international opprobrium. Sanctions can then be easily imposed, and a “government in exile” formed. Most nations these days in the civilised white world are soft and will collapse rapidly once sanctions are imposed, and “negotiations” can be held to impose the “government in exile” of your choice.

 Please note that this controlled chaos approach can be used even against perfectly democratically elected governments. It is, in fact, the perfect weapon to use when election results go against what you would like. As you are doubtless aware, assuming you’ve ever participated in that effete exercise known as an “election”, there  will always be some people unhappy with how the results turned out. These people will always be convinced they were somehow “robbed” of a victory and will be seething with anger; they’re the tools we shall use, and their fury shall be the fuel.

But, after all, tools need controllers, and this mass of formless anger is useless unless carefully directed. Therefore we need reliable, efficient agents who can take charge and direct this fury, to the logical goal of making things unendurable for the regime to be overthrown. Regime Change Associates, Inc, guarantees to find such agents from non-governmental organisations in the country, or, failing that, from expatriates living in the West. If these expatriates are already celebrities (like a former professional boxer, say), all the better. If they are not celebrities, RCA, Inc, undertakes to carry out a media campaign designed to transform them into celebrities. Once this is achieved, they can be made the face of the protests, returning dramatically to the homeland to play a role because “their consciences could not let them rest while the people were suffering.” High profile Western politicians can be invited to appear with them on camera and endorse their protests, if necessary after entering the country illegally.

Like this

Or this

At the same time, the protests must be extensively marketed in the media abroad. The importance of this cannot be overstated. This marketing must follow two simultaneous routes.

First, the incumbent government must be vilified to the utmost. Its democratic credentials must be trashed. If it won its last elections with a bare majority, that should be cited as claim that it did not, actually, have that majority, and that it bullied and stole votes to power. If it won with a big majority, the line to be taken is that the election was fraudulent – a “Mickey Mouse election”. Either way, the average Western citizen must, and can, be conditioned to believe that the election as no election at all.

Simultaneously, the protests must be made catchy and easily identifiable. One way of doing this is to put a celebrity face on them. Also, in the manner of a sports team, they must be given a uniform – a colour, say, such as pink or yellow.

Regime Change Associates, Inc, guarantees to market the protests and make them visible and identifiable in the media.

Once this is achieved, the next step is a dramatic escalation in violence. Peaceful protests are out; they look fine for the media, but they don’t achieve anything. Besides, peaceful protests – as you’re probably aware, Your Majesty/Excellency/CEO/Mr President, Sir – are easily ignored and allowed to run out of stream on their own. How long, after all, can people continue to maintain enthusiasm for peaceful protests when they can see for themselves that these protests are going nowhere?

In these violent protests, the focus has to be tightly maintained, too, to attack, as far as possible, police and government property only. Petrol bombs and stones are great for this. Here we may have a problem. You see, extensive research has revealed that common people, no matter how inflamed by rhetoric or filled with resentment, tend to be wary of committing acts of unprovoked violence. In these cases, we can rely on criminal gangs and far-right-wing groups to take advantage of the opportunity to join in. If necessary, they can be lured with the promise of being allowed control of organised criminal activities under the new dispensation.

The involvement of criminal elements in the protests provides hardened rioters, but runs the risk – we should call it the near-certainty – that they will exceed their brief and attack private property and citizens. This will, of course, tend to alienate fence-sitters and other potential opponents. This is the point at which media management is extremely important to convince the people of the West, who really matter, that it is government agents provocateur who are responsible for this property damage. If the marketing has been carefully handled, it will be extremely easy to achieve this.

In the course of these protests, of course, while the hard core is composed of the criminal gangs and our handpicked organisers, the bulk will belong to the ordinary disaffected. No reliance should be placed on the willingness of these people to fight; they are by and large soft and easily scared away after a dose of tear gas or a water cannon blast or two. However, they are as well easily replaced, and as they drop away, more can easily be recruited to take their place, so long as the momentum does not flag.

By now, the authority of the state will be severely challenged. With a little luck, the government may cave in at this point and offer negotiations. Said negotiations must be rejected completely. Whether negotiations succeed or not, they will inevitably take the steam out of the protests and make it difficult or impossible to start them again. Besides, people might begin to think, and they must never be given the opportunity to think. Once they do, they will soon discover for themselves that they are being manipulated, and we can’t have that, can we?

So, the offers of negotiations must be rejected in toto. If required, an excuse can be manufactured – a tortured “activist”, say – to reject negotiations, but the demand must be the same; an immediate departure of the incumbent government. Offers of fresh elections must also be rejected. The government’s legitimacy, by now, will have been completely destroyed in the Western eye, and it must stay that way.

At this point, Your Majesty/Excellency/CEO/Mr President, Sir, we will ask you to threaten to impose sanctions (or have politicians you control threaten to impose sanctions, as the case may be) on the government concerned. It’s highly likely that the mere threat of sanctions will be the final push required to push it into surrender; if not, a period of actual economic pain may have to be imposed to see the regime see reason. Either way, it will go, and the celebrity face of the protests can be placed at the head of the new dispensation, hailed as a “liberator”. Of course, we will ensure that we have his or her signature on all relevant documents giving our patron (that is you) whatever is wanted.

If we cannot win with these men, then... 

