I feel a rant coming on…

On and off I get to wondering just what it is that pisses me off so much about the self-styled ‘muscular liberals’ of the pro-war left, and today’s one of those days.

What’s prompted this train is thought is having spotted yet another outbreak of obsequious fawning over yet another of Nick Cohen’s tiresome rants in which he postulates – as usual – that he and his ilk are the only truly inheritors of the ideological mantle of the left and everyone who disagrees with them are just bunch of fascist bastards.

Then it finally struck me. Just go for the simplest possible explanation – they’re just a bunch of crashing bores.

Just look at them, Aaronovitch, Cohen, Hitchen – what have they actually got to say for themselves?

Fuck all. Just the same old tired load of bollocks endlessly recycled for the moron classes. Not a debate, just the newspaper equivalent of three ragged-arsed old drunks sitting on a park bench and railing incoherently against the world.

‘You’re all a bunch of fucking fascists, you fucking fuckers!�

There’s no debate here, it’s all just an acid-flashback to a meeting of the Student Union left in 1983, the kind where you’d start the evening with one left-wing party in the room and finish with four, all of which claim to be the only ‘true’ left wing party in the room (all the others are ‘fascists’ and ‘traitors’ of course – they always are), even though no one’s either entered or left the meeting since it started.

I always thought they were a bunch of twats then – nothing’s changed has it?

I suppose I could go on and flesh out my arguments here.

I could point out that there is rather more to the concept of ‘totalitarian government’ than just fascism; absolutist monarchies, theocracies, corporate states and so on and so forth.

I could note the rather unsavoury undercurrents of racism which surface from time to time, or the prevalence of Jewish commentators in the pro-war camp and note a concern or two that there might be just hint of an age-old blood feud lurking in the recesses of subtexts to this debate when it comes to some commentators – but why bother? Mention any of that and I’ll automatically be labelled a fascist anyway – let’s face it, we’re all of us fascists if we don’t see the world their way.

Fuck ‘em. What’s the point of arguing with them anyway? Their heads are so far up their collective arses that sound waves can’t get past their cheeks to their ears, so why bother.

I will make one point though.

If, over the last twenty years, I’ve come to understand the defining characteristic of fascism then what I’ve learned is that it isn’t anti-Semitism; it isn’t racism and it isn’t even an unhealthy obsession with World War II memorabilia and men with toothbrush moustaches.

No.

Fascism’s defining characteristic is an absolute belief in the superiority and rightness of your own preferred political ideology coupled with the belief that its obvious superiority gives you the right to force that ideology on others whether they want it or not, even to the point of using military force.

I wonder, who do I hear arguing that position these days?

“The duty not to countenance the use of torture by admission of evidence in judicial proceedings must be regarded as paramount and to allow its admission would shock the conscience, abuse or degrade the proceedings and involve the state in moral defilement.”
Lord Carswell

And so, the Law Lords rule unanimously and unequivocally that evidence that may have been obtained by use of torture is inadmissible in UK courts.

Today has been a good day for British justice.

Perhaps ‘Justice in Mercy’ does still mean something after all.

…from the media’s instant beatification of an Eton-educated descendent of a royal bastard for a couple of minutes, there is something rather more important going on in the High Court at the moment.

Right now there’s a group of ‘Tarzan’s and Man Friday’s’ - that’s precisely how a Foreign Office memo described them back in the 1960’s - fighting to overturn not only one of the most appalling human rights abuses ever carried out by a British Government but an equally appalling piece of legislative chicanery carried out by the current government.

I’m talking, of course, about the Chagos Islanders’ fight to win back the right to some of their home islands after they were illegally taken from them in order to accomodate a US Naval base - one which, its speculated, may be being used for the odd ‘extraordinary redition’ or two.

The Yanks call their base ‘Camp Justice’ which is probably yet another military euphemism for ‘Camp Testicular-Electrodes’

Couple of quick points of fact to clarify here.

Although Her Maj is technically the defendant here, as her royal prerogative powers were used to shaft the Chagossians, the actual process by which orders-in-council are passed is actually…

1. A conniving slime-ball New Labour Scumbag Privy Councillor stands in front of Her Maj and reads out the title of the order… Note, I said the title of the order - the Chagossians don’t even get the courtesy of Her Maj having to listen to the whole order that’s fucking with their lives.

2. Her Maj says whatever she says on such occasions - ‘yeah, alright then you’ve talked me into, I s’pose’ for all I know or fucking care - and then signs the thing - or more likely it gets pp’d by the Grovelling Keeper of the Royal Biro.

And that’s it - it takes less time for this government to fuck over 4,500 people than it used to take Bush to sign death warrants and the not even any of that messy bullshit about democracy or Parliament to get in the way.

Second little fact for you all - the Coronation Oath,which Her Maj took in 1953 reads, at one point, as follows:

Archbish - “Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this Kingdom of England, and the dominions thereto belonging, according to the statutes in Parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same?”

Her Maj - “I solemnly promise so to do.”

Archbish -”Will you to your power cause law and justice in mercy to be executed in all your judgements?”

Her Maj “I will.”

Which as the expulsion of the Chagossians was ruled illegal by the High Court in 2000 suggests that law, justice in mercy and the Coronation Oath mean just about fuck all these days.

I’ll keep you posted on this as it develops, in the mean time pay a visit to the Disillusioned Kid for some first rate coverage.