Rape Capital of the World

"Excuse me, have you ever raped a woman?"

South African Men Have No balls


South Africa: A rape every 26 seconds...

Nick of NjaloNjalo is pissed off:

"Rape has yet to be cast and perceived by men, as an unforgivable sin, and I want to know why."

Yeah, so do I. What is it with these wusses? I mean, they have their cars, which epitomise guided missiles. Driving into town this morning, a fundamental truth almost sent me hurtling into a taxi that had just forced itself in front of me and the logjam backed-up on the M5 (this is at 06:45). "We're a bunch of fucking animals," I thought as I hurled abuse designed to denigrate the mother of the taxi driver.

"Is it perhaps because it might make people believe that rape is more prevalent in South Africa than it actually is and that the country is populated by a disproportionate amount of rapists? I think it is too late for that – the truth hurts."

It is and it does, bro', and I've stuck the figures above this entry. But they're not the half of it. With a woman raped every 23-26 seconds (and a child every 11 minutes) in a country boasting the world's highest incidence of HIV / AIDS (no matter what Rian Malan thinks), prevalence doesn't come into it. One in four girls will be raped before age sixteen. We're the world's most violent country not at war (Columbia is at war) and we have the highest number of murders, rapes and violent crimes per capita.

Figures mean nothing. Speak to the women you know and find out how many have had their souls shredded by some brainless psychotic hell-bent on proving the fiction of his manhood. There are rape victims all about us. It's a South African pandemic but we appear to have resigned ourselves to it. And I do mean "appear". I can't believe a society willingly accepts the destruction of one person by another.

"Perhaps the public would find this kind of aggressive campaign offensive and uncomfortable, particularly for children. Is this not necessary?"

Screw the public. What or who the hell is 'the public'? Generally, 'the public' tends to comprise the self-proclaimed custodians of our morals, virtues and disposable income here. The media sucks, occasionally reporting spectacularly gruesome feats performed by rapists, and business is as bad. Most of our captains of commerce resort to platitudes, tax-deductible social responsibility programmes, and dark mutters darkly about a state-led descent to hell when figures soar to unacceptable levels and the hired help don't pitch for work. The fundamentalist churches? To hell with them. Let them feel uncomfortable.

How often do we read of babies being raped? I know it's too often but, with a child raped every 11 minutes, it's not often enough to get people off their backsides. Rape is tearing our country's children apart and no-one's generating ideas on how to slow or stop it. Yes, I'd say our kids need education. But they need more. They need watching. They need parents at home and parents who stay together. The generation now fading away did a damned good job and we need to hang on to what they taught us. While we're out pushing the envelope of impropriety or sitting at home entertaining improper thoughts, what do you think the kids are doing? They're batting rocks, spiking up or getting laid. Many do all three and who can blame them?

As parents, we certainly don't. We tend to blame everybody else. Usually, when the kids get into trouble, it's the state's fault. Okay, it is for the most part, but we must give credit where it's due. Curriculum 2005's put AIDS education into the classrooms and lecture theatres and that's a good thing. However, I believe teachers (or educators as they now like to be called) need to show the kids more than how to slip condoms onto cucumbers. They need rape education as well. With South African women standing a greater chance of being raped than they do of learning to read (and that's a fact), our kids need 'survival' rather than 'life' skills.

"Another more ominous reason might be that it tackles some socio-cultural attitudes that have not yet been adequately questioned. Patriarchy and spousal abuse have been cultural norms in this country for far too long."

Damned right and, without detracting from cultural norms, let's be quite blunt. Most South African males selectively choose to hold to traditional values that promise instant gratification. We're a bunch of boorish, drunken, horny pigs. Whether we've grown up in the rural Eastern Cape, a wine farm in the Boland or in Cape Town's southern suburbs, we behave like animals when faced by women. Okay, maybe you and I don’t, but let's stick to generalisations here. Generally, we men have no manners, class, taste or education. Worse, we have no self-respect.

Why? We've a 45 percent unemployment rate. That's a real killer. No wonder people are going crazy. When half the workforce is out of a job (and most of the rest are earning below the poverty level), you know your country's in deep shit. We really are in deep shit. I bitch and complain about the DA because all they do is bitch, complain and perpetuate their privilege. But they do know we have a problem. So too do many members of the ANC but, like rape, our national flaws are taboo. Damn our taboos. I've always taken our bread-basket nation status as a given. My realisation that we do a far better job than most so-called First World countries is grounded in that ugly reality. Part of that ugly reality is that, as a society, we don't yet give a damn for each other. Having no self-respect, we couldn't care less what happens to our or others' wives and kids.

"It is only recently that the legislation was amended to include unconsenting sex with one’s spouse in the definition of rape."

And a fat lot of good that did. According to the Mail & Guardian, "A woman is killed every 6 hours in South Africa by her intimate partner." ... "'South Africa has the highest rate of intimate femicide of any country in the world where it has been studied,' says Dr Naeemah Abrahams, specialist scientist in the MRC Gender & Health Group." Of the perpetrators, a third are convicted. Having a fair idea of how the courts work, they will do some time in an environment where their repeated rape will do more to harden than rehabilitate them. Some would say the conviction rate of one third for femicide is pretty good. According to another report in the same paper, we have an overall conviction rate of six percent for violent crime, rape and murder. It's not good.

Last Sunday afternoon, three guys hijacked a woman around the corner from us. She tried to stop them so they crushed her. The car wouldn't budge, so they walked off and will probably never be caught. Neighbours were appalled, so they've asked the local security company to increase its patrols. At a price. I wonder how those good citizens would feel if they knew just how bent and twisted many of our privatised police are. I reckon they'd head for the hills. It's the same old story. We're the world's best legislators but, without the means to enforce the law, what's it worth?

"I would hope that there is sufficient agreement amongst men around the unacceptability of rape in order to speak out forcibly and aggressively against it."

So would I but, as we know, hope springs eternal. I mean, cops from the so-called Child Protection Unit have been had up for raping victims in Cape Town and Jo'burg. Under-resourced, ill-trained and often illiterate police officers, through no fault of their own, are gunned down with impunity. Several thousand have died over the past ten years.

What have we done about these things? Very little. The private sector's bought the police fleets of vehicles (most of which are either wiped out or taken for private use), we've paid for thousands of cops to get their driver's licences, and we've learnt that thousands are completely illiterate. In most countries, they'd call that rather sad. As far as rape is concerned, and as discussed on your blog, there was the 1999 Charlize Theron TV advert because it offended men. Rape Crisis puts that fiasco into appropriate perspective.

"There can be no questioning about rape, in any form, as an absolute abhorrence."