Now, there is a chance – if the target is a non-white, non-European nation – that the government concerned will not cave in tamely. Even sanctions might not work. Such nations are likely to be hard targets, and can be relied on to crush the protests with massive force. In these cases, we must be prepared for Option Two; the route of the armed revolution.

Now, in this instance, we must reluctantly be compelled to admit that the application of armed force will be necessary at some stage. However, the conditions for the application of the armed force must be carefully created. Even before the protests are manufactured, armed groups must be seeded in the country to take advantage of the chaos to attack the police and army. Once they retaliate, the conditions will be set for what – to the world – can be presented as a civil war.

This “civil war’s” primary battlefield is the cities. The purpose of the armed groups will be primarily to force the governments to either lose control over the urban centres (and thereby lose legitimacy to call themselves the government) or attempt to take them back by force. If they try to do the latter, they will likely fail initially since the average conventional army is not trained in city combat. They will, therefore, have no option but to resort to either siege or mass aerial and artillery bombardment. This will help the “rebels” by achieving these aims:

First, it will compel the civilians – who are likely to at least be ambivalent about the armed uprising if not actively hostile – to depend on the “rebels” (who are, of course, beholden to us) for security and sustenance.

Secondly, it will force the regime to inflict mass civilian suffering, whether by starvation or bombardment. Regime Change Associates, Inc, will ensure that friendly media people are smuggled into the cities to report on the suffering (with suitable embellishment as necessary) at first hand.

Thirdly, it will create dissensions in the regime’s ministers and generals about the morality of inflicting violence on the people. Some weaker links can be relied on to defect, and such defections can be played up to great effect.

At this time, civilians will be recruited to demand a foreign invasion to overthrow the regime and “liberate the country”. Children are great tools for this – they must be placed at the forefront of these demands. Everyone wants to help children, and anybody refusing is liable to be seen as a monster.

A UN Security Council resolution can then be demanded in order to invade and overthrow the regime on “humanitarian grounds”. If required, Regime Change Associates, Inc, will arrange for “atrocities” to force the Security Council’s hand.

If the Security Council gives the go-ahead, there should be no need for a ground invasion. Your (or your politicians’) air force can pulverise the regime’s armed forces, which will be massed against the “rebels”. If the armed forces disperse to escape your air strikes, the “rebels” can overwhelm them. Either way, in short order, you win.

...we have to market these men as glorious freedom fighters

However, this is contingent on the UNSC giving the go-ahead. If, owing to the recalcitrance of two particular nations, the resolution isn’t forthcoming, then I am afraid that we will have a choice to make. One of these choices is a unilateral, unauthorised invasion. However, after the Bush presidency’s invasion of Iraq, this has become extremely difficult to justify. The only other option is to provide training, arms and safe sanctuary to the “rebels”, in the hope that they can force the de facto partition of the country. The “liberated zones” can then be at least exploited in whatever way possible.

I agree that neither option is particularly pretty, but war never is. And, Your Majesty/Excellency/CEO/Mr President, Sir, this is the modern way of war.

I await your decision on hiring our firm with great eagerness.

Yours in anticipation

                                                                    G. Reed Isgud

                                                                    Regime Change Associates, Inc. 

Santa Claus

Santa flew over the town

Gifts filling all his pockets

He was riding on a drone

And stuffing presents into rockets. 

Santa Claus, Christmas man

Gifting gifts as only he can

Known from the White House to Afghanistan

As Santa Claus friendly. 

Santa flew over Helmand

And blew up a family

Said "Oops, that didn't go as planned, perhaps"

And delivered a little homily.

"They must've had bad thoughts sometimes

Or they might have had them in future

So kids remember to thank your Santa Claus

Banish evil from your nature."

Santa Claus, Christmas man

Gifting gifts as only he can

Known from Yemen to Pakistan

As Santa Claus friendly.

Santa flew over Peshawar

And blew a car away

Said "it was loaded with terrorist men

I knew it clear as day."

Santa flew over the wreck

Once again to take a photo

Sent it by elf to archive it

In his North Pole trophy grotto. 

Santa Claus, Christmas man

Gifting gifts as only he can

Known from Mali to Waziristan

As Santa Claus friendly.

Santa flew over Yemen

Blew a wedding to pieces

Hovered over the blood and screams

Pondering hits and misses.

"They'd have had terrorist kids" he said

Shaking his head so sadly

"So I had to kill them now

But it was done so badly.

"There's an artistry to killing," he said

"As beautiful as the sun and rain, 

I must be losing my touch

So for practice I'll do it again. "

Santa Claus, Christmas man

Gifting gifts as only he can

Known from Somalia to Tajikistan

As Santa Claus friendly.

Santa flew over Africa

Destroying what he was able

Bombed a clinic in Mogadishu

And spun a little fable.

"It's a tale of wrong and right

I'm right so they must be wrong

Over the wrecks of shattered lives

I sing my little song."

Santa Claus, Christmas man

Gifting gifts as only he can

Known from Sudan to Turkmenistan

As Santa Claus friendly.

Santa Claus, he's your guy

For gifts right to your home and heath

And the gift he brings to you and yours

Is a grave the earth beneath.

So obey your Santa Claus

Do as he wants you to

And don't you dare have second thoughts

'Cause Santa will come for you. 

Santa Claus, Christmas man

Gifting gifts as only he can

Known from the White House to Afghanistan

As Santa Claus friendly.

