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 America, the neighbourhood gendarme Better than Vichy French, Putin's Kreplakistan and communist China March 12, 2003 The Iranian I know there's a war on and things but I'm concentrating on the positives. I recently bought a bag of fair-trade, organic coffee - don't tell me that didn't help. If charity pamphlets are accurate, it will have irrigated an African province and built a district sanatorium. That's if the struggling, revolutionary, non-aligned local officials didn't pocket the money. (I was recently reminded of Winnie Mandela by a yukka puree I tried. Yukka is like potato, only tough and it made me vomit. I imagine Winnie stirring a pot of boiling yukka now she's not an international statesman, enjoying the plaudits of Soweto goons). I had to fight my way through a million-strong anti-war march to get to one of Barcelona's Oxfam shops to help my dear, adopted third world. "No a la Guerra," the pram-pushing mob shouted, not just here but across Europe. European leaders take note, the message is clear: people are swayed, manipulated and misinformed collectively. I assume the housewives or 'madonna studies' graduates attending these marches are unfamiliar with the history of dictatorships, vile Arab nationalism or Saddam and his Gulag regime. But who cares about history? "No to War" sounds good. It's a short sentence and suggests a whole lot of goodness and concern. A simpleton stumbling onto the news these days might excusably think that there is a country, Iraq, minding its own business, and along come these wicked people called the Bush Administration, who simply "want" war. They have a fondness for warmongering. Or one might be led to believe that there is a "diplomatic" crisis, a question of methods, a misunderstanding perhaps, which may be resolved "diplomatically", but that Bush, who wants all the power and oil, is charging at it like a cowboy. And were it not for the heroes of the hour, the Vichy French, Putin's Kreplakistan, communist China and various Euro-socialist parties who never, ever play politics but are simply concerned, who knows where we would be now? As for the people of Iraq, all they want is peace ("Give Peace a Chance", says the Nana Mouskouri song), like people in London, Paris or Madrid. Their peace is a trifle more interesting of course, jazzed up a little by Saddam and the Gestapo, but that's what they want for decades more, or as long as they are lucky enough not to be interfered with by those rotten Americans. I pontificate to digest my food. Last week I ate a deep-fried chicken dish. Now the saturated fat and my conservative views are clogging up my arteries -- with guilt. Aside pontificating, my improving Spanish permits me to make a hesitant start at complaints and arguments in shops and cafes. I complained when the waiter recently took my Herald Tribune at a local cafe Art and Shilling. He must have dumped it into the food remains, because it came back with the edges soggy. Kim Jong Il's face was gnarled by cabbage soup. What fun! I deprived the waiter of the tip he knew he wasn't going to get. He looked like an anti-war type anyway: bleached hair, dreadlocks, nose/ear rings - a right little Frappuccino anarchist.  Very little cheers me up when I have financial problems.
I have sought in vain to supplement my meagre wages. (I work in a Dickensian soup
kitchen, 14 hours a day, serving a watery broth to sooty orphans who operate an enormous,
vaporous engine, one of several that run the British Empire. One of them, one Oliver,
asked for more consommé with garlic croutons the other day with the paltry
excuse that it was Christmas or some such humbug. "More?" I asked, then
sang a song and had him beaten -- to nurture in him a sense of gratitude. No, just
kidding, I'm a freelance translator, more freelance than translator, and I haven't
had a consommé since the last power-lunch with my friend Mimi -- Madame Chiang-Kai
Chek to you.) But even in my state of genteel poverty, I am concerned for the world:
international affairs are my daily soap opera (beside a Venezuelan telenovela called
Secreto del Amor -- The secret of Love -- where the characters cry much and
slap one another). As the French author Henry de Montherlant said of his idle, over-politicised character Don Celestino: La planete etait son affaire -- The planet is my business. Let me have a go: the [privatised] trains would run on time and we would see the end of nuclear energy, that plague nobody wants if only they would bother asking us. If mankind were grateful for the endless blessings God gives us, from the beach to bicycles, baklava, chocolate cake, digestion etc... we would hardly bother with nuclear power. Only atheists want nuclear power.  Equally absurd are the "human shields" heading
for Iraq. Some are returning, surprised the Iraqi government does not want them to
shield orphanages or hospitals but refineries, petrochemical plants, that type of
thing... Well I'm surprised, so surprised. One of the shields, a Catalan teenager
the White House should have consulted before planning its petrodollar-war, said,
"we're doing this for the Iraqi people." Imagine the Iraqi people's gratitude.
To the peace marchers, I say with my habitual, good-natured respect, go back to your spliffs, ecstasy pills and scrubbing the kitchen floor. You didn't bother demonstrating when Saddam gassed the Kurds, when he invaded Iran, or when Taliban decapitated women etc. So don't bother now. Your anti-American sentiments are nothing but stinking left-over socialist piffle. "You can't have the Americans going around changing regimes," I was told recently. Yes you can: thank goodness for the neighbourhood gendarme. * Printer friendly Does this article have spelling or other mistakes? Tell me to fix it.
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