Those who've been twisted enough to hang around this blog awhile know that rape has hit my family and hit it hard. My wife and I have lived with the prospect of having contracted AIDS and we've given up on both the medical profession and the police. The average marriage lasts a year after a rape. We've been fortunate in the past and hope to be fortunate this time round. Yes, it's abhorrent and a few things besides. As a male, how do I deal with what my wife has been through? I dunno. I just do my best to watch her and myself.

There's some validity in the notion that counselling outfits are too busy to deal with the families of rape victims but there's another side to that. How the hell does the family, which includes the victim, cope? No wonder relationships break up. Another thing the counselling people need to look at is their attitude. As a male who's endured one session with these people, I'd rather not go back. I felt pretty bust up on arriving, but left feeling infinitely worse, as though I was the cause of the rape. There's a definite need for males in this area.

"This message has to be broadcast, loudly and publicly, by men to their peers and sons."

Yeah, but sometimes I doubt it'll do much. I mean, how much more public do we go? The ineptitude of the cops has turned every neighbourhood pub and club into a hash house where barkeeps serve date rape drugs with the drinks. Given our nose for a fast buck, we now urge women to buy testing kits before hitting the town Friday night.

Nick, you're on the right track and I'm there with you. I'll tell you one reason so few men speak out. It's not that we're all that the femi-Nazis accuse us of being. Most guys (still) are decent people who do not beat up or abuse women. In instances where women they know are raped by strangers, their silence (beyond that of not bothering to report it to our pathetic excuse for a police force) is born of a desire to protect the victim from further suffering.

Because so many suffer an erroneous shame or guilt, many would rather "forget" a rape than speak about it. People want to "get on with their lives". In other words, they'd rather we didn't speak about it. But that pisses me off because, although the rapist may sexually assault or perhaps kill only one person, the pain he causes is shared, not halved. And, often, we need to speak about it more than we need to do something about it.

I was once in a position to really "do something" but, luckily, I didn't go through with it. Molotov cocktails and a slow, roasting death would've been too good for those bastards. But, yes, if ever I catch someone abusing a woman, I will visit on him an anger he will not survive. This future rapist's demise is conjecture, of course, but it's a measure of my frustration with people who hide themselves behind electric fences, security gates and alarms. They do little before crime hits them between the eyes or the legs. They then take their violations to the neighbourhood watch, pay more money to the armed thugs doing the cops' work, and are surprised when they're hit again and again and again.

I know of only one way of dealing with this stuff and it's much in line with your proposal. Talk about it openly whenever possible and never tolerate it. Hey, we live in a violent country, we survive it, and we try to improve it. We've bugger all to be ashamed of. We are about the only real men around here. The fact is that, while most South Africans are drunk, desperate and penniless, they're also pretty honest. Potential rapists remain a large minority. As far as I'm concerned, the guy who sneers at beggars crowding the intersection from the comfort of his 4x4 contributes as much to crime in this country as anybody else—and is as much a potential rapist. But that’s what it boils down to. The beggars at the intersection. Until we start feeding the poor, we'll know nothing but grief.

And our wives and daughters will continue to pay the price because most of the self-centered saps swanking about this country don't have the balls to talk or do anything about rape.

Notes

• Nick is a member of the Southern African Web Ring, which is well worth visiting. Unfortunately, my propensity for vile language precludes me submitting an application for membership, but I believe I am still permitted to visit member sites. I shall enjoy doing so on the understanding that it's never a good thing to fuck with cultural norms in this neck of the woods. I would, however, like to know how Farrago got to be a member of the ring. I mean, deny it as she might, I happen to know that she swears like a trooper.
  
  
• Another entry of great interest to me was Nick's take on last week's Cape Town meeting of traditional leaders. Entitled The Circumcision Caucus, he notes that "...it represents a clash of traditional values and culture versus the technology and ‘arrogance’ of Western medicine and ideas." For a kick-ass insight into just how well South Africans are melding diverse cultural values, with the emphasis on circumcision rites, you can't go wrong with Andie Miller's article in the Mail & Guardian, Men on the Brink.

Exploding Admirals

Seaman B.S. Moffatt returns from shore leave...

A Bad Idea...

"Let's hijack the ship..."

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world | Inside of a leather cup | But all his sexless patients | They're trying to blow it up | Now his nurse, some local loser | She's in charge of the cyanide hole | And she also keeps the cards that read | "Have Mercy on His Soul" | They all play on penny whistles | You can hear them blow | If you lean your head out far enough | From Desolation Row

I've been running around and, quite frankly, I'm bushed. My old friend Tom Barnett set the whole thing off. Yesterday, he and I were mulling over the state of the world at Prayer Group.

"I want to start World War 5," he said.

I gave him a sharp smack and told him not to get ahead of himself. "It's a bad idea. We've yet to finish off the others."

"We'll finish 'em off," he said, with the same relish for death shown by the former Governor of Texas when mimicking Carla Faye Tucker's plea for clemency. "But I'm getting itchy fingers. I feel a new paper or three coming on."

"The only thing your papers will come on..." I caught myself in the nick of time. Tom and I have civilized discussions these days. "Sorry," I mumbled somewhat shamefacedly.

"Don't worry," smiled Tom, his mind obviously on matters of graves and imminent publication. "For a terrorist, you're not doing badly."

After Prayer Group, I felt troubled. I left Tom to his devices (he has several) and went off in search of Norlin. I found him swapping war stories with former Special Force operatives at a seedy bar in the Denver backstreets. They were shit-faced.

"Listen, Eric..." I started but, for the second time in four paragraphs, brought myself up short. He was incoherent, mumbling profanities, but somewhere in the 90-percent proof babble I caught Rageboy's name. 'Fucking little dago-punk-spic-wop' was the exact phrase should this matter go to litigation.

I grabbed him by the nape of the neck and brought his head down hard on the deal table at which the good ol' boys were drinking. "You drunken asshole," I spat. "Get Lynndie out of here and explain yourself to me."

Norlin kicked Lynndie out from under the table, zipped up his trousers and turned two bleary eyes my way. "Whazzat?" he slurred, slightly the worse for wear for having had his head thumped. Blood trickled from a gash on his forehead and the barkeep reached under the counter for his gun. I motioned to him to put it away, pulled the seat next to my friend out from under a former torturer and sat down beside Eric.

"Get rid of these losers. I have to speak to you."

One thing about Eric. He knows how to get things done. After spraying the room with his M-16, we were left alone. The good ol' boys followed Lynndie from the room, loudly weighing up their chances of "getting a piece of the action".

"Thanks." I really was grateful. Special Force operatives are supposed to be tough, but fill them with enough booze and they behave like girls. I didn't fancy having to give them a beating, having just come from my Prayer Group an' all (send a donation by clicking the graphic to the left). "Listen, Eric, you uranium-depleted little shit. If you ever blaspheme RageBoy again, I'll kill you. You should be disgusted with yourself. After all he's done for you..."

