Blair, death and Dignity
Who, one wonders, is really in the business of
death?
March 14, 2005
iranian.com
Diary
8 August 2004
It is a hot day in England. Phil and I have been in the garden
reading papers. One of the stories was about a funeral service
company that had lost money due to a drop in the death rate in
the UK in the past six months. But the company was confident this
was merely a ‘quirk’ and that the death rate soon would
pick up.
Dignity, the firm in question, specializes in horse-drawn
carriage treatment. In life this is reserved for royals but in
death for anyone with a few bob to spare. The horses in question
are jet black, rather pretty creatures, their seats draped with
ornate crosses on velvet, with purple outlines. Black plumes sway
above their heads as they clip-clop to the cemetery, delivering
another body to the earth and “happy” customer to the
company.
But who, one wonders, is really in the business of death -- the
people who own these horses or Tony Blair and his government? Two
weeks ago a member of the British intelligence services was fired
after having told a documentary that he had balked at the idea
of Iraq being an imminent threat to Britain when Blair had made
WMD his battle cry. Some weeks ago Piers Morgan, editor of the
Daily Mirror, the vociferously anti-war tabloid, was dismissed
for publishing what turned out to be fake pictures of torture victims
in Iraq.
Meanwhile, Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary who this time last
year was close to losing his job over the death of Dr David Kelly,
has been in Gibraltar to mark 300 years of British rule -- a
perceived snub to Spain for pulling its troops out of Iraq. The
people of Britain have failed to claim a single scalp from their
deceptive government. The gangsters still strut, smiling.
 Harold Pinter referred to the US-led assault on Iraqis as a ‘gangster
war’ last year on BBC radio. He published a book of poetry
on the war at that time which was criticized, by many in both the
anti- and pro-war camps, for not being ‘poetic’ enough
-- his style was accused of being too candid. This was a misplaced
criticism
as poetical devices were daily being used by ministers to twist
truth. What was “weapons of mass destruction” if not
a metaphor for oil?
Pinter was being frank where politicians were
beating around the bush -- what poetry usually does. How many
times did we have to hear statements to the tune of: “There
is no evidence to suggest that British forces were involved in
bombing of X civilian district and until the bureaucratic body
of nobodies delivers its reports.” Anyway, I mention this
as Pinter received the Wilfred Owen prize for war poetry last
week, a rare instance of truth managing to out. Even today
Saddam and
Iraq are talked of as if they were a single entity. Saddam had
to go, but Iraqis did not have to be bombed.
Meanwhile the British National Party -- which has far more
claim to being Nazi than national -- is reeling after being
infiltrated by a BBC journalist who caught its führer Nick
Griffin telling a group of fascists in a pub that rape is and always
has been integral to the spread of Islam.
 While reporting this,
however, no newspaper is asking how it is that a political leader
who insults Muslims has his party’s bank accounts frozen
and is subjected to an investigation, but one whose policies result
in the killing ten to thirteen thousand Muslims gets a slap on
the wrist from an obedient judge. Perhaps the British government
should offer one of its prized Iraq contracts to Dignity, the funeral
company, so that every Iraqi killed by coalition forces
from now is escorted to the grave by its horses. That way we could
count the dead and it would be good for business.
|
