Standing on the shoulders of the compliant
The next person to say to me that they’d still rather see a Labour government than a Tory one is going to get told where to go in words of one syllable.
The more I think about this Miliband and torture thing, the more I think a national security ensured by hacking at a man’s penis (and the covering up of said hacking) isn’t worthy of the name. Like a victory involving an innocent man being beaten to death, you have to ask what it’s all worth. It this what it’s come to for us?
Is it about sending a message do you think? Is it supposed to be like those al Qaeda videos when they behead someone and put the footage on the internet? A ‘Hack at our necks and we’ll hack at your cocks’ kind of thing? We’re talking about a situation where conventional morality – the morality by which the rest of us live our lives – takes a look at the job advert and decides against it. In other words: it doesn’t apply.
It makes you wonder why they’re trying to cover up this genital mutilation business. It’s clear now that we’re party to it. Thin lip service to condemnations of torture from the likes of the morally inverted David Miliband now mean precisely nowt.
So surely realpolitik – or whatever high-fallutin’ phrase we’re using to explain away atrocity right now – dictates we should airdrop graphic up-close photographs of Binyam Mohamed lacerated manhood onto the Afghan-Pakistan border to put the wind up the insurgents. Maybe an MP3 of Baha Mousa screaming his last breath could be hosted on the Foreign Office website and broadcast from aircraft flying over Helmand Province.
Who comes out looking more civilised, I wonder? Beheaders or knob slashers? Mohamed probably had a bit of Germoline dabbed on his shredded bell-end which makes the western ‘values’ that fuel The War Against Terror look slightly less medieval, I suppose. And he’s still alive, of a fashion. So that’s one point for us.
Posted on February 16th, 2009 at 6:59pm under Human rights, New Labour, T.W.A.T.
It gets worse – UK drew up torture policy for Pakistan detainees – which leaves the inevitable question: who gave them the green light?
The Labour government have done more than enough to deserve to lose at the next election. I still wouldn’t prefer a Conservative government though. Do you really think that they would have been any more removed from the Cheney agenda than New Labour over the last ten years?
Do you really think that they would have been any more removed from the Cheney agenda than New Labour over the last ten years?
Granted Adam, but without the aid of time travel we’ll never know for sure. We’re talking actual versus hypothetical crimes here. I imagine (hope?) fewer bollocks will get the Edward Scissorhands treatment under an Obama-Cameron axis.
There’s already reason to feel optimistic about what Obama will (and more importantly won’t) do and I’m sure whoever wins the next UK election will play along, but:
“The next person to say to me that they’d still rather see a Labour government than a Tory one is going to get told where to go in words of one syllable.”
still doesn’t follow for me. I just don’t agree that the Conservatives will be a better government simply because the New Labour government has been a bad one. The only way this argument stands up is if you can be certain that they will be less heavy handed with the cluster bombs and more resistant to the demands of the security services.
Given that’s hypothetical, you have to look at actual conservative government as well, and here in London the Conservative administration has so far been worse than the Labour one that it followed. On green issues, redistribution, transport, health, housing, and general competence it’s been one big fail. Given the whole administration is stuffed with Cameron placemen and trainees, I’m not convinced that this won’t be repeated on a national scale.
Given that’s hypothetical, you have to look at actual conservative government as well, and here in London the Conservative administration has so far been worse than the Labour one that it followed.
Doesn’t surprise me – Boris never looked like he did ‘competent’. On an ideological level, Cameron will live down to expectations; it’s the mixture of incompetence with malice and the access to the full train-set of New Labour legislation that worries me.
This will be Labour’s greatest legacy when they’re gone…to have turned normally liberally orientated people to think the Tories at least can’t be worse than them. Bravo those brave men and women.
Bad as Blair and his cronies have been, the foundations were laid by Thatcher and her sycophants.
The Labour government have done more than enough to deserve to lose at the next election.
The Labour government have done more than enough to deserve Nuremberg-style trials and Nuremberg-style execution!
For fuck’s sake, we’re talking about torture and aggressive war here.
“Should we re-elect the torturers?”
“Oh, but the Tories might get in!”
Nose pegs all ’round!