Eric began to bawl like a baby. He swept the detritus of the evening from the table and, as it crashed to floor, put his head in his arms and wept. "I know, I know," he howled. "I've failed him. But he promised to come and work for me and..."

I hit him with a beer bottle. He fell off his chair, stunned. "Whatcha do that for?" he gurgled, his face a crimson mess.

"RageBoy does not work for you. You work for RageBoy? Understand?"

Norlin flailed around in the alcohol soup of his brain, finally grasping at a passing straw of sense. "Uh, yeah. Shit, we wus only havin' us some fun and I was..."

I broke the base off the bottle and threatened him with it. "I've no interest in your pathetic excuses. Clean up your uniform and put that rifle away. We need to talk."

While Eric cleaned himself up as best he could, I ordered a bottle of cheap Scotch and a couple of toothbrush tumblers. Norlin sat opposite me, nervously picking his nose. "Whaddaya want to know?"

I poured him a glass. He knocked it back and shook his head vigorously. I fired several questions at him. "You heard of Tom Barnett? The Pentagon's New Map? The Global Transaction Strategy? The NewRuleSets.Project? Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski? The Office of Force Transformation? Cantor Fitzgerald?"

My friend from Special Forces heard me and nodded. He was trained for this sort of thing. "It's old stuff. Pom Pom's a military astrologer, a futurist. He's the author of The Pentagon's New Map and The Global Transaction Strategy. He ran the NewRuleSets.Project for Cebrowski in the WTC offices of Cantor Fitzgerald. Of course, it was Top Secret so they had to go. We wiped them during 9-11."

"That's what I thought."

"He also started WW5 without telling us. That's why we're here, drowning our sorrows. We wanted to go and kill us some more ragheads and other goofballs. He's an ungrateful little shit."

I wasn't aware WW5 had broken out and made a note to call Karl Rove. But it was typical of Barnett. Always respectful and demure at Prayer Group, he was prone to following his own agenda behind others' backs. I needed more information if I was to engage Tom in meaningful debate.

"Ungrateful?"

"Yeah, he's a conniving little swine. You remember the TDRC, the Titanic Deckchair Rearrangement Committee?"

"Who doesn't. Brother Marek still writes of it."

"Well, he gave it up to Ashcroft. Accused us of profane language and that sort of thing. Marek put out that he went to Poland for a couple of months, but that was bullshit. He was locked in a cage on a carrier off Diego Garcia and tortured with cattle prods."

"Jesus!"

Norlin shook his head. "Uh-uh. He was doing the movie with Gibson. It was a put-up job. Faked."

I'd like to go into greater detail here but, owing to the sensitive nature of Eric's and my discussion, cannot do so. Just remember this. "In the fight between you and the world, back the world." Franz Kafka said that and he had a hell of a sense of humour.

I'll shortly be posting a couple of papers on the Office of Force Transformation website and you can get the lowdown there. For what it's worth, I can tell you this much. We'll shortly be bombing the shit out of Sierra Leone, opening a base on Sao Tome-Principe and a large embassy in Tehran.

...to Begin With

"Well, that's that."

Now at midnight all the agents | And the superhuman crew | Come out and round up everyone | That knows more than they do | Then they bring them to the factory | Where the heart-attack machine | Is strapped across their shoulders | And then the kerosene | Is brought down from the castles | By insurance men who go | Check to see that nobody is escaping | To Desolation Row

After milking Norlin for information, I asked him what he thought of Barnett's idea of forcing globalization by ""shrinking the Gap".

"I dunno. To tell you the truth, I never really thought about it. My job's killing gooks... er, ragheads. Pom Pom feeds his ideas up through the chain, we get our orders and Dumbfeld feeds the press a load of horseshit. That's the way it works."

Eric fingered his empty glass. I filled it, but did not fill mine. "So, if you had to think about it, what conclusion would you draw?"

Norlin emptied half his glass and pondered the question. "Well, I guess it's kinda dumb. I mean, whatever one wants to do, you have to operate in a certain context, no matter how you skew perceptions of the environment in which you're operating. It's like, well..."

I topped up his glass.

"It's like he's trying to accelerate and influence the evolution of a functioning system, y'know?" I did. It was what I had suspected all along.

"Globalization on steroids? An American Soviet?"

"Yeah, y'know? It's a bit weird if you ask me. It can't work. Imposing peace is a bit like raping someone because you dig them, if you get my drift?"

In the context in which hard men like Norlin operate, I did. He'd tried. I nodded. He carried on.

"I mean, it's wrong. Plain and simple. You have to cross the line at the outset. Look, I was at Tora Bora and Fallujah and most of the guys were hacked off. It got downright difficult. 'Why do we chase this raghead all the way here and then let him get away?' That kind of thing. I couldn't give them the bigger picture so I had to send some of them to Dostum for containerization. It was tough. They were good guys. Just a bit too inquisitive."

"Yeah."

"So after doing a stint in Djibouti, I phoned Barnett collect and asked him why, if we look at the world as a functioning entity or empire in its own right, we need form another."

"What'd he say?"

"Nothing. He e-mailed me. I have a copy here." He scratched around for his PalmTop. "Here we go." Eric read slowly and methodically, pointing to each word on the screen. 'I would love to comment, but the heat and the useless name-calling here is so dense I can't actually make out a point you're trying to make. If you want to be serious in arguing something, you have to stop hiding behind the bad-boy language...'

I'd heard enough. Something decidedly weird was going on. I reached over the table, put my one hand on Eric's shoulder and filled his glass with the other. "Listen, my friend, and listen well. I want you to delete that message. I received one like it the day before yesterday."

"You mean The Day After Tomorrow?"

"No, and that's my point. It was The Day Before Yesterday. It's code. Cebrowski's fucking with us and Barnett's a plant."

Norlin chuckled and pulled a spliff from his pocket. "Can we smoke him?" he asked, lighting up. I took the joint from his hand and stubbed it out on the table top.

"Eric, pay attention. Some heavy shit is about to go down. Today's June 6. It marks the beginning of the end of WWII and the end of the beginning of...?" I hesitated, but he caught on immediately.

"WW6?"

"Exactly. The bugger's done it again. He may be the bagman but he's always one step ahead. He says he wants to talk, but that's the oldest con in the book. He's opening a new front and this time there will be no Iraq. He's upping the tempo."

"He wants Iran."

"Yeah. For starters. What's the betting on Israel getting stuck in there by September?"

"7-10."

"Jesus. I won't make any money at all. Who else knows about this?"

"Well, we wus jus' discussin' this during our time in Ethiopia an' James Jones happened to let slip..."

