TFT 29th July 2005 - The More Terror, Vicar Issue
R.I.P. WAR ON TURR=
When Marathon became Snickers, it didn't get any more peanutty.
When Prince became Hilariously Pretentious Squiggle, he didn't
ascend to new heights of filthy falsetto-pop glory. When the Post
Office decided that 'Post Office' was way too self-explanatory
and morphed into Consignia, Britain roared with laughter in all
its four quarters. And then it stopped laughing and said 'Oi,
twat with the sack, why are all my bank statements still going to
number 19?'
Rebranding often changes nothing, but it can be the kiss of life
for an ailing company, product or pop star - just that nudge of
realignment with a demographic, a little aesthetic boost
suggestive of a fresh approach, can turn fortunes around. People
are sensitive to the connotations of names and images in ways
they are barely even aware of, and millions are splurged trying
to press their elusive consumer-buttons. Every day you're
prodded, tugged and inappropriately fondled by fledgling brands
jostling for primacy in your fickle head. Such is the nature of
modern business; and, such is the Bush administration's closeness
to corporate America, that they've taken a leaf from its book and
opted to give the War on Terror a little lick of ideological
paint.
Yes - after around 25,000 Iraqi civilian casualties, almost two
thousand American fatalities, almost a hundred Brits, all that
Bali and Madrid and London unpleasantness *and* poor young Jean
Charles de Menezes - the latest casualty of The War On Terror is
The War On Terror itself. Long derided for its dangerous vacuity,
TWOT has finally keeled over under the weight of its own massive
malapropositude. OK, so they needed a slogan - 'the thing we're
doing where we exploit the fears of our own nation in order to
gain their support in shafting other nations but not really doing
anything to improve the safety of our own citizens because, let's
face it, what's in it for us to do that' may have been more
accurate, but just didn't have that high-street-profit zing. It
is still appalling, though, to realise that the GOP themselves
are thinking in terms of business and advertising while people
live and die in fear - it's colder, even, than that bluntly
military phrase we all reflexively spit at the mention of.
So now the world is to be coaxed into supporting not a War on
Terror, but a 'global struggle against violent extremism'. This
is, actually, a bit more fucking like it. You cannot invade
terror, it seems to finally admit. You can't put on fatigues and
accidentally shoot your own comrades while aiming at it with all
the measured expertise of a 19-year-old doofus who signed up
because he thought it would be 'awesome to bag a few A-rabs,
dude'. What you do with terror, that noxious elemental wafting
cloud of uncertain threat, is struggle with it - struggle to
understand it, struggle to assimilate the reasons behind it,
struggle to undo it from the roots up. Grapple with the daily
reality of extreme anxiety, with the pressing moral dilemmas.
Wrestle with the way it tries to impose itself. That sort of
thing. Nothing magnificent to have holidays for or build statues
commemorating or print t-shirts in support of. But something
grounded in reality.
The question is how much of this kind of understanding, this
sober stepping-back and cool-headed contemplation is actually
behind the rebrand. Experts will tell you there are two types of
rebranding - the kind that indicates change has occurred, and the
kind that fools people into thinking change has occurred. It's a
little too much to hope that the Bush administration will
suddenly grow a brain and a heart, stop hacking away at civil
liberties and human rights, and start pondering what can
realistically be achieved, although this little rethink does
suggest that perhaps Britain's non-hysterical response to being
attacked has had some subtle influence.
However, US citizens may not much care for the linguistic
downgrade. Certainly deranged ego-on-stilts Conservative blogger
La Shawn Barber won't be too chuffed. Following the London
attacks, she bleated:
'Islamofascists have declared war on the *world*, and they've
decided to bomb London at will, which is proving stunningly easy
to do since the government won't racially profile. No commuter
will ever feel safe again, and that's the idea. Britain's
response? They've adopted a localized cops-and-robbers approach.'
She backed this up with a quote from another commentator, who
sniffed over the 'unwillingness of the majority of the British
people to recognize that they are indeed in a war. The flak-
jacketed, heavily armed men and women lining my road to Heathrow
last week were cops, not troops. America is at war, Britain is
playing cops and criminals.'