Copyright B Purkayastha 2013

The Pyramid Scheme: Egypt and the Politics of Revolution

Yesterday, there was a military coup d’état  in Egypt.

It was not, as is commonly supposed, aimed at the Muslim Brotherhood government of President Mohammad Morsi. Yes, Morsi was overthrown, and is allegedly currently being held in an “undisclosed location”, but he was not the primary target of the coup.

Why do I say this?

I say this because Morsi has been among the walking dead for some time now. When thirty three million people rise up in protest against you, you’ve only two options. Quit, or unleash holy hell on them. If you’re to do the latter, better be sure that either you’re a nuclear power with a credible deterrent, or you’ve got what Chinese Emperors used to call the Mandate of Heaven (said Heaven being Washington these days; that’s why the Bahrain regime can get away with gunning down protestors on the streets with hunting rifles). Otherwise, you’re toast.

Obviously, Morsi had neither. In other words, he was going down.

Now, let me say a couple of words about the Egyptian Army. The Egyptian Army is not a very nice institution. In fact, it is a completely brutal, thoroughly politicised, institution full of thugs whose allegiance is not to Egypt, but to its own interests (it directly controls more than one-third of the Egyptian economy), and to its own interests alone.

Let us not forget that the ex-dictator, Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown in 2011, and who is in prison now, is a former Egyptian army general and that he only fell when the army no longer propped up his regime.

Ever since the early 1970s, the Egyptian Army has no longer been the property of the Egyptian state. It has, instead, been the property of the United States of America, which provides it huge amounts of military assistance, and which, in consequence, controls all its activities. The Egyptian army could never have contemplated this coup without the blessings of the US, just as it could never have abandoned Mubarak till the US gave the go-ahead to abandon him.

So just why should this army suddenly be so filled with concern for the protesting people that it would overthrow the new ruler, as it allowed the old one to be overthrown?

The answer is, of course, that it didn’t.

The coup wasn’t aimed at unseating Morsi, who was as good as gone. It was a pre-emptive coup, aimed against the people of Egypt, and with only one end in mind – to prevent the emergence of a genuinely popular government or leader. Whoever takes over now will do so under the army’s supervision, and will be under the army’s control.

Why should the army want to keep the government under control, and why should the Empire allow this?

The first part of the answer is that, as I said, the Egyptian Army only looks out for its own interests. The last thing it wants is for any genuine popular government which will clip its wings. It’s seen what Erdogan did in Turkey to the Turkish army, and it has absolutely no desire to be similarly cut to size.

As for the Empire...

Of all the Arab nations, Egypt is probably the most important. Saudi Arabia is important because of its oil; Iraq because of its oil and its strategic position near Iran; but Egypt, the most populous Arab nation, sits between Asia and Africa, and connects the two halves of the Arab ummah together. Also, it’s right on the border of the so-called state of Israel, and the Zionist entity’s security trumps all other considerations where the American empire is concerned.

Therefore, the Empire wants to – in fact, the Empire must – control Egypt. It got its lucky break when Nasser died, and his successor Sadat handed the nation over to it on a platter. It’s fine with a fundamentalist Muslim government being in power – after all, Muslim fundamentalism and American imperialism have always been the best of allies – as long as the fundamentalists manage to hold on to power and the lid down on protests. However, if the protests grow to a critical level, the Empire has to step in and manage a transformation.

That’s why, until it grew evident that he couldn’t hold on any longer, the Empire backed Mubarak – and that’s why it’s still backing Erdogan in Turkey, where the protests haven’t yet reached critical mass. Once the protestors reach that level, though, the formerly loyal dictator becomes dispensable – the Empire’s only desire is to maintain control, by all means possible. Since it owns the army, the tool’s ready to hand.

Therefore, the people who are rejoicing at the overthrow of the Morsi government are seriously deluded. Morsi was not overthrown by the people; if he had, there would’ve been cause for optimism. He was overthrown by the army – and the army is emphatically not on the side of the people.

At this point, the fate of Morsi is probably unimportant, except to prove again to Washington’s toadies that being an American lackey has a short shelf life. Morsi can go to the wall as far as his relevance goes; it’s who’ll come after him that matters. This person will either be an army-backed dictator, or a rubber stamp owned lock, stock and barrel by the US Empire. Either way, his only purpose in power will be to perpetuate the military’s and its American masters’ interests.

Since this isn’t the medieval era, the facts won’t be hidden forever, and just as the overthrow of Mubarak was soon followed by protests against Morsi, so the next puppet ruler will soon face protests of his own. Over a period of time, these protests might force a genuine change. It might happen someday. But it will not happen as long as the Zionist entity and the American Empire do not allow it.

That’s something the people cheering at Morsi’s fall are about to find out for themselves, I think.

Further reading:

http://www.syrianews.cc/washington-egypts-coup-detat/

The Tank Man Today: Shades of Irony

I’ve not, so far, talked about l’affaire Edward Snowden except in passing in another article, and I do not expect to talk about him in detail in future. In any case, any regular reader of mine will be able to surmise exactly where I stand on that topic.

However, my attention was drawn to a cartoon that appeared at the time Snowden was in China, and was taken apart by one of my own favourite cartoonists, Ted Rall. It was a take on the old Tank Man picture from the Tiananmen Square “protests” of 1989, and depicts Snowden standing in front of a line of Chinese tanks. A voice from the lead tank says, “Why, sure, you can count on us to protect your civil liberties, Mr Snowden.”