I stood up, ordered Eric another bottle, and went over to the bar and settled the tab. I then locked myself in the phone booth, called the Colonel and asked him to join me. Thereafter, I phoned Father Christopher's assistant, Chris Locke, and told him to prime some dirty bombs, round up Sweet Melinda, Sister Annie and Angel (who'd just arrived back from the coast), order in some extra girls and book me a long rest at the Jesus Bunker. The last thing I did before leaving town was place a call to Wootton, a small coal-mining town in England. Fiona answered.

"Mike! My God, it's good to hear from you."

It broke my heart not to be able to speak openly to her, but I took comfort in the fact that we would one day be together again. "Hi Fi. Tell me, is he there?"

"Yes, but he's been rather morose of late. He spends his time polishing the Beemer and playing with Cameron. Lately, he's taken to tossing telephone poles around the backyard. He says the caber's old hat."

It was the best news I'd heard in a long time. Whatever Barnett had up his sleeve, I knew then that World War 6 could be won. At around 03:00 this morning, I contacted Eric and called him to the Jesus Bunker. At the crack of dawn, he and RageBoy took the armor-plated bulldozer and headed off for Granby on a suicide-bombing mission.

The Colonel flew me back to Cape Town. We touched down a couple of hours ago. Just now, I shot off a mail to Tom, telling him I'd be missing Prayer Group tonight. I added:

Rest assured, WW6 will not be won by ideologues tweaking the planet to perfection at the cost of millions of lives and countless cultures. It will be won by the forces of all that is good, right and just on the Web. This mighty army will be led by none other than the inimitable, indefatigable, vile, scurrilous and thoroughly evil PorridgeBoy.

As a consummate professional and a blogger to boot, I tell you not a word of a lie.

Praise be to Nero's Neptune | The Titanic sails at dawn | And everybody's shouting | "Which Side Are You On?" | And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot | Fighting in the captain's tower | While calypso singers laugh at them | And fishermen hold flowers | Between the windows of the sea | Where lovely mermaids flow | And nobody has to think too much | About Desolation Row

Bob Dylan | Desolation Row

Making Movies

Controlled Explosions and...

...the Crime of the Century


Heavy weather...

Welcome! | Get your Tommy T-shirts, and your stickers, | And your Tommy mirrors to smash! | Don't rush, keep steady, | Have your money ready! | Buy your way to heaven, | That comes to one pound seven.

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

Project for the New American Century | Rebuilding America's Defenses (p51)

For my money, which is what we pay to see films or videos like those linked to above, I prefer to poke through the labyrinthine Center for Cooperative Research, a mine of sober information on reported events, than I do wading through garish conspiracy chat rooms. However, an evening at the movies is always a good thing and, y'know, Bruce kinda insisted... The dialog, however is shit. Try this:

As for the American public, what the intelligence failure on Iraq should translate into is a new and frank understanding of the limits of arms control. Again, different worlds (Core, Gap) require different rule sets on security. Getting any state from the Gap into the Core means, first and foremost, getting that state to accept the Core's fairly clear rule on security with regard to WMD—basically "just say no." I know it's hypocritical for nuclear powers to tell smaller states to "Do as I say, not as I do," but on WMD I think that it's better to err on the side of order over justice.

What Americans need to understand about the potential (and real) proliferation of WMD inside the Gap is that all the arms-control treaties in the world won't do a damn thing to stop it. All such treaties reflect the conventional wisdom of life inside the Core, where mutually assured destruction has basically ended great-power war. That logic, or that security rule set, simply does not penetrate the Gap. So when states or transnational actors inside the Gap make moves in the direction of acquiring WMD, the new security rule set called preemptive war not only makes sense, it is imperative.

The above was penned by my friend, Seaman Thomas P.M. Barnett, bum boy of the Western World in general and Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski in particular. Formerly a conniving deviant in the NewRuleSets.Project of the Office of Force Transformation (NRSP link courtesy of the WayBack Machine), Tom ‘Pom Pom’ Barnett and his publishers down at the slut house, Esquire, have done more to tell us the future than any third-rate, four-year warranty rent-a-pol.

Forget my earlier posts which rail against the slime coating the mind of the man who penned The Emperor's New Underpants. As one Amazon reviewer puts it, "What he writes explains a lot." Today you can read Tom’s latest vision of the Apocalypse, Mr. President, Here's How to Make Sense of Our Iraq Strategy, in full. If you find the day pass a hassle, you can read the thing on his blog. Read it now. Blowback from Barnett's shit-for-brains intellect will be hitting your neighborhood soon.

For those of us living in Africa, we can savor Tom Mazetti's overview of the new Pax Americana:

Even as it girds for a long and costly occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon is quietly carrying out the most comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. global force posture since the end of World War II. No longer will hundreds of thousands of American troops be garrisoned in the safe, family-friendly bases in Western Europe and Asia built during the Cold War, 'little Americas' complete with schools, bowling alleys, and fast-food restaurants. Instead, they will be pushed out to Spartan bases, far from families, in remote locations like Kyrgyzstan, Bulgaria, and Djibouti—places most Americans couldn't locate on a map. 'Anytime you have a global threat, it requires a global presence,' says Marine Brig. Gen. Mastin Robeson, who commands Task Force Horn of Africa. The goal is to better position the United States to fight a war with no end in sight, and it means U.S. troops will be everywhere.

Hmm... My post, Paradise Lost of July 27 last year, in which I quote Gen. James Jones Jr., head of the United States European Command, and speak of Bush's Pax Americana doing its worst to my continent, takes an air of prescience in the light of this envisioned lockdown, datelined October. But enough about me. We are Africans and will see you off without difficulty.


Admirals in Africa...

Now, let's get back to 9-11. It's more fun. Do I believe 9-11 was an inside job? Well, yes, but I held that notion as far back as my first posts, long before trash like Barnett sloped in to reinforce it. Anyway, it’s irrelevant what I think. It’s what you think that matters. You’re the people voting in the fuckers now tabling requests for FY2005 for signature by Bush or Kerry.

D'ya think the latter knows what Barnett's favourite admiral has planned for him? Nah...

You lucky people! | The camp with a difference, never mind the weather, | When you come to Tommy's, the holiday's forever!

The Who | Tommy's Holiday Camp

Note This post was edited after three comments had been posted and is now perhaps more derogatory to the person at whom it is aimed than it was when he stopped by. I'm afraid I was not aware of his visit. My thanks go to Professor Thomas P.M. Barnett for dropping by (with his Webmaster, Critt Jarvis) and for deigning to leave a somewhat miffed comment at the foot of this post. To wit:

I would love to comment, but the heat and the useless name-calling here is so dense I can't actually make out a point you're trying to make.

If you want to be serious in arguing something, you have to stop hiding behind the bad-boy language. It obfuscates more than informs.