Funny that - it seems from here that, by *branding* the attacks
as crimes and not acts of war, to be dealt with by police rather
than by soldiers (whose anachronistic, pointless presence on the
streets would frighten more than it would reassure), people are
that bit less in thrall to the idea of terror. This mental
achievement, if this really were a war and not a series of
criminal acts, would be called a small victory.
Hence, we can tentatively - oh so tentatively - applaud the
Consigniafication of The Struggle Formerly Known As The War On
Terror. And as we progress towards enlightenment, breathe deeply
and ask yourself - what is the sound of one hand slapping La
Shawn Barber?
* * *
RIGHT NOT TO NOT DIE
=
It's not unsimple. Most people expect the right to live. Some
people desire the right to die. Others want the right to not die
if there's a hint of a ghost of a whisper of a chance that a few
brain cells can be kept gasping on the treadmill for a few more
precious moments. This week, a 45-year-old man with a
degenerative brain condition unwon his right to not die. That
sound you don't hear is Diane Pretty, who fought for legal
release from the body that had become worse than useless to her,
not spinning in her grave.
Most of us would prefer not to imagine the living hell of a
terminal condition such as Pretty's - motor neurone disease,
which Professor Stephen Hawking has defied to the point of
sending himself up on The Simpsons. Faced with being unable to
eat, move, speak or fuck, most of us would rather be dead. Only
it's an option we still don't have - however sick we get, however
insupportable our lives become to us, it's a party we are forced
to stay at until, near as dammit, its natural end. Till there's
nothing left but Blue Bols to drink, even if you could drink it.
But people's definitions of dignity do vary - some feel strongly
that as soon as you need assistance wiping your self, it's time
to go; others believe that every squeezed droplet of life,
whatever the circumstances, however relentless and unbearable the
agony, is sacred. Lancaster's Leslie Burke is one of those who is
not big on the idea of going gentle into that good night, thanks,
and last year won a high court ruling which would stop doctors
withdrawing sustenance from him during the final stages of his
illness. The ruling was celebrated as a landmark for the
terminally ill - some of whom were undoubtedly pleased, while
others were incensed and outraged. The two factions will now be
swapping places, along with their respective supporters, because
the General Medical Council has won its appeal against the
hearing.
It's a nasty one, this, with no winners - reminiscent of the
Terri Schiavo debacle, during which debate raged as to which
superlatively awful thing was worse. Burke is afraid that, as his
health declines, he will be seen as dispensable, as little more
than pre-dead, and that medics will gently nudge and shunt him
towards the grave by denying him food in his final days when he
is too weak to protest. A reasonable fear, and not one any of us
can presume to dismiss - but it is his fear. It is not the fear
of many terminally-ill people, for whom death isn't quite as
conventionally horror-flick scary as for those who aren't so
intimate with it, and who fear the continuation of their painful
existences a great deal more.
It seems excruciatingly obvious - with doctors insisting that
this appeal win isn't giving them licence to whip out feeding
tubes willy-nilly, and pro-lifers and pro-choicers locking horns
all over again about death sentences and life sentences - that
what Burke's case illustrates is that all cases are different.
The law as it stands condemns far too many people to a miserable
life that they do not want, a life they should have the right not
to live. The simplistic fear is that a euthanasia law will usher
in some horrific new era wherein you can wheel Gran down to the
local clinic and have her put down by some gurning butcher in a
Harold Shipman mask. But there's no sensible or moral choice
other than to deal with each individual, like, individually.
Hawking's astonishing mind appears to have somehow sustained the
rest of him several decades beyond the point at which he was
expected to shuffle off, but he is very much the exception - for
most people in his place, the novelty of the robot voice would
wear off pretty swiftly. It's absurd to prevent people who want
out from getting out, to force them to stay. That way Schiavo
lies.
Personally, as soon as we find ourselves unable to communicate,
and at the mercy of whoever's got the TV remote, we're off to
Switzerland. Maybe via Amsterdam. For old times' sake.
shippingout@thefridaything.co.uk
* * *
GREENISH GOLD
=
These are tough, rough times for the world, and anyone timidly
suggesting there will soon be some kind of let-up will be beaten
to death in yet another example of the toughness, and the
roughness, of said times. Although, it must be tiresomely
reiterated, this is how the world has always worked. War. Famine.