The (intended) subtext is clear: Snowden has run to a nation which tramples on civil liberties, or, to be more exact, grinds them under tank tracks. It’s so obvious a subtext that only someone totally uninformed would miss it – or else someone well-informed enough to see through the sham.

Part of the latter informed view was voiced by Rall himself, who commented :^[1]

“...China really did look out for Snowden, protecting him in a special police-run district and then permitting him to leave despite America’s...move...of annulling his passport.”

Actually, though, it goes way beyond that.

Now, I’m a bit of an authority on the Tank Man photo. I analysed it, after all, in excruciating detail in an article I wrote on the so-called Tiananmen Square “massacre”. Part of what I had to say is as follows (the whole analysis of the photograph is much longer and is available at the link):^[2]

“It’s called one of the “100 most famous photographs of all time”; actually, there are several versions of the photo, and there’s a video of the episode as well, which has its own peculiar significance. Taken on the morning of 5th June 1989, it shows a lone man, in white shirt and dark trousers, with what seems to be shopping bags in his hands. He stands in front of a line of tanks. In the most well-known version, that taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press, there are four tanks. In other photos, taken from further away, there are more tanks behind those four. They are Chinese Type 59 tanks, with the crew “buttoned up” inside; i.e. the hatches shut. 

As seen in the video, the man gestures angrily to the tank with his bags. The tank swerves to one side in order to drive around him. The man steps again in front of the tank, and the heavy vehicle again tries to steer around him. Finally, it stops, and the man clambers on it, has a brief exchange with the crew, and descends. As the tank tries to drive on, he again steps in front of it and again it stops. People from the crowd then pull the man to safety and the tanks drive on (this last bit is typically excised from videos of this episode posted on such sites as YouTube).

According to the standard mythology of the event, one so standard that it’s practically sacrilege not to believe it, the man displayed almost unbelievable courage in the face of overwhelming Chinese military aggression. This “lone hero” became an instant icon, known as the “Tank man” and a symbol of courage worldwide.

...Now, if we look at the video, we see the tank shifting to the right and back again in an effort to avoid the man. If the Chinese troops had already shot and crushed down hundreds to thousands of unarmed civilians, and according to standard mythology they were, even on this 5th of June, shooting students trying to re-enter the Square, why would the tank have gone to such trouble to save the life of one miserable counter-revolutionary? There can be no reasonable explanation but the fact that  that the tankers were exercising the maximum restraint in the face of provocation."

  

Therefore, whatever you believe about the rest of the events surrounding the so-called Tiananmen Square Massacre, this much is undeniable: the Tank Man episode does not depict military brutality. It, instead, depicts Chinese armoured forces going out of their way not to hurt or kill a single isolated demonstrator. Seen in that light, the cartoon is ironically true – in a way its cartoonist never intended.

Then, there’s this interesting little fact that in 1989 the Tank Man was called “heroic” for standing up to armour. Now imagine if there were major domestic disturbances in a Western “democracy” today, attempting to overthrow a government deemed tyrannical by a section of the population.  Now, imagine that troops/National Guards were called out to quell these disturbances. Suppose an unarmed demonstrator were to step out in the path of one of these columns of troops, moreover, carrying bags in his hands, bags which might contain petrol bombs like other demonstrators have used to burn troops alive.^[2] What would happen to him?

I’ll give you the likely answer in two words: Rachel Corrie.^[3] And she wasn’t even armed, nor was there any kind of demonstration going on.

But let’s assume he’s not run down. Let’s accept that the armour stops instead, and waits for him to get out of the way.  But, let’s then posit that he climbs on top of the lead vehicle, apparently in an attempt to talk to the crew. He’s still carrying his shopping bags with him, bags which for all the crew knows might contain Molotov Cocktails or explosives. What would the crew do under these circumstances? Wouldn’t they be justified in assuming their safety came first?

Either way, the answer is the same: if Tank Man had attempted his stunt in a “liberal Western democracy” today, where one can be chased down and killed on the Underground^[4] for the crime of having brown skin and “looking Arab”, for instance, he’d have been toast. And the crew would not only have been able to have got away with killing him, they would have been criticised for recklessly endangering themselves if they hadn’t blown him away. What he might or might not actually have had in his shopping bags, or whether he might be mentally disturbed^[2], would be immaterial.

And, of course, after they’d killed him, they’d have called him a terrorist. Or a terrorist-sympathiser, which amounts to the same thing.

I’ll leave it to your imagination what would have happened if Tank Man had tried his thing in Until-Recently-Occupied Iraq, Still-Occupied Palestine, or Occupied Afghanistan. How things change according to time and circumstance.

Irony isn’t dead, after all.

Sources:

^[1] http://www.rall.com/rallblog/2013/06/23/not-safe-for-cartoon-fans-with-taste-or-brains

^[2] http://bill-purkayastha1.blogspot.in/2012/11/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-new-look.html

^[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie

^[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

A Controversial Take On The Delhi Rape "Protests"

Some years ago, there was a little incident in the town where I live. A few young men were drinking one night, and then went cruising in the taxi belonging to one of them. They picked up a young woman (who imagined she was getting a ride home) and drove out to the forest outside town, where they raped her for hours, beat her half to death, and then dumped her on the roadside like a piece of garbage.