Then again, it does insulate you from serious discourse, and maybe that's what you want. At least that's what I remember from junior high....

The professor has a light touch, but I do understand his reasons for being angered by profanity, despite his descent to the rough-and-tumble of the blogs. It is not nice to be slagged. However, should he be prepared to engage a common-or-garden blogger (better than an angry Iraqi armed with more than a modem), I'd be happy to debate his policy proposals soberly and without resorting to locker-room language.

Unlike the U.S. troops who, with brutality and profanity, arrested and beat up former Iraqi Lieutenant-General Taha Hassan Abbas in front of his family and APTN's cameras on November 22, 2003 (see 6:25 minutes into the clip for Iraq — On the Brink [RealPlayer required] at the Journeyman Pictures site; analysis at Information Clearing House), I believe I should rein in my anger and take whatever opportunity Professor Barnett offers to understand his rationale for pursuing an unsustainable, criminally dangerous 'globalization' policy at the cost of millions of lives...

...before he disappears too.

Here on the blogs, we post stuff to the Web and, often, leave it to the reader to make or take the point. That the professor did so tells me all is not lost.

I believe I understand why Professor Barnett argues as he does, but I do not accept his arguments or buy into his philosophy. Nor do I accept that he is allowed to get away with what I believe amounts to an active incitement to commit genocide and other crimes against humanity. I do, however (and contrary to the tone of my views expressed here), keep an open mind and am prepared to entertain his arguments if he feels it worthwhile putting them to me. I am as open to persuasion as the next person, and I will communicate as much to him.

However, until given reason to change it, my post stands.

The Day After...

...the Day After Tomorrow

Conventional wisdom...

"Oi...Get your filthy hands off my desert!"

"What 'e say?"

Brezhnev took Afghanistan. | Begin took Beirut. | Galtieri took the Union Jack. | And Maggie, over lunch one day, | Took a cruiser with all hands. | Apparently, to make him give it back.

Pink Floyd | Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert

The New Black...

...or Not The Last Post?

"Not blogging is the new black."

Sometimes I feel I should be out there, tracking PorridgeBoy with the Colonel and the ghost of old Fang at my side. PorridgeBoy? We go back a ways. He's one of a kind. I know he's out there somewhere.

Other times, I feel the need to take my wife and kids and get the hell out of here. The city is murder. We could go back to another world I remember well. In the shadow of the hill forming the last resting place of a couple of Livingstone's support troops, it's a small tourist-cum-fishing village called Chembe on the shores of Lake Malawi. Looking out over the lake, one realises that not much has changed since the First Day.

You could always find a crate of Carlsbergs in Chembe. Not that I need a crate of Carlsbergs right now. But, hey, even if we can't go back there, there's always another town, another time, another place... right?

Well, I ain't got my childhood | Or friends I once did know. | No, I ain't got my childhood | Or friends I once did know. | But I still got my voice left, | I can take it anywhere I go. | Hey, hey, so I guess I'm doin' fine.


Gone fishin’…

"My work is done here." Indeed? Nah... I don't buy it either. At least... Ah, what the hell. Go well, Gary. And remember... wherever you go, you're supposed to put salt on it.

Well, my road might be rocky, | The stones might cut my face. | My road it might be rocky, | The stones might cut my face. | But as some folks ain't got no road at all, | They gotta stand in the same old place. | Hey, hey, so I guess I'm doin' fine.

Bob Dylan | Guess I'm Doin' Fine

Thinking On Lesotho

Blogging the Present to the Past...

...and Finding the Past Present


From The Fiery Mountain Kingdom...

Rethabile Masilo's posts are evocative. Given my predilection for putting my foot squarely into my mouth, I'll leave it at that. Quite what his narrative voice evokes as it marries the solitude of the mountain kingdom of Lesotho to a world largely ignorant of its existence is up to his reader to decide.

I don't know Lesotho, having traveled around it before overnighting at Ladybrand overlooking the Maseru bridge on the Caledon River, so I'm loath to wax lyrical about a mythic place in which the average life expectancy tops out at between 32 and 38 years. But, in many ways, the legacy of Moshoeshoe and the dignity of one proud country surrounded by another rise way above the dark days of South Africa's apartheid, Lesotho's Leabua Jonathan and Malawi's Kamuzu Banda, who was said to 'disappear' some of his opponents by feeding them to the crocodiles and hippopotami on the banks of the Shire River. These things, i.e. history and identity, may not do much to alleviate the destitution of millions of ordinary people but, hell, they're a damned side better than nothing.

Given our current geopolitical situation, they have to be.

Elsewhere, LangageHat and Rethabile discuss Malawian poet, linguist, academic and former political prisoner Jack Mapanje. I believe I drove past Mikuyu Maximum, a face-brick monument to the overbearing silence of official brutality, on the road outside of Zomba several years before Mapanje's incarceration. One of Banda's palaces was visible from the same road, an edifice reminding me of the fortress architecture dominant in South Africa at the time. In those days, a sense of dread lurked beneath Malawi's reputation as 'the warm heart of Africa'. Nobody spoke openly of politics and, as far as expatriates were concerned, every other person with a job might have been one of Banda's secret police.

Yep, I missed much as a twenty-something and forgot the rest as the road unreeled from the Elephant Marshes in the south, snaked through the surreal mangrove forests along the shores of Lake Chilwa, ran up to Mangoche and rolled on to the quietude of Lake Malawi. Heh... Anybody who has traveled that route would know that it demands a lot of a 4x4 to negotiate even the mildest of 'potholes'. They're mountain passes in their own right. Mm... Somehow, in speaking of Lesotho (almost three thousand miles removed from Malawi) and his youth, Rethabile reminds me that I live in another country, one that knows no borders and is contained only by a spirit unquestionably its own.


...to The Warm Heart of Africa's Great Rift Valley

GNALAFOSTOHK
for my brother

The mother begot the child and stood near
Death for it — a boy she at once made man
Before he had known how to conquer fear
By himself, warrior of a lonely clan.

He followed certain roads the long way here,
Living among castes where the African
Spirit endures, the rush of angry tear
Turning mere soldier into veteran.

And as he went forth in dreams of his own,
Learning how to cope in quest of good
For together with life he was alone,

What prospects he received, at heaven's whim,
Became his with no hopes misunderstood,
All of the rhythm having entered him.

© Rethabile Masilo

Without Sanctuary

'...an African American male' circa 1900, location unknown [Without Sanctuary]

The mob numbered into the thousands that wrenched five black men from the civil authorities of Salisbury, North Carolina on the night of August 3, 1906. They accused the men of murdering members of a local family, named Lyerly. The New York Times reported that the victims were tortured with knives before being hanged and then riddled with bullets. The authorities in North Carolina, alarmed at what was one of the largest multiple lynchings of the 20th century, took unusual steps to punish the leaders of the mob.

