Yes folks...the rant of the week is back...whether you like it or not!
With the anniversary of September the Eleventh thundering expectantly round the corner, America is no doubt gearing itself up for All night love-ins, Sing-a-longs featuring talentless celebrities adorned in star-spangled banners, Stirring tales related by Oprah Winfrey accompanied by sentimental music (because Oprah's viewers have forgotten how to experience emotions without an accompaniment) and...hmmm...what else? Oh yes...I remember...the Third World War will be starting in Iraq just as soon as the candle smoke clears.
Tony bin Blair, true to form of course and now complete with an enigmatic James Bond type dossier, is hoovering the president's rectum with his dextrous tongue as we speak.
On the eleventh, millions of meaningless wicks will flicker in the gloaming across the Atlantic -- lest we forget about those who died so spectacularly for the benefit of the BBC. Unfortunately, Mel Gibson appears to have forgotten one or two of the people who perished already. In his latest film -- I've no idea what it's called and, quite frankly, I don't care -- a true war story...or at least as true a war-story as Hollywood can generate...the hero was originally a veteran from Cornwall. A veteran who died saving his work colleagues in the twin towers disaster. But bollocks to him, the English bastard...he's now been replaced by an invented American character because Smelly Mel can't get the accent right.
Perhaps on that glitterati-filled night, somebody out there might also remember those countless thousands of peasants etc who have died in Afghanistan since Osama obligingly disappeared. (Thirty-something thousand at the last count, but we all stopped caring after we bombed that last wedding, didn't we? Still, it makes a change from British ground troops. It's amazing, isn't it? All that sophisticated weaponry and the only targets we manage to hit are ones with red crosses on them.)
Honest Hughes Bookmakers is currently taking bets on not a single dead Afghan peasant being remembered in the vigil.
Also being forgotten, no doubt, will be the fact that America set up the training camps for the Al Queda network in the first instant, in an attempt to get the Russians out of Afhanistan. Not to mention America helping the Taliban to power and then abandoning the downtrodden people to their fate as more important matters took precedence.
Unfortunately the World Summit recently, designed to create intitiatives to reduce global poverty and clean up the environment, wasn't one of those 'more important matters'...which is hardly surprising when you consider that American industries are not only the biggest exaggeraters when it comes to announcing their profits, but also the largest polluters on the planet.
So, good citizens of the U.S.A. (and I'm sure there must be some out there) please light a candle on September the Eleventh and hold it up to that God-awful flag of yours that supposedly represents fair-play, liberty and truth. And I'll be donning my Guy Fawkes costume and doing the same with four tons of gunpowder beneath the Houses of Parliment to show solidarity.
In the meantime...as you might already have noticed...the SCRAG ENDS Rant of the Week is back, and no doubt it'll soon be accompanied by the usual team of fellow bloggers specially hand-chosen for their lack of anything more constructive to do. Feel free to complain, comment, e-mail me or sulk. But don't bother sending me the Klez virus because my computer is, apparently, immune.
Brian Hughes