The city went ballistic. The incident made the national news, too, and the country could talk of nothing else. The rapists were hunted down, arrested, and, after a dramatic trial, locked up for the rest of their natural productive lives as examples to others of their kind. The victim got the sympathy and help she deserved to recover from her terrible ordeal, and even the criminals’ mothers came forward to apologise to her for what their sons had done.

No, wait. What actually happened was that the rapists got all the sympathy of “society”. They were called poor misguided youth who had made a “mistake”; their mothers marched, along with women’s’ body representatives, demanding that they be let off the hook. The victim was called a whore who deserved everything she got. As for national news, you have to be kidding – they didn’t even mention it in passing.

New Delhi, December, 2012. A 23-year-old female physiotherapy student boards a bus late one night, accompanied by her “male friend”. The bus isn’t on a regular route – it’s actually being taken on a joyride by the driver and five of his friends. They proceed to beat the woman and her “male friend” with an iron rod, rape her for almost an hour, and then throw them out of the moving vehicle before driving away. At the time of writing, the woman is alive, minus part of her intestines; she’s still in critical condition, but off a respirator and it’s becoming more likely that she’ll survive.

This time the nation – or, rather, a part of the nation – did go ballistic. The media, for one thing, made the rape its top news. “Protests” – more in a moment about them – started in many cities, asking for the rapists to be executed. Most especially these “protests” were in Delhi, where the “protestors” attempted to storm the Presidential Palace and demonstrated near India Gate, the heart of the government district. Most of the “protestors” in Delhi were young – college students from the middle class.

A question: is the different response to these two rapes a sign of India’s changing social attitudes? Not exactly. Because, while these protests were going on, a woman was stripped naked, tied to a tree in the state of Tripura and beaten, but nobody said a word. In Manipur, a Naga insurgent belonging to a banned Baptist terrorist group (the National Socialist Council of Nagaland, Isak Muivah faction) beat up an actress on stage, right in front of an audience full of military and paramilitary personnel, and nobody outside the state gave a damn. Elsewhere in this country, a woman continued to be raped about every fifteen minutes, and nothing happened to catch anyone’s attention.

But in Delhi, the “protests” continued.

If you’re thinking that I think there’s more to these “protests” (note the quotes) than meets the naked eye, you’d be right.

For the moment, I’m not going to go into the phenomenon of India and the treatment of women here; I’ll just say that it’s not exactly a surprise. A country where men are indoctrinated from birth to think of women as an inferior species can scarcely expect anything more. It’s hardly as though cruelty towards women is a new phenomenon – it’s been going on at least since the late Vedic period, circa 1000 BCE. From the brothels of Bombay to the forest hamlets of Central India, rape by the powerful male (be he the brothel madam’s pimp or the Indian paramilitary trooper) is happening right now, even as you read this. But nobody even wants to know about that.

There are reasons why the Delhi rape drew so much attention. The first is the simple fact that it took place in Delhi. To Indian officialdom, the media and the Great Indian Muddle Class, only what happens in Delhi, Bombay, and to a lesser extent in Bangalore matters – they are the centre of their version of India. What happens elsewhere makes no difference to them. But other rapes happen routinely in these same cities, daily – and nobody says a word.

That’s where the second reason comes in.

I have repeatedly characterised the Great Indian Muddle Class as incredibly self-absorbed and selfish, to the extent that to it, nothing matters but its own immediate interests. The Muddle Class sees itself as superior to the masses from which it has emerged, and it aspires to separate itself from them as far as possible. Unlike the middle class in other parts of the world, it doesn’t see itself as preyed on by the upper class; the upper class is its ideal, the realm to which it aspires. That’s why the corruption, decadence and dissipation of the upper class don’t fill Muddle Class people with revulsion. That revulsion is only reserved for politicians, whom the Muddle Class excoriates but whom it votes for anyway.

On the other hand, the Muddle Class hates and fears the underclasses. It feels threatened by them – by their increasingly uppity demand for a place in the sun and by their competitiveness. To the Muddle Class, the underclass isn’t PLUs (People Like Us) – they are PLTs (People Like Them). It’s the underclass who threaten the Muddle Class’ upwards march. It’s the underclass which reminds the Muddle Class of the morass from whence it sprung, and where it’s terrified of returning.

So when six members of the underclass rape a woman of the Muddle Class, it’s not a crime against an individual woman. It’s a strike against the Muddle Class. Think of it as a serf raising his hand against a nobleman, and you won’t be far from the idea.

It’s significant that the last time the Muddle Class reacted in such a way was after the Bombay terrorist attacks of November 2008, when it was the Muddle and upper classes which were the focus of the assault. The ordinary people were killed, sure, but the media focussed almost exclusively on the rich set’s hangouts targeted by the terrorists, and it was the Muddle Class which held candlelight vigils to condemn the attacks, signed pledges to “give their lives for South Mumbai” and threatened not to pay their taxes if their security couldn’t be assured. There have been terror attacks before and since, but the victims were of the masses, so the Muddle Class wasn’t particularly stirred.

It’s an absolute certainty that if the victim of the rape had been of the labourer set, there would have been as little reaction from the Muddle Class as there is when (as happens routinely) rich kids driving SUVs get drunk and crush homeless people to death. The Muddle Class doesn’t care about anyone but itself.

Accordingly, whatever the “protests” appear to be, they are not actually against the rapes – they are protests against the Muddle Class being made to feel vulnerable. No more, no less.