After the Governor ordered the National Guard to restore order, local officials arrested more than two-dozen suspected leaders. One of the killers, George Hall, was convicted and sentenced to 15 years at a hard labor in the state penitentiary. The New York Times predicted that, by taking these measures, North Carolina's Governor Glenn was not improving his political prospects. more...

Deliverance Comes to Iraq

Ms. England’s own least appealing traits appear to have thrived with stunning perversity on the lingering energies of Abu Ghraib prison, such that she and her friends succeeded in bringing American pornography’s abiding concern with a visual record of degradation, to a role reversal of what George W. Bush claims went on in Saddam Hussein’s prison "rape rooms." But in giving an American female face to the legacy of Saddam’s male torturers, she and her friends seem to have brought some "backwoods world" twists that would have done the mountain men in Deliverance proud.

According to the Telegraph’s Sharon Churcher, "the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population" of Fort Ashby "talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence." And indeed the iconography of the hooded prisoners recalls precisely — but again indulges through projection in reversal — the spooky anonymous hoods of the Klan. What’s more, though, another local woman, Colleen Kesner, explained to Churcher why Lynndie England is locally seen as a hero: "A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq. To the country boys here, if you're a different nationality, a different race, you're sub-human. That's the way girls like Lynndie are raised. Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you're hunting something. Over there, they're hunting Iraqis." more...

(See also Doug Ord's Comment for May and Seven Days in May [title page])

Note In What Have We Done?, published today, Susan Sontag examines the pornography of lynch-mob imagery (and the printed version of the site referenced above, Without Sanctuary), before ripping the hood from the face of George W. Bush's so-called War on Terror. The Guardian asks, "The horrific images from Abu Ghraib have come to define the ill-starred occupation of Iraq, but what do they really tell us about America? Are they simply the work of a few rogue soldiers, or the result of the new foreign and domestic policies of the Bush administration, which find ready approval in an increasingly brutalised society?" Like Doug Ord, Susan Sontag delivers.

"Bad people have parties too."

U.S. Reacts to Mogr al-Deeb Wedding Party Video

Kimmitt Rises to New Lows as Bush Plumbs the Depths


'Bad people have parties too.' Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt

I can see how dozens of women, children and celebrating men would be a 'threat' though. Yes, it makes perfect sense.

River

"Contrary to media reports, there was no wedding tent and no nuptial tent in the area," Army Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for Multinational Force Iraq said during a Baghdad news conference.

"To the allegation that there was a wedding going on, there was no evidence of a wedding," Kimmitt reiterated. "There were no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration and no gifts.

"The men were almost all military-aged, no family elders that one would expect to see at an event of this type," he said.

[...]

Kimmitt said there may have been some kind of celebration going on at the said (sic), but not a wedding. "Bad people have celebrations too," he noted. "Bad people have parties too. It may have been that what was seen as some sort of celebration may have just been a meeting in the middle of the desert by some people that were conducting either criminal or terrorist activities. That's the conclusion we're continuing to draw the more we look at the material, intelligence, post-strike, and follow-up intelligence."

Kimmitt said the coalition believes "a handful of women" could have been present. "We believe six were killed, and we acknowledge that in all of our reports," he said. "But there are still not reports of any children being killed."

Kimmitt said a videotape distributed to the media showing at least a dozen bodies, including small children, wrapped in blankets for burial, being unloaded from a truck doesn't look like the video taken at the site of the attack.

"None of the geography in those videos match the geography of this open area," he noted. "But there are still some inconsistencies. We still remain opened-minded about this. We'll continue to look into everything that's provided to us in the way of evidence." more...


Spc. Sabrina Harman and murder victim Manadil al-Jamadi show us a really good time.

Celebrating women and children are not civilians. 'Contractors' traveling with the American army to torture and kill Iraqis ARE civilians. CIA personnel are 'civilians' and the people who planned and executed the war are all civilians. We're not civilians - we are insurgents, criminals and potential collateral damage.

River

Note EastSouthWestNorth gives comprehensive coverage to articles and footage covering the massacre. I've no doubt, as Reuters reports George W. Bush's popularity dipping to a point beneath which no recent U.S. presidential candidate has won a November election, Brigadier General Kimmitt will soon be showing us his video.

Fahrenheit 9/11 Takes Palme d'Or

Moore Burns Bush at Cannes

Neocons start feeling the global heat


Michael Moore sticks it and the Palme d'Or up Bush's ass at the Cannes Film Festival...

For anybody who's been around a while, it came as no surprise. Given a 20-minute standing ovation on its first showing, Michael Moore's slap-on-the-wrist Bush mockumentary Fahrenheit 9/11 carried the day and the prestigious Palme d'Or at the close of the Cannes Film Festival.

Featuring select absurdities marking the neocons global reign of terror since September 2001, the U.S. movie-maker and self-styled publicist's take-down of the Bush regime has found a receptive European audience to which he will be able to distribute his latest Weapon of Mass Distraction.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I may be no fan of Michael Moore, but if his work contributes to bringing down the trans-continental gang of money-laundering, drug-running, oil-swilling neo-Nazi thugs and war criminals now slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocents across the world, I'm all for it. Every little bit helps as they say. And given Disney's refusal to allow U.S. distribution through Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Miramax, an audience is what's needed.

Besides, Moore is, by all accounts, a nice guy. He dedicates the award to his "...daughter, to the children of Americans and to Iraq and to all those in the world who suffer from our actions." I do not decry his motives or, not having seen the movie, his reportage.

So, why the sour tone? Well, Moore is a lightweight (relatively speaking) and the people he takes to the cleaners and the local movie house are dressed too lightly for scum every bit as loathsome as Stalinist stooges on a bad-hair day at the OGPU. Yes, he details the theft of the U.S. presidency, makes the connection between the Bushes and Bin Ladens, and takes film crews into Iraq to document scenes of carnage, torture and despair.

My problem is Moore's apparent focus on and treatment of Bush as an idiot, a stupid, short-sighted and greedy man who makes a fool of himself while making a mockery of international law and fundamental human rights. To quote the Washington Post, Moore, who "slices and dices President Bush's presidency into a thousand satirical pieces", ... "frequently uses the president as his own tragicomic scourge - in other words, hanging him with his own words and facial expressions."

This creative use of Bush the Buffoon serves only to lessen the severity of atrocities for which he, his administration and his collaborators (most notably, Ariel Sharon and Tony Blair) should be hauled before an international war crimes tribunal. These people and their foot soldiers, reaching deep into the most trusted public and private instruments of civil society, are knowingly plotting their way to a repressive global hegemony. For this, they should be held responsible.

