Here's hoping...JOHN PILGER

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Here's hoping...

(Friday 26 December 2008)

JOHN PILGER



JOHN PILGER imagines a year ahead in which some notorious political characters get their just desserts.

January

TONY Blair is arrested at Heathrow airport as he returns from yet another foreign speaking engagement (receipts since leaving office £12 million).

He is flown to The Hague to stand trial for war crimes for his part in the illegal, unprovoked attack on a defenceless country, Iraq, justified by proven lies, and for the subsequent physical, social and cultural destruction of that country, causing the death of up to a million people.

According to the Nuremberg tribunal, this is the "paramount war crime."
The prosecution tells Blair's defence team that it will not accept a plea of "sincerely believing." Cherie Blair, a close collaborator who has compared her husband with Winston Churchill, is cautioned.

February
Following the inauguration of Barack Obama as president of the United States, his predecessor George W Bush is arrested leaving the Church of the Holy Crusader in his home town of Crawford, Texas.
He is flown to The Hague in War Criminal One (see above for prosecution details). Laura Bush, after a plea bargain, agrees to give evidence against the former president "for God's sake."
March
Former vice-president Dick Cheney shoots himself in the foot hunting squirrels following a prayer breakfast in Hope, Florida.
April
Aung San Suu Kyi is released from house arrest and assumes her rightful place as the democratic head of the government of Burma.
May
All US and British troops leave Iraq, including the "300 to 400" British troops who are to stay behind to "train Iraqis" and do the kind of special forces dirty work almost never reported by embedded journalists.
June
All NATO troops leave Afghanistan.
July
The British government calls a halt to selling arms and military equipment to 10 out of 14 conflict-hit countries in Africa.
The chairman of the arms company BAe Systems is arrested by the Serious Fraud Office.
August
The British Department for International Development ends its support for privatisation as a condition of aid to the poorest countries.
September
Sir Bob Geldof and Bono visit Tony Blair in prison, suggesting a worldwide Crime Aid gig to raise money for their hero's defence.
October
The Booker prize-winner Anne Enright apologises to Gerry and Kate McCann, parents of the missing child Madeleine McCann, for speculating in the London Review of Books about the possible involvement of the McCanns in the disappearance of their daughter.
November
Gordon Brown is kidnapped, hooded and forced to listen repeatedly to his 2007 speech to bankers at a Mansion House banquet, "What you as the City of London have achieved for financial services, we as a government now aspire to achieve for the whole economy."
December
Tony Blair is sentenced to life imprisonment and beatified by the Pope.
If you think none of this will happen, you are probably right. But beware 2010...

This article appeared in the New Statesman.

[ArthurBorges]

Oh for fluck's sake: DESERT (n.) long dry stretch of sand AS OPPOSED TO DESSERT (n.) any of a variety of sweet dishes served at the end of a meal; in Europe, dessert is sometimes followed by fruit(s), which in turn should be followed by coffee and possibly by a digestif.

Arthur Borges in Zhengzhou

[ArthurBorges]

...and please delete my posting as soon as you correct the blooper so that I don't have to look ridiculous too.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Originally Posted by ArthurBorges

...and please delete my posting as soon as you correct the blooper so that I don't have to look ridiculous too.

I think you should look just as ridiculous a the rest of us!