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CounterPunch
March 7,
2003
Eat Your Heart Out Comedy
Club
Make Way for
Reality Politics
By LINDA S. HEARD
Go on! Be honest! Do you prefer tuning in to Who
Wants to be a Millionaire or Eastenders rather than CNN or the
BBC? If so, you don't know what you're missing. This week in
politics was far more entertaining than your run of the mill
quiz program or soap. It even gave Comedy Club a run for its
money. However, if you are a Fox News viewer, stick with it.
Real politick cannot compete with pure Vaudeville.
It began with the 'My friend Igor' show
'produced' by Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. When the
Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov turned up at Number 10 Downing
Street, even the Sky News anchor was taken aback by the salivating
Straw's effusive greeting. Straw, doing his imitation of the
Cheshire cat, fairly flew out of the Prime Minister's London
residence to engulf the amazed Igor, in what the Sky reporter
referred to 'a Russian bear hug'.
Things got even funnier as the day progressed.
After lunch, the two foreign ministers gave a joint press conference.
By this time Straw's grin had become fixed, rather like an actor
doing re-runs for a toothpaste ad. He kept referring to the dignified
Russian as his good friend, calling him 'Igor'. The not so jolly
Ivanov, who formally referred to his British counterpart as 'the
Foreign Secretary or Secretary Straw', however, didn't reciprocate
such intimacy.
After they both assured the public of
the unprecedented level of cooperation between the British and
Russian governments and how they both agreed on everything under
the sun, Igor was seen later in the day rushing out of Down Street
with unnatural haste in what only could be described as a huff.
His buddy Jack was left looking surprised, even desolate on the
steps of number 10, while Ivanov, like the Biblical Lot, never
looked back. Jack never even got a desultory wave.
The following day we were treated to
Prime Minister's Question Time in the House of Commons when Blair
assured Members of Parliament that a second UN Iraq resolution
was in the bag. No problem at all. After all, with someone like
Jack Straw willing to wiggle his toes and his ears hoping to
make friends and influence people, one can understand Blair's
confidence.
But such enthusiasm turned out to be
spectacularly misplaced as just a few short hours later, what
did we see? There was dear Igor lined up in Paris with his real
best friends - going by the body language and the genuine camaraderie
- announcing that Russia, France, Germany and China would not
support any second resolution. Oh, the pain of betrayal! I wouldn't
be surprised if poor old Jack shed a tear or two into his Earl
Grey.
Meanwhile over in Qatar, there was an
emergency summit of the Islamic states, which replicated the
kinder-garden ambience of an earlier Arab League meeting in Sharm
El-Sheikh. Live television coverage of the Arab League's discussions
was brought to a close when the ever-entertaining Libyan leader
Muammar Gaddafi, attired like a Sub-Saharan African chieftain,
accused the Saudi government of being an American puppet. This
insult prompted the Saudi delegation to go through the motions
of walking out, before being persuaded to return to their seats
by a sycophantic squad saying please, please pretty please.
Qatar witnessed squabbles between the
old protagonists Iraq and Kuwait with 'traitor', 'monkeys' and
'curses on your moustache' being bandied about. This time it
was Kuwait's turn to threaten to walk out. Did they? What! And
miss the fun? What happened to the mutual hugging in which both
Iraq and Kuwait indulged during last year's Arab League summit
in Beirut?
Later on that day (Wednesday) Chief Weapons
Inspector Hans Blix gave a press conference at which he stated
clearly that during the past month or so Iraq has been proactively
cooperating and visibly disarming. He explained that Iraq's destruction
of its Al-Samoud missiles must be considered as real disarmament
and said that they had interviewed seven Iraqi scientists without
minders and tape recorders. He also stated that there is progress
with the verification of whether Iraq had destroyed its stocks
of anthrax and VX nerve gas some 10 years ago.
Blix was asked whether he considered
Iraq a danger to its neighbours and to the rest of the world.
He replied in diplomatic-speak saying that Iraq was militarily
far weaker than it had been in 1991 and it could hardly get up
to mischief while it was surrounded by hundreds of thousands
of enemy troops.