Pestilence. Ringtones. Human beings have been a good deal less
than excellent to each other since they evolved from apes, and
even before that they liked nothing better than to sit around
hitting each with bits of tree and snorting in a primitive
precursor to actual bestial cackling.
However, even in these lousy times we all must brace ourselves
for worse. This week it emerged that due to a drought in Spain,
the price of yummy, versatile and healthful olive oil is set to
rocket. (They could always make it out of something other than
olives, no one would know. It never smells like olives. It smells
like something inedible you could use to clean gently some part
of your car.) Never was there such a conspicuous candidate for
nudging us toward global flashpoint. In the belief it is better
not to beat about the parched and barren bush at such times, TFT
gives it to you straight - the implications of this are terrible.
Terrible.
1) Celebrity chefs, aghast at the extortionate price of the basic
ingredient, go on strike. Gaps open up in the TV schedules, to be
hastily filled with old episodes of 'Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em'.
Suicide rate soars.
2) Ailing couples on the brink of last-ditched slippery
experimentation find that they cannot afford a bottle of the good
stuff. Screaming rows in supermarkets ensue. Divorce rate soars.
3) Everyone's pasta starts to stick together in the pan.
Indigestion rate soars.
4) Fire officers can no longer afford to use olive oil to free
small children who have got their little arms wedged in fences.
Small-children-wedged-in-fence-for-longer-than-strictly-necessary
rate soars.
5) With olive branches at a premium, world peace is dealt a body-
blow. Oh bugger.
oliveoliveo@thefridaything.co.uk
* * *
MOUSEACRE
=
This week, as the world's attention focused on the ongoing
Situation, another violent and sustained campaign was raging on a
tiny island in the Atlantic.
Gough Island is home to huge colonies of seabirds including
shearwaters, petrels and albatross. It is also home to some
really fucking big mice, which are thriving due to their taste
for the flesh of the enormous fluffy white chicks of the birds.
The unusual thing is that they don't kill them first. They just
tuck in, while the chick blinks and wriggles about in pitiful
bewilderment. Ah, nature red in tooth and tiny little mouse
claws, you'd think; only this time it's the fault of people
parking their ships by the island for a quick cuppa, allowing
non-native mice to scuttle off to make a start on the plentiful
hot buffet.
This story has been all over the place this week, and despite its
quite awe-inspiring gruesomeness it's been a veritable relief
from the rolling terror updates. You can hear the gratitude in
presenters' voices - it perks them up no end. A bit like a
snippet of the last half-hour of 'Straw Dogs' in between back-to-
back showings of the Star Wars trilogy - in these topsy-turvy
terror-riddled times, you grab your morsels of respite where you
can. Slow-fluffy-chick-death-by-mouse-gang beats all the other
kinds of death available.
More to the point, though, for a silly-season story (or even a
sombre-season story), there is something worthy in it, something
that gives you pause. It's after the feathers stop flying and the
mice scuttle away licking the beads of bird blood from their
whiskers, and there's a nice aerial shot of the spectacular rocky
island, and then the voiceover says something about how the RSPB
has been awarded £62,000 to conduct further research (roughly
half the amount spent researching whether there is some universal
pattern to the holes in cheese), but any concerted effort to stop
the rampaging mice 'would cost millions'. Said in sad voice,
implying that said millions are not available. Not many millions.
One or two. Tiger Woods' toilet roll. But millions that no one is
likely to be prepared to spend on some birds that have been
endangered for ages anyway and are probably overdue a visit from
the Darwinator.
And you start to think, boggle-eyed and boggle-brained with
endless shots of cordoned-off streets, and images of the most
mundane things like cars and rucksacks and New York sweatshirts
now infused with malevolence - well, hey, wouldn't it be nice if
someone spent a million or two saving some lovely vulnerable
immortalised-in-poetry birds, instead of just spending it on
tanks or stupid advertising or rubbish gadgets or ID cards or an
abstinence programme that tells frightened teenagers they can get
HIV from tears. Someone could easily chuck what is really a very,
very few quid at something that is actually fixable, something
that people clumsily broke in the first instance. Just do this
one tiny thing, and then you can watch for it maybe popping up in
the 'and finallys' - it'll be about as dramatic as the bits in
Big Brother where they're all fast asleep, but some presenter
will grudgingly say 'oh, and some big white birds are no longer
being eaten to death and have lived as a species to fly another
day, God why didn't I just become a doctor like Dad wanted'. And
then it's back into the giant rumbling washing-machine of bad
news, the kind where you come out dirtier than you went in, but
this time you'll have one small, fluffy, beaky, happy thought in
your poor overloaded head.