What's more, Moore may be delivering fresh footage, but is he telling us anything new? The neocon shredding of the U.S. constitution and its rape of the world's peoples and resources are documented in far greater detail on the Web than is possible in any 110-minute movie. While the sundering of the globe may not be the average U.S. voter's primary concern, the copious (almost overwhelming) online evidence of complicity in looting the U.S. and other economies for personal financial gain reaches deep into the pockets, stomach and heart of every man, woman and child on the planet.

Fahrenheit 9/11 may give many cause to feel justified in sending George W. Bush to the retirement home for former dictators, genocidal maniacs and syphilitic kings come November. However, by omitting to infuse his film and those watching it with a chill sense of the Bush Gang's fundamental evil, Moore belittles his audience and does them (and the countless thousands that have died to enrich the few) an injustice.

"C'mon, lighten up. It's just a movie..."?

Right.

Hey, as I said at the outset, "...if his work contributes to bringing down the trans-continental gang of money-laundering, drug-running, oil-swilling neo-Nazi thugs and war criminals now slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocents across the world, I'm all for it."

For that alone, well done Michael Moore.

"Marshall McLuhan, meet Kevin Carter."

Down at The All-night Kombinat! Diner and Grill

Brother Marek sets the record straight


Between the medium and the message

Well, the rifleman's stalking the sick and the lame, | Preacherman seeks the same, who'll get there first is uncertain. | Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks, | Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain, | False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin, | Only a matter of time 'til night comes steppin' in.

It was in search of an answer to the question posed below, i.e. "Who are we to assume that it is we who face the bayonet?" that I visited Brother Marek Jastrzebski, the laughing, mad-song poet of the wine-lit night down at The All-night Kombinat! Diner and Grill (Eggs Sunny Side Up and Twice Over Easy). He was seated at a grimy table, reading a comic book by Breughel (the elder). He was also being industrious, squeezing potatoes into a toothbrush glass.

"How now, Brother Marek?" I greeted him.

"Brother Mike!" Marek leapt to his feet and gave me a warm Polish bearhug. He wiped his hands off on his cassock and I wondered whether the dry cleaners would ever get the potato starch out of my jacket. "How now? Good, my friend, very good. And you?"

"It does for now, Brother M." I murmured quietly, not wishing to interrupt his potato-squeezing.

"Have a glass, Brother Mike..." I could not resist a tumbler so joyously thrust at me. Emptying it of its content, my eyes watered, my nose ran, and my head nearly exploded from my shoulders.

"By the Grace of God and our Beloved Father Christopher, Brother Marek, this is a mighty fine brew," I sputtered. "Surely, you must share it far and wide."

"Indeed I shall, Brother Mike," reported my comrade happily. "For all men shall partake of the harvest; and BlogBabes too if they are good. Thus spake old Father Christopher when he gave me the last of his Ukrainian potato crop. How is he, by the way?"

"I bring you glad tidings, Brother M., but that is not why I'm here. On his long march through this vale of tears, our spiritual guide and mentor has reached his twentieth year to heaven. It is indeed an occasion to which we should drink, but I have weightier matters on my mind."

Brother Marek grew quiet. "We shall not be playing Peekaboo with Sweet Melinda, Saint Annie and Angel then? Angel's just got back from the coast and..."

"Yes, I can imagine..." I did just that and faltered. She'd spent a week on a photo shoot along the Gold Coast for the swimsuit issue. I could see the water glistening on her tan skin, forming mercurial rivers of dancing sunlight flowing along the smooth contours of her exquisite body as her long, tawny hair... I brought myself up short. "Brother Marek, I must ask you this."

I looked at my old friend closely. Brother Marek, who has been an EGR Irregular far longer than anybody else (the years cast long shadows in the laugh lines around his dancing Polack eyes), grew somber. He knocked back a stiff one.

"I'm ready," he said, sitting down.

I phrased the question delicately. "I was reading some shit on McLuhan. It seems he has The Truth Shall Make You Free engraved on his tombstone. Is this indeed so?"

Few have seen Brother Marek lose his temper. Of course, there was the time he beat Mel Gibson to hell and gone. A self-made Australian and the millionaire ghost writer of a revisionist history on the life of Father Christopher, Gibson had crucified himself on the electrified perimeter fence surrounding the Jesus Bunker. His effrontery sent Brother Marek off the deep end. Needless to say, the Boulder Weekly mounted a scurrilous campaign against my friend and, for several weeks, ran graphic pictures of him beating the dumb sheep shanker to a bloody pulp.

Father Christopher came to Marek's rescue. He had Brother Eric Norlin, a former Special Forces operative turned philanthropist, take the rap. He found Brother Eric carousing with former friends at a cheap Boulder ale house, deep in his cups, a couple of girls and fond reminiscences of the days 'when men were men', and asked the hapless former bouncer turned businessman to do him a favor.

Brother Eric obliged. Father Christopher thereafter sent RageBoy into Boulder on a suicide-bombing mission. It put an end to the stories (and the Boulder Weekly) and Brother Eric spent a year in jail mocking the local sheriff for lousing up on the Littleton case. The forces of all things considered good, just and noble by civilized society have, since then, singled out the Jesus Bunker for what they euphimistically call 'softening up'.


The Battle Between Carnival and Lent [Pieter Bruegel]

It's a shadowy world, skies are slippery gray, | A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet. | He'll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat, | Take the motherless children off the street | And place them at the feet of a harlot | Oh, Jokerman, you know what he wants, | Oh, Jokerman, you don't show any response.

But that is another story. For now, the engraving on McLuhan's tombstone sent Brother Marek ballistic. His face contorted and he screamed (as if in anguish, of course). "The dumb fucks! What are they trying to do to me? I told them..."

I gave him a short, brutal smack. It rang like a pistol shot. I liked it, so I gave him another. Same effect. Crack. "I could get used to this," I thought to myself. "Listen, you lame-brained, potato-drinking, recidivist priest," I bawled, grabbing him by the shoulders. "Get a grip on yourself. It's a simple question. I don't want or need another of your drug-crazed Polack outbursts."

It was a case of too little too late. Pulling himself free, Brother Marek bolted for the door of the diner and the parking lot. Seeing him leave, the short-order cook grabbed the pump-action shotgun from beneath the counter and let him have both barrels. He missed Marek but nailed a couple of patrons on the other side of the room. Both were badly wounded. One diner's right arm was ripped from his body, flew across the bar and landed with its fingers in the till. Both patrons fell to the floor, writhing in agony.

All I had wanted was an answer to my question. I am, after all, a blogger and a professional to boot. I am also a gentle person. We gentle souls verify our sources and make sure of our facts. Who was McLuhan and what did he want from us? Would the Jesus Bunker survive or would the supply of BlogBabes eventually dry up? These things troubled me and I wanted answers. However, if I'd known my meeting with Brother Marek was going to get out of hand so quickly, I'd not have bothered asking him.

