What really infuriates me about the Tories at the moment is that they are such an abject cluster fuck that no-one is paying any attention to the poisonous cancer of a government we are afflicted with. So the Highways Agency are planning for the possibility of sections of the motorway network jamming to such a degree that those stuck will have to be supplied there until the traffic can be reversed. So Diddy David Blunkett’s new extradition treaty with the USA means that each and every one of us can be rousted and shipped to some undisclosed location on the mere say-so of some pissant small-town Republican bigwig promoted to a real job for his loyal campaign contributions without any evidence being presented to a court whatsoever, whilst the meanest, nastiest excuse for an American citizen may do whatever crime it likes in Britain with impunity as long as they reach home soil, as the Constitution forbids extradition. So Geoff “Iraqi mothers will be grateful for our cluster bombs” Hoon has decided all the armed forces’ new equipment projects can be scrapped. Barely any new destroyers (the ones the navy are counting on for their air defence between now and whenever the new carriers and F35s come into service), one armoured brigade to go because Apache helicopters will do everything (so why were they useless in Iraq?), all supposedly for faster, whizzier expeditionary ops – but the network-centric warfare programme is to be shit canned as well. No connection there.
But the political shrapnel hurtling out of the Tory bomb site blocks the view. Everything keeps going catastrophically wrong and each time is worse than the last. When I formed this blog, I considered naming it “The Downward Spiral”. But I felt that was overly pessimistic. Clearly, though, pessimism is the wave of the future. Look at this. Go on, look at it. LOOK AT IT!
“an ‘undisclosed location’ (a place the CIA calls ‘Hotel California’) – presumably a facility in another co-operative nation, or perhaps a specially designed prison aboard an aircraft carrier”
So that’ll be as in “You can check out any time you like – but you can never leave!” Jesus. I will bet good money that this zone of horrors is right on British soil. RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus? Too accessible. The carrier can be ruled out – there are no secrets aboard a ship, however huge. Diego Garcia, most likely. The place we threw the people off so we could kowtow to the Pentagon better. What a fine example of George F. Kennan’s argument that the Soviet Union needed external enemies to justify the illegitimacy of its internal terror. We are seeking external enemies to justify external terror to internal opinion, but the principle seems much the same.