And then you think, since the stupid overgrown fowl are too fat
to move off their nests and too dumb to peck their assailants to
death with their huge beaks, fuck them. Spend the money on beer.
miceworkifyoucangetit@thefridaything.co.uk
* * *
HAW DOTH PROTEST TOO MUCH
=
One of the most basic rights enjoyed by people in a free society
is the right to protest - and it is enjoyed, if you can call a
fervent plea for change enjoyable. Over a million people took to
the streets of London in February 2003 to protest the imminent
invasion of Iraq. Alas, they were poo-poohed out of existence via
the brief waltz of logic of a shiny-shoed Prime Minister. 'Look...
British people have the right to protest. It's a basic right. And
it is their right. Iraqis... do not have that right. So we are
going to put them out of their mis - um, liberate them. Then they
will have the right to protest our ongoing occupation which
endangers them all, thank you, no questions'.
Protests make governments uneasy, but they're a handy tool for
the same governments to use whenever they want to point out how
magnaminous they are and how great it is to live in this country;
so they let their citizens have their little mew and wave their
little banners, and take little notice. But our government seems
to have had an attack of protest-fatigue, a lapse in tolerance
for the frenetic exercising of this particular basic right, what
with some individuals still refusing to move on from the war. Or
indeed from Parliament Square. 56-year-old Brian Haw has been
keeping vigil there - noisy vigil, admittedly, berating MPs at a
most indiscreet volume for hours on end - for four years, making
him almost as well-known a London 'character' as that Sinners and
Winners arse at Oxford Circus. Except that Haw has a point. And,
like his inane Scouse counterpart, he has a right. For now.
In two days' time, the police will have powers to boot Brian from
the spot where he has been quietly protesting all these many
months. This is because new laws decree that anyone wishing to
protest within half a mile of Parliament must ask nicely first.
There can be no spontaneous expression of disgust about Iraq, or
anything else for that matter. The fact that Haw has been camped,
festooned with banners and badges, on the House's doorstep for
some time, making his protest rather less than spontaneous, won't
protect him. MPs are blustering about being unable to work with
the constant ballyhoo, and about the 'security risk' posed by
Haw's display - presumably, they're worried the anti-war flags
and placards will inflame disaffected young Muslim males,
resulting in immediate radicalisation and a headlong rush into
the Commons with whatever weapon is to hand. But they're
confident he'll soon be out of their hair. Only he may not,
because this week the veteran protester won the right to - yes -
protest the new laws being applied retroactively. Cheers!
He'll lose, of course, to a chorus of snotty hoots from MPs
intent on nothing more than furthering their own careers and
maintaining their standing, who profess the utmost respect for
their constituents in the most unctuous tones whenever it is in
their best interests, but who secretly - and sometimes not so
secretly, as in the case of an embarrassing bug-in-the-Merlot
like Haw - hold them in utter contempt. If Blair could carelessly
discount a million ordinary people of all ages, social strata and
levels of hygiene as silly, then it's a breeze for the rest of
the bunch to laugh a solitary buffoon with a megaphone off the
political map. No one cares what he's saying. He's a mad jobless
arse who lives in a tent. Pfft.
But when said mad jobless arse is dragged kicking and
sloganeering from Parliament Square, they may find the peace and
quiet resonates somewhat with the massed grumbles and scowls of
quite a few other people who know that the war hasn't gone away.
Those MPs who supported it will have to live with it every day of
their lives, as the body count racks up, and with the doubts in
their own heads making such a racket, they might even miss the
hollering bloke who used to distract them. Then the protester -
who will surely be lurking not too far away - will have the last
laugh.
Haw. Haw.
loiteringwithinatent@thefridaything.co.uk
posted by lethalbuzzle @ 6:34 PM
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