And, that being so, therefore, the “protests” will last until the Muddle Class feels reassured of its own position. Currently, the government is talking of making the anti-rape laws stricter, to enhance punishment. The “protestors” are demanding nothing less than the death penalty for the six rapists, even though no such law exists on the books now. They claim to be willing to settle for nothing less, even though they are well aware that laws can’t be made retrospective.

Now, as I’ve said before, the death penalty always works against poor people selectively, because they can’t afford good lawyers. Also, the judges are from the Muddle Class and routinely look down on poor people. So, suppose the laws are changed to make death a penalty for rape. Will the Muddle Class be willing to put its own members’ lives on the line? Will it be content to send to the gallows the rich man’s son who rapes his neighbour’s teenage daughter? Of course not.

The demand for the death penalty for rape is meant to be used against the lower classes, and the lower classes exclusively – just as the death penalty for murder is used exclusively against the lower classes in this country. I can’t even think of the last time I heard of a rich person being sentenced to death for murder, no matter how gruesome the crime. It’s always the poor guy who hangs. Just as the six rapists in this instance have been convicted and sentenced to death in advance, even though they have not yet been put on trial and so in the eyes of the law are innocent until proved guilty beyond reasonable doubt.     

And that is exactly the point, because the “protests” being primarily against the threat from the unwashed masses, the demand is for the law to be used to keep said masses in their place. The Muddle Class is frightened, and like a cornered beast, it’s lashing out.

I'm far from the only person to have noticed that the "protests" are restricted to the Muddle Class. As one newspaper editorial said:

Why are the weaker sections of the society not participating in these protests? Especially, why have those, who live in the slums where the main accused of this gang rape lives, (not) come forward? Indian society is divided and everyone is fighting their own battle. 

It’s not even as though the death penalty could be an actual deterrent. From the point of view of the rapist, it just gives him a powerful incentive to kill his victim instead of just violating her. If he’s going to hang anyway, at least killing her gives him a chance of getting away with it. Making the death penalty a punishment for rape merely dooms the victim.

That’s just logical. But cornered beasts don’t think logically. But, of course, this isn't a protest - it's a glorified lynch mob.

Speaking about lynching, the “protestors” don’t exactly have clean hands either. They’ve managed to kill a Delhi Police constable – a member of the underclass, as it happens – who collapsed and died of a heart attack after suffering injuries including three broken ribs. The Muddle Class and its media are unrepentant, of course – they claim that if such a thing happened, the police was at fault for putting a man with a bad heart into riot control duties. Because, you know, beating some poor cop till he dies is all fine if you’re fighting for a law to keep the other poor in their place.

The conflict is going to get worse. As the so-called economic boom continues to fall apart, and the infrastructure and environment continue to disintegrate, the Muddle Class’ grip on its niche will come under ever increasing threat. Since the Muddle Class relies on the underclass to be its hewer of wood and drawer of water, it can’t isolate itself from them like the ultra rich with their gated communities – it has to interact with the lower class, depending on it while hating it. More violence is inevitable, with lower class criminals (many of whom are poverty migrants to the cities, and forced to live in teeming slums with no facilities at all) preying on the Muddle Class, and the latter lashing back.

We will live in increasingly interesting times.

Meanwhile, I’d like to say something about the victim of the rape that started the whole thing off. All the “protestors”, the Muddle Class media and the politicians are concerned about her, and they want justice. Good. So do I. Try the accused rapists, and if they’re found guilty, lock them up by all means and throw away the key.

But I want to know something – why is it that they don’t mention the fact that we still don’t know the young woman’s name? The answer is that if her identity is disclosed, she’ll be publicly stigmatised as a rape victim and will probably not find anyone willing to marry her, ever.

But all those people so concerned about women’s rights don’t even want to talk about that.

The Hookerworm Infestation

The national motto of India is Satyameva Jayate, Truth Will Prevail. It’s inscribed at the base of the national symbol, the Asoka Pillar.

A better version of the symbol would be Hypocrisy Will Prevail. Since I don’t speak Sanskrit, I can’t render that in the proper words. Excuse me.

The latest manifestation of said hypocrisy was the decision of the Indian Foreign Ministry to direct our embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, to crack down on visas granted to Ukrainian women aged 15 to 40 on the grounds that they include “numerous prostitutes in search of a job”.

This being, you understand, a country where lawmakers watch porn in the state assemblies, and local trains and newspapers run ads for escort agencies and “private massage”, and big cities have large and well-established sex industries, ranging from sleazy brothels to high-class call girls walking the corridors of power. This also being a country which is the first to scream “discrimination” and “racism” against any critical comment, and any action elsewhere in the world that might even tangentially involve India or Indians negatively is taken up as a national affront. (For instance, this is a country where children are routinely mistreated and virtually considered their parents’ property, and nobody blinks an eyelash; but this is the same nation which was exercised recently because authorities in Norway removed two children from their Indian parents and placed them in care because the parents didn’t meet Norwegian child-care norms.)

This is also the nation which allegedly tries to promote tourism, and which has a substantial inflow of Ukrainian tourists every year, especially to Goa. Obviously, tourists don’t exactly decide on the basis of age and sex when choosing a destination, and young women don’t necessarily think they should have a male escort in order to visit someplace if they want. And with more and more women earning independent incomes, there’s no reason why they should.

