Skip to main content

Wishful thinking for 2009

People fall into two camps about veteran journalist, commentator, author and film-maker John Pilger - they either love or hate him. Whatever.....Pilger is a renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, one of only two to have twice won British journalism's top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. "John Pilger," wrote Harold Pinter, "unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him."

Pilger's latest piece for the New Statesman has all what Pilger sees as the good news for the new year:

January: Tony Blair is arrested at Heathrow Airport as he returns from yet another foreign speaking engagement (receipts since leaving office: £12m). He is flown to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes for his part in the illegal, unprovoked attack on a defenceless country, Iraq, justified by proven lies, and for the subsequent physical, social and cultural destruction of that country, causing the death of up to a million people. According to the Nuremberg Tribunal, this is the "paramount war crime". The prosecution tells Blair's defence team it will not accept a plea of "sincerely believing". Cherie Blair, a close collaborator who has compared her husband with Winston Churchill, is cautioned.

February: Following the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States, his predecessor, George W Bush, is arrested leaving the Church of the Holy Crusader in his home town of Crawford, Texas. He is flown to The Hague in War Criminal One. (See above for prosecution details.) Laura Bush, after a plea bargain, agrees to give evidence against the former president, "for God's sake".

March: Former vice-president Dick Cheney shoots himself in the foot hunting squirrels following a prayer breakfast in Hope, Florida.

April: Aung San Suu Kyi is released from house arrest and assumes her rightful place as the democratic head of the government of Burma.

May: All American and British troops leave Iraq, including the "300-400" British troops who are to stay behind to "train Iraqis" and do the kind of special forces dirty work almost never reported by embedded journalists.

June: All Nato troops leave Afghanistan.

July: The British government calls a halt to selling arms and military equipment to ten out of 14 conflict-hit countries in Africa. The chairman of the arms company BAE Systems is arrested by the Serious Fraud Office.

August: The British Department for International Development ends its support for privatisation as a condition of aid to the poorest countries.

September: Sir Bob Geldof and Bono visit Tony Blair in prison, suggesting a worldwide Crime Aid gig to raise money for their hero's defence.

October: The Booker prizewinner Anne Enright apologises to Gerry and Kate McCann, parents of the missing child Madeleine McCann, for speculating in the London Review of Books about the possible involvement of the McCanns in the disappearance of their daughter.

November: Gordon Brown is kidnapped, hooded and forced to listen repeatedly to his 2007 speech to bankers at a Mansion House banquet: "What you as the City of London have achieved for financial services, we as a government now aspire to achieve for the whole economy."

December: Tony Blair is sentenced to life imprisonment and beatified by the Pope.
If you think none of this will happen, you are probably right. But beware 2010 . . .

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading the Chilcot Inquiry Report more closely

Most commentary on the Chilcot Inquiry Report of and associated with the Iraq War, has been "lifted" from the Executive Summary.   The Intercept has actually gone and dug into the Report, with these revelations : "THE CHILCOT REPORT, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation. Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the

An unpalatable truth!

Quinoa has for the last years been the "new" food on the block for foodies. Known for its health properties, foodies the world over have taken to it. Many restaurants have added it to their menu. But, as this piece " Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? " from The Guardian so clearly details, the cost to Bolivians and Peruvians - from where quinoa hails - has been substantial. "Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as

Climate change: Well-organised hoax?

There are still some - all too sadly people with a voice who are listened to - who assert that climate change is a hoax. Try telling that to the people of Colorado who recently experienced horrendous bushfires, or the people of Croatia suffering with endless days of temps of 40 degrees (and not much less than 30 at night time) some 8-10 degrees above the norm. Bill McKibben, take up the issue of whether climate change is a hoax, on The Daily Beast : Please don’t sweat the 2,132 new high temperature marks in June—remember, climate change is a hoax. The first to figure this out was Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who in fact called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” apparently topping even the staged moon landing. But others have been catching on. Speaker of the House John Boehner pointed out that the idea that carbon dioxide is “harmful to the environment is almost comical.” The always cautious Mitt Romney scoffed at any damage too: “Scientists will fig