6th Epistle to the Foxnewsians

Dear Foxnewsians,

Now come on, you must have been expecting an epistle from me on this of all weeks. Sorry it’s a bit late, but as we’ve previously seen, I do like to take my time to reflect and consider before speaking, so that I can try and form a cogent argument (after all, I’m not Sarah Palin and a stream of non-sequitors doesn’t really work for me). So grab a coffee, sit back and smoke ‘em if you’ve got them, because this is a gonna be a long one. You should also be aware that the words, ‘hypocritical cunts’ are liable to be used on a number of occasions.

So Osama Bin Laden is dead. My first reaction was this: Yawn. It would be like if Al Qaida had killed Dubya. You’ve killed a figurehead. Well done, well done you. My understanding is that most of the actual masterminds of 9/11 died in the attacks. Bin Laden was the money man. So what? I hear you foam, it’s the same thing. Well then, when the Indonesian Army invaded East Timor in 1975, slaughtering 200,000 people, a quarter of the population of that tiny country, 90% of the funding for the invasion and 90% of the weaponry used came from the USA. The then US ambassador to the UN, Patrick Moynihan, said that he was ‘proud’ that it was his obfuscation that prevented the UN from taking any action to prevent the wholesale slaughter of civilians. Where’s their ‘justice’? Hypocritical cunts.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have no strong feelings about an international terrorist being killed one way or the other, but if I’m going to celebrate the death of a mass murderer then I’d rather save my jubilation for when a major one goes, like Kissinger, Bliar or Cheney. The 9/11 attacks, for all their perceived global significance, were a minor event in terms of casualties. More civilians have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan in the last five years than died in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Evil and cowardly we call it when it is done to us, yet the majority of those drones are controlled by twenty year old kids, sat behind VDU screens and joysticks in an US Air Force base in Colorado. Kids who have been raised on a diet of Call of Duty and Splinter Cell. If you blow yourself up, you’re a coward. Sit behind a screen 10,000 miles away, slaughtering people who you don’t even have the common decency to look once in the face and you’re a patriot and a hero. Hypocritical cunts.

In fact, I think I’ve worked out the real reason why the US government has decided not to release the photos of Bin Laden’s corpse. It’s because Osama was the millionth person to be killed in our so called War of on Terror and it wouldn’t be great PR to see a photo of his body sporting a party hat, surrounded by balloons and ticker tape. I hope his family gets to keep the car though. Is it still a car you get for being the millionth?

It changes nothing. It won’t end the war in Afghanistan because the war in Afghanistan was never about Al Qaida or 9/11. This is, ultimately, why I don’t believe in a 9/11 conspiracy. I mean apart from it being totally barmy (take one look at how incompetent the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were conducted and tell me these people were capable of carrying out anything so well executed as 9/11) The invasion of Afghanistan had already been announced in the European press in May 2001. If you’re planning a massive conspiracy to kill your own citizens, why announce what you’re going to use that as a justification for in advance? There are even some suggestions that Osama gave the go ahead for 9/11 as a pre-emptive strike in response to the planned invasion. Cart before the horse people, cart before the horse.

If the West had really wanted to destroy Al Qaida following the attacks, it only had to do one thing: nothing. Al Qaida were already a spent force in the Arab world. Their attacks against western tourists in Egypt in the 1990s saw a wave of protest from moderate Muslims denouncing terrorism and Fundamentalist Islam. But then Arabs have always been far more politically savvy then we in the west. The Middle East was a land of moderate Islamic democracies until the end of the Second World War, when western dependence on oil became an addiction and democracies were overthrown and replaced by tyranny and brutality.

The prime example of this is Iran. In 1953, President Mosaddegh renationalises the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP), leading to his overthrow by the CIA and British secret services, execution by their agents, and the return of the Shah, who instigates a 26 year program of some of the most bloody repression that the Middle East has ever witnessed. But here’s the punchline: Jimmy Carter makes a state visit to Iran in 1979, telling the Iranian people how proud they must be to have such a benevolent leader. This is the final straw for the brutalised Iranians and Carter’s visit leads to the Islamic Revolution (*drum roll, crash of cymbal*).

International terrorism is entirely the preserve of the west. Not only is the most successful terrorist organisation in history the CIA, but Al Qaida’s effectiveness in recent years is down to us, because you see, we need scary Muslims in the world to justify the continued manufacture and sale of arms. Following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, America only emerged from the Great Depression because of the start of the Second World War. Armament contracts to Britain boosted GDP and this was the reason why America joined the fight, to protect its investments (bombing Japanese Pacific bases just long enough to provoke a reaction). If Britain had lost the war, the US wouldn’t get paid (although the Bush family would have been just fine, they did make their fortune from business done with the Nazi’s after all). Since that time, the American economy has been largely reliant on its arms industry, which in practice has meant fermenting conflict the world over. It’s also why so many democratic governments in the Middle East and South America have been overthrown and replaced with genocidal cunts. A regime living in fear of its own people has far more need of security equipment than one of elected representation.