The Kombinat! Diner, Bar and Grill (Girls 24/7) disintegrated into chaos. Customers screamed, dived under tables or sought any cover they could find. "Absolute bedlam," commented the customer sitting alongside me at the bar. He was completely unphased. I glared at him. He was strangely familiar. Neat in an FBI way, he was eating a slice of blueberry pie. He yawned and began to clean his fingernails. I reached for my Glock. Its magazine was full and it packed a deadly wallop.

I popped him.

Turning back to the parking lot, I could see Brother Marek reach his Cadillac. He dived into the cockpit and, almost instantly, the barrels of the 30mm cannon mounted on the hood swung crazily in the direction of the diner windows. "Jesus Fucking Christ," I bawled. Nobody paid any attention and Brother Marek opened fire.

If you've read this far, you've probably been here before, so I won't go into detail. It was the usual, horrible stuff. Marek razed the place. I've since put in an order for a similar cannon. He'd welded an aditional pannier holding an unquantifiable amount of ammunition to the underside of the Caddy's hood and blazed away for what seemed like hours. At the end of it, I was the only person left standing. Once the paramedics, firefighters and other emergency personnel were able to fight their way through the rubble, fire, dust and water to extract the dead, I put an arm around Marek's shoulders and steered him through the car park. The sound of jackhammers, the occasional explosion, the wail of sirens, and the clatter of helicopters receded.

"It's rough, I know." I spoke softly but with some urgency. Norlin was going to take a beating for this one. I couldn't see Father Christopher letting him off easily. Marek was far too valuable. "But McLuhan's an icon and I need to confirm this. There's a lot riding on it."

Marek took a while to calm down. His mad Polish eyes danced stardust in the rain. Gripping an imaginary machine gun, he asked excitedly, "Did ya see the way the ceiling came down? Did ya see the peek-a-boo go pop 'n goo?"

"Yeah, yeah." I needed him to focus so I zapped him with the taser. It's a new 44001 Advanced Taser M18-L with an integrated laser sight and four air cartridges. He howled and fell to the ground. I hauled him up and dusted him down. "You okay?" I asked.

He nodded but I could see his eyes were still emitting sparks. I zapped him again and he quieted down. "Okay, okay, we'll take the girls next weekend. I'll bring plenty of potato juice and we'll give Father Christopher a celebration he'll never forget. D'ya remember the love clinics we used to do at the Y?"

I needed no reminder. They were and remain to me the most memorable of times. Barging into boardrooms around the globe, Father Christopher's band of EGR Irregulars would mount impromptu love fests and individuation clinics for the tired of heart, the spiritually numb and the comfortably dumb.

We frequently travelled to the dark heart of the grim corporate soul in those days, but Oprah fucked it all up. She had us on her show and Father Christopher took an instant dislike to Dr. Phil. The rape case which followed was a travesty. If anything, it enhanced Father Christopher's reputation.

"Jeez, those were the days." I felt myself slipping into reverie. Giving Marek a crack across the cranium, I steadied myself. "McLuhan, Marek? I need to know."

"Yeah, Brother Mike, I know and I'm willing to discuss it now. Y'know, they say that phrase was blogged by John at 8:32. 'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set ye free'. It's bullshit."

This was what I wanted to hear, but it made Brother Marek emotional to speak of it. I fed him a potato and he calmed down. He sighed. "You know, I blogged that a good few years ago and registered it at Gary Turner's Unfamous Quotations. But, you know, it's kind of like Napster...and the Jesus Freaks always climb in first. I reckon it happened because of its connection to the Jesus Bunker Swimsuit Edition. That's where it first appeared. Anyway, before I knew it, it was plagiarized by every Tom, Dick and Harry Met Sally."

"McLuhan was a traitor?"

He nodded. "But he was good man. He gave voice to my words."

We sat down at the curbside. Marek began to sob. A chill wind came up and a scarlet mist began to fall. Across the road, the barman cranked up the radio and the familiar strains of Lord Randall floated across the darkening sky. Its soothing lyrics calmed my beloved friend and I as well pleased. Seeming to draw strength from it, he gathered himself to himself. Standing up, tall and proud as any EGR Irregular I have known, he roared into the fast-falling gloom. "You lowdown, scum-sucking, bottom-feeding fuckers. You got it all wrong. It wasn't meant to be that way at all."

I realized that my suspicions had been correct. I remember Brother Marek at his prime, the scourge of the Jesus Bunker and Father Christopher's Propagandist in Chief. Marek would prowl the dungeon in which Father Christopher kept Chris Locke, his scribe, rent boy and sometime minor author, chained to a small desk. To ensure correct interpretation, Marek had the unfortunate Locke run his teachings through the Google translation engine. It was replicated in every language imaginable, including Klingon, Bork Bork Bork, and Afrikaans.

"You simplistic, arrogant yahoos. You miserable, low-rent barf bags..." I sensed my brother in all that is truly just, right and noble was running out of words. "...it was The Truth Will Set You Free But First It Will Piss You Off."

The immortal words hung on the air before dissolving into what was fast becoming a rain of blood. The barman across the road called time, hustled his patrons inside, rolled a drunk in the gutter and, after hawking on the unfortunate he'd just robbed, closed the doors of his hostelry.

"That Lord Randall..." I mused.

"That McLuhan..." echoed Brother Marek.

"That Goya..." I intoned, getting into the mood.

"That Carter..." sighed Brother Marek.

"Yeah," we agreed together, falling silent.

Brother Marek shook himself. "So what happened to the little girl in the picture?" he asked.

I reached for my Glock. Its magazine was full and it packed a deadly wallop.

Jokerman dance to the nightingale tune, | Bird fly high by the light of the moon, | Oh, oh, oh, Jokerman.

Bob Dylan | Jokerman

Notes

1. As part of his ongoing world tour to revive the flagging spirit of the carnival, Brother Marek now appears nightly on Kombinat! Radio to speak truth, play Peekaboo with the girls and rake in the shekels for The Father Christopher Fund for the Soulless Fuckers of Boulder. Do not pass this one up and remember, all donations, sexual favors and lewd phone calls are gratefully accepted. They will be forwarded to Father Christopher on receipt.

2. The All-night Kombinat! Diner and Grill (Eggs Sunny Side Up and Twice Over Easy), also known as The Kombinat! Diner, Bar and Grill (Girls 24/7) was not harmed during the filming of this blog entry.

3. Nobody, bar those who knew him, will get to know Kevin Carter. All that remains is a photograph he made of a vulture stalking a little girl in Sudan. Nothing more, nothing less. May he rest in peace.