Shortly afterwards, up pops Colin Powell
while Blix's encouraging words were still fresh in our memories.
He said that Iraq had shown no signs of cooperating and adhering
to resolution 1441 whatsoever and was a real and growing danger
both to the US and to the planet. Huh!
Hans Blix is fast becoming a veritable
thorn in Powells' side. During the last UN General Assembly meeting,
Blix's fairly positive report on the Iraqi disarmament, including
criticism of Powell's earlier claims and accusations, embarrassed
the American Foreign Secretary in to throwing away his prepared
speech, forcing him to adlib. Those guys really ought to coordinate.
And talking about school children, for
that is surely what we have been doing, thousands of Britain's
kiddiewinks played truant or walked out of classes to protest
against war with Iraq outside the Labour Party headquarters.
Bags of manure were dumped outside the front door as a symbol
of the protestors' thoughts on Blair's foreign policy.
In another one of the Bush-supporting
countries Australia, protesting women lined up to cast off their
clothing forming an anti-war message on a hillside, drawing a
further protest from a British news anchor who moaned he was
tired of watching ladies' derrieres.
But such blatant anti-war libertarianism
was frowned upon by a New York shopping mall, where, according
to Reuters, a man wearing an anti-war T-shirt he bought in the
mall was arrested for trespassing when he refused to take it
off. I don't suppose the incarcerated man who was sentenced for
making a joke about a 'burning bush' thinks much of America's
new constrained atmosphere either.
Against all odds, the Bush crowd is determined
to have its war and it will go to any lengths to achieve its
hegemonic aims. Britain's Observer reported that US intelligence
agencies have been told to listen in to telephone calls and monitor
emails made by Security Council members to afford arm-twisting
ammo when it comes to the next vote.
Blair has already shown himself willing
to manipulate the truth as he did over the debacle of the dossier
plagiarized from the Internet, and the way that he has jumped
about from one pretext to attack Iraq to another. Blair began
with the party line of disarming Saddam Hussein, moved onto the
spurious Al Queda linkage, turned in frustration to regime change
and ended up as Father Teresa out to help the poor suffering
Iraqi people. Oh please!
Thanks to American inducements and threats,
the newly elected Turkish government is trying to push a new
vote through its parliament on the stationing of 62,000 American
troops on its soil, in opposition to the Turkish people. The
Turks told the Americans to stuff their bribes after seeing their
country depicted by US cartoonists as a whore or a carpet-seller.
They believe that any American dollars they receive will be bathed
in Iraqi blood, but even so their gung ho generals eyeing up
northern Iraq's rich oilfields along with nipping Kurdish autonomy
in the bud, are keen to host the Americans.
So, friends, tune in while you can still
have a good laugh. At this rate it won't be long before our tears
of mirth will turn to sorrow. The pyrotechnics in Iraq are soon
due to go off. The jokers, truth manipulators and the saber-rattlers
will have won and rather than watch images of dismembered women
and babies on my screen, while we, who live in so-called democracies,
are impotent, it's Big Brother here I come. Enjoy!
Linda S Heard
is a specialist writer on Mid-East affairs and welcomes feedback.
She can be reached on questioningmedia@yahoo.co.uk
Yesterday's
Features
Ann Harrison
No
Lock Up for Medical Marijuana Advocate Jeff Jones!
Gary Leupp
A Very
Fine Thing: Turkey Stands Up to Bush
Winslow T. Wheeler
Inside
the Pentagon's Pork Factory
Chris Floyd
Swing
Blades: How Rumsfeld Filled His Pockets with Pyongyang's Nuclear
Loot
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Sleight of Hand
Ron Lare
UAW Local
600's Opposition to War
David Krieger
Meanwhile, Back at the Security Council
Ralph Nader
How MSNBC Sabotaged Donahue
Anthony Gancarski
Somebody Blew Up Donahue: a Response to Ralph Nader
Harry Browne
The
Curse of Bono
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