During the Bush II years, the US government passed the point where it spends more on weapons and defence each year than every other country in the world combined. The internal collapse of the Soviet Regime had presented a real problem for western leaders, because they could no longer blame international terrorism on communist forces. The only other viable ‘evil empire’ to scare US citizens with was Islam, representing 20% of the population of the planet. Ever since the Berlin Wall came down, the west had been looking for an excuse to elevate Islam to Global Enemy No 1 (remember the Oklahoma City bombing? Remember how quick the US media was to blame it on Islamic terrorists, until it became clear that one of their own homegrown fundamentalists was responsible). 9/11 was (for a time) great for US business. $1.13trillion have been spent on our phony war. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people have died, but they’re only poor people, so they don’t count. It’s nothing new. In response to Al Qaida’s 1998 attack on US embassies in Nairobi and Dari Salaam, Bill Clinton bombed what he said was a chemical weapons factory in the Sudan. In fact, it was one of only two pharmaceutical factories in the country. The last figures I heard suggested that 20,000 people died of preventable disease as a result of that terrorist outrage. But again, because they didn’t die in glorious Technicolor on the Breakfast Hour, they don’t count. Bill Clinton, you are also a hypocritical cunt.

Nor is the USA, or even the west, solely guilty of this hypocrisy. There is another continuing war, besides the War on Terror. It is a forgotten war, because it is taking place in Africa and no one gives a fuck about Africa. It is happening in the Republic of Congo. Over four million people have been killed since 1998. It is being perpetuated by arms companies from the USA, UK, France and Russia. Altogether now: Hypocritical cunts.

I didn’t bother to watch the crowds celebrating Bin Laden’s death in New York (if I wanted to watch a bunch a idiots celebrating a non-event, I could’ve watched the Royal Wedding, but I’m not simple), but it was depressingly familiar to see many Americans who, when given the opportunity to demonstrate some humility and decorum, instead opt for the usual flag waving and triumphalism, as if there is anything worth celebrating (it really was like the Royal Wedding). The usual cries of ‘an eye for an eye’ were to be heard, but I am sure that you, Oh Foxnewsians, remember the words of the big JC. We covered it last term. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? “You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” Anyone seen this before? Ask me what I think about Christianity and I will give you the same reply as when Ghandi was asked what he thought of western civilization: I think it would be a good idea. If the precepts of Christianity had been applied ten years ago, then Al Qaida would, like its erstwhile figurehead, have disappeared beneath the waves a long time since.

I’m a cynical cunt, of that there is no doubt, and I suspect that the timing of Bin Laden’s assassination has a lot to do with the Arab Spring that is flowering across the Middle East. The protestors have largely been peaceful, despite facing the usual western backed repression, killed with our bullets. Be in no doubt, our leaders are terrified of a moderate Middle East. They have no need of our arms. They have no need of us, period, but we need their oil, and that, however much naive idealists would like to bury their heads in the sand, is what it all comes back to. Killing Bin Laden seems a desperate attempt to re-energise Jihadist groups (the US had known he was in Abbattobad since at least August last year) in order to maintain the transparent lies of the War of Terror. It would appear a futile gesture. The Arab Spring heralds the winter of American Imperialism. The Arab Spring is your Suez Crisis (goggle it).

I know that the ‘lefty-liberals’ in both our countries would love to continue to think the best of Obama, because he’s black and a Democrat and his wife is hot, but it’s time for a reality check. Bill Hicks said that whoever’s President, they get shown footage of the Kennedy Assassination from an angle you’ve never seen before. “And then the screen goes up and the lights come up, and they go to the new President, ‘Any questions?’ ‘Er, just what my agenda is’." However, the US educational and political systems are set up in such a way that you don’t get to be President if you’re likely to challenge the established order. After doing what Bush couldn’t (wouldn’t) do and take out OBL, Obama’s a shoehorn to be re-elected, and he will be as ineffectual in his second term as he has been during his first. And then, like Clinton and Carter, he can spend his days touring the world promoting peace and democracy and everyone will kindly forget that under the laws we established at Nuremberg in order to try the Nazis, he would be guilty of the same crimes of aggression. Just like every US President since Truman. One last time, with feeling: Hypocritical cunts.

You shall hear from anon.

Amused, Manchester.

PS: Two words: Glen Beck. *al la Nelson Muntz * Ha ha!

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