It’s not as though there are no Ukrainian (or Russian, or other Eastern European) hookers in India. But there are also hookers, and sundry other criminals, including the Mafia, from plenty of other nations, including those favoured ones in the Western Hemisphere to which our rulers never miss an opportunity to genuflect. I don’t see them cracking down on visas issued to denizens of the European Union nations or the Zionazi pseudostate just because plenty of them are involved in drug smuggling among other pleasant little activities.

Oh, can you say “hypocrisy”?

So a Ukrainian women’s group, Femen, decided – quite rightly, in my opinion – that they had been insulted by the de facto Indian claim that any woman between the ages of 15 and 40 is a potential prostitute. (Can you even imagine the ruckus if the Ukrainian embassy had said anything remotely similar about Indian women? You can? Good.) So four of them broke into the Indian embassy, staged a topless protest (Femen is rather well known for this) on the balcony, and threw the Indian flag on the ground, waving anti-Indian banners the while.

The right-most poster reads "Arse to India". Ukrainians are amateurs at abuse.

Oh, horrors. Insulting the Indian national flag on top of everything. We must make war on Ukraine at once!

In a nation where the average cricket fan slathers the colours of the flag on his face and then acts in a manner not unlike a rabid ape, the national flag is something which is abused so routinely that if the poor thing was a conscious entity it would have died of shame long ago. And, anyway, a flag is just a piece of painted cloth, when all’s said and done.

I’ve often thought that Indians use outrage as a mask for insecurity, and hypocrisy as a default mode in daily life. Each little thing confirms me in this belief.

Let them who are without prostitutes cast the first stone.

International Giving Obama The Finger Day

I realise this incident happened a few days ago. However, I just got to know of it this morning, and since, damn it, whether you like it or not, it's my damned idea, I am naming today International Giving Obama The Finger Day.

For those of you who don't know about it yet, an anchorwoman called Tatiana Limanova on a Russian TV network did this to the Messiah cum Nobel Peace Prizident:

She did it as she read Obama's name while reporting on the APEC summit in Hawaii earlier this month, possibly believing that she wasn't on screen at the time and was on "voice over".

Here, have a good look again:

How many of us have instantly made Ms Limanova our new heroine? How many of us would love to give the warmongering, voter-betraying, murderous, waffling, corporate-shilling Nobel Peace Prizident the finger ourselves? Just about the only people who wouldn't, it seems to me, are the shrinking number of True Believers for whom Obama-worship is now a de facto religion, and whose faith is firm and unflinching. 

Hopefully Ms Limanova will find new employment shortly. Her ex-employers' competitors should be a good place to start looking.

[I am aware, incidentally, of the claim that Limanova was giving one of her camerapeople the finger for trying to make her laugh on screen, but I don't believe it. Attempting that kind of thing is utterly unprofessional and Limanova is hardly a beginner to fall for such juvenile humour. Besides, until the moment she gave Obama the finger, she didn't even look up from her notes. It sounds like an attempt at damage control on someone's part, as though there were any damage to be controlled.]

As for the rest of us, I suggest we all show Obama the finger ourselves. After all, they can't fire us.

Here  I am, doing it:

See how easy it is?

Right, now you do it too.

National Slap A Politician Day

As I’ve said on occasion, I’m more than a little tired of American holidays being stuffed down the collective craw of the rest of the world – like, oh, turkey, for example – so this year I was planning to invent a holiday of my own to mark the occasion, as a kind of protest. 

But then, being naturally lazy, I let the idea slide. I mean, you need something to celebrate when you invent a holiday, right? And what the hell is there to celebrate these days, unless you’re an imperialist warmonger, in which case you can pretty much celebrate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year anyway?

All right, so to get back to the point, I was looking for something to celebrate as a kind of antidote to Thanksgiving, and I believe I have found it.

Today, in New Delhi, one of India’s most loathsome politicians (and to stand out in that crowd, one has to be peculiarly awful), Sharad Pawar, got his.

One of the things that makes me reluctant to write at length on Indian topics is frankly how I have to lay out the groundwork and explain the background each time, every time. Still, I believe I haven’t mentioned Sharad Pawar before, so here goes.

Sharad Pawar, who holds the post of Agriculture Minister in the Indian government, is the chief of a political party called the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), an ally of the Congress Party in the right wing coalition which (mis)rules India at the moment. He is also an ex-member of the Congress party who left to form his own outfit in order to get a bigger share of Pawar, er, power, and then came right back and allied with his own former outfit to get that power. Who says politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows?

Oh, and Pawar is a disaster from whatever way you look at it. As Agriculture Minister, he’s sat back and watched as millions of tons of grains rot in stockyards (hint: link to an article by me) while people starve in the villages. He’s exported food while domestic prices rise through the roof. He’s also spent more time politicking in the cricket establishment (cricket in India is a lucrative business, awash in slush funds, and only incidentally a sport) than in running his ministry. But he can’t be sacked from his post, because the Congress needs the support of the Nationalist Congress to stay in Pawar, uh, power (sorry, can’t resist making that pun over and over), and keep on with its own agenda of sucking the nation dry.

The face of leadership

Today, one Indian finally had enough.

A young Sikh called Harvinder Singh, a transporter, caught up with Pawar in New Delhi and landed a nice hard slap on his obese cheek. (Can you tell I’m happy? Oh, you can? Good.) 

Singh was beaten up and taken to prison, but his act’s fired the imagination of the people, as you can see by the responses to this article here (I’m there too, being my usual Grammar-Nazi self).

Let’s look at that slap one more time shall we? Here you are:

The political class, even those who can’t stand Pawar (meaning pretty much everyone, even his allies) have closed ranks around him, obviously from simple fear. The refrain is the same – condemn this evil senseless act, yada yada. Perhaps they remember Martin Niemöller, and are modifying his words slightly:

First they slapped Sharad Pawar, and I didn’t say anything because I was not from his party

Then they pulled the pants off Manmohan Singh, and I didn’t say anything, because he’s on the way out anyway

Then they kicked out the Gandhi dynasty, and I didn’t say anything because I thought it would clear my way to power and wealth

Then they replaced me by a people’s government, and there was nobody left who would say a word in defence of me.

How I wish.

The most ludicrous response, even by Indian political standards, came from the Congress. It put the blame on the Hindunazi Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; the name means “Indian People’s Party”, which sounds like a leftist group, but isn’t). In a rare display of sense, the BJP had warned a couple of days ago that people’s anger would boil over and they’d “come down to the streets” unless corruption and rising prices were addressed. Apparently, the BJP is responsible because its warning instigated Harvinder Singh on his mission to slap the crap out of Pawar.

And here we come to the anti-Thanksgiving holiday I mentioned. I propose that we Indians henceforth celebrate the fourth Thursday of November as National Slap a Politician Day.

Look at all the advantages:

1.     It gives us a legitimate reason to celebrate, one that doesn’t involve the murder of innocent poultry;

2.     It’s in a perfectly good cause, one any sane individual can get behind regardless of political leaning; and

3.     Since our nation is now cravenly pro-American, and utterly in thrall to anything and everything that happens in the Empire, it needs a holiday to coincide with Thanksgiving, and this provides such an opportunity.

All right, so there you are. Your brand new holiday, courtesy Bill the Butcher. No charge.

You can bow in gratitude to me now.

Britain Burning

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."  

                                                                  ~ John F Kennedy

I’ve stayed away from the British protests/riots/looting spree (call them what you will) so far, as some of you might have noticed. I’ve stayed away from them because I don’t know enough about them to comment authoritatively, and because others have been talking about the topic more effectively than I could have.

However, I will make these points, in general, about them:

First, that just because the “protests” have turned into a combined destruction and looting spree doesn’t mean that they can be dismissed as a merely criminal activity. Anger builds up and is sparked off by something that might appear relatively trivial, even something that most people wouldn’t think has anything to do with the source of the anger. But ignoring real grievances will only stoke them up further, and the backlash will be even more intense, even more destructive, the next time around.

Second, criminals will always take advantage of anything they possibly can. A protest is a lovely opportunity to smash, burn and loot – even without any involvement of agent provocateurs (a tactic used far too many times by governments to thwart protests to be dismissed as a conspiracy theory). Quite apart from professional criminals, people who join in protests with quite genuine grievances can turn to crime easily when the opportunity is before them. None of us are saints, and the organisers of protests need to be extremely careful to keep their “flock” under control. Having said that, just because there’s rioting and looting doesn’t mean the rioters and looters don’t have genuine grievances.

Third – imagine if the British people had as many guns as they could wish to buy? We wouldn’t be talking about “civil disturbances” or “riots”, let alone protests – we’d be talking of civil war. As a committed anti-gun activist, I can’t really resist pointing out the fact that there’d be armed gangs blasting each other and bystanders to pieces, often raiding homes to get guns to shoot even more people to pieces; and the army out in the streets with tanks to blast peace into the people. So much for the “armed militia” keeping a government in check.  

Fourth – imagine if these “protests” had happened in an (unfriendly) Arab nation, an (independent-minded) Central Asian republic, or Iran. By now, the media would have been full of reports claiming that these were peaceful protestors asking for democracy, “activist groups” based in Washington or Paris would have been claiming that hundreds of people had been brutally murdered by the government, atrocity stories would have been invented, and all evidence of violence, looting and destruction would have been dismissed as propaganda by the "regime". And soon enough, either a colour-coded revolution would’ve been arranged for by the Empire, or a resolution passed in the UN authorising NATO to bomb the nation to democracy, and arms and money would flow to terrorist groups dedicated to the overthrow of the legitimate government. Think Syria. Think Iran. Think Libya.

Oh – while I’m on Libya: while the effort to kill civilians to save them from Gaddafi continues apace, did you miss this little bit of news? According to the plans made by the “liberators”, a post-Gaddafi regime would see suspected Gaddafi supporters rounded up and jailed or killed, Tripoli occupied by troops from the UAE (you know, the peaceful, democratic UAE which uses slave labour), and Gaddafi’s security people kept in their places just as long as they switched loyalties. That’s democracy for you!

Now to get to the point of this post – re-read the Kennedy quote above. As I’ve said in the past, democracy is now a mockery just about anywhere since whoever you vote into power behaves like a clone of the people you voted out of power. As such, voting is a hollow exercise, and isn’t even a safety valve for letting off steam any longer. Since political parties don’t care about a thing except power and money, and since the people are effectively disenfranchised, what we are going to see is more and more of the British style eruptions all over so-called democratic countries in the days to come.

Watch this space.