And who created chaos? (Jamaica Observer)

John Maxwell
Sunday, August 29, 2004

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And who created chaos?

John Maxwell
Sunday, August 29, 2004



"Where did everything come from, Daddy?" the little boy asked his father.

"Why," said Daddy "God created order out of chaos."
"But who created chaos, Daddy?"
Had Daddy answered "journalists" he might have been close to the truth.
It's been that sort of week, where we can sympathise with the commentators who perceive democracy to be in distress.
This week past the UN led the world in celebrating, if that is the right word, the end of slavery. The date commemorates the start of the Haitian revolution which abolished slavery.

Among those relatively few who were unable to celebrate were the descendants of those in whose honour the day was dedicated. Courtesy of realpolitik and cowardly politicians, the Haitians are going to have to do it all over again.
To lift your depression, perhaps I may report a happier event. Baroness Thatcher's son, Mark, has been arrested in South Africa in connection with a plot to overthrow the dictatorship in Equatorial Guinea for the entirely noble purpose of clearing the way for Western oil companies to exploit the deposits of oil off the coast.

Since March, plotters have been arrested, and some found guilty, in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Guinea, among other places. It was a really high-class plot, organised by old Etonians, one of whom is the heir to the Watney Mann English beer fortune. Mark Thatcher apparently tried to buy a helicopter as part of the plot. He was arrested in his pyjamas as he was getting ready to leave his palatial home in South Africa (where else?) to take up residence in Texas (where else?)
Thatcher, who is a baronet (a hereditary knight, courtesy of his mother) is commonly regarded in Britain as being 'as thick as two short planks', but like George W Bush, he made a lot of money when no one expected him to.

John O'Farrell in Friday's Guardian was grateful that Sir Mark hadn't followed his mother into politics, as Bush followed Bush into the White House; he remarked:
"In fact, episodes like this remind us of the type of morality that prevailed during the greedy Thatcher years. Thank heavens things have moved on. Can you imagine our current prime minister being associated with the sort of people who'd embark on some ill-thought-out military adventure because they hoped to install a regime that would allow them to get their hands on the country's oil reserves? It's completely unthinkable."
Which, of course, is why some British Labour MPs have taken it upon themselves to launch a parliamentary motion for the impeachment of Prime Minister Tony Blair over the Iraq war.
The motion for impeachment is being drafted by the legal Chambers in which the prime minister's wife, Cherie Blair, QC, is a senior partner. She, of course, won't be involved. The drafting will be done chiefly by Rabinder Singh, QC, another senior partner who is, in his spare time, a deputy High Court judge.

The last time a British politician was impeached was 156 years ago, when the target was Lord Palmerston, the man who defined diplomats as people "sent abroad to lie for their country".
Lies, of course, were a staple of the week's news. In the United States it has now been proven that a television advertisement accusing Democrat candidate John Kerry of lying about how he had won his medals for bravery in Vietnam was, itself, lying. The proof took some time in coming and when it came out, one expected that the lies would be denounced by the president whose cause they were manufactured to serve.

What was funny was watching the Press and the president as they profited from the lie while making elaborate excuses for not denouncing it.

On CNN, General Wolf Blitzer was spectacular. Every time he brought up the question of whether the advertisement was a lie he replayed the ad, purely in the interest, it would seem, of showing how revolting it was - à la Larry King.

By the sheerest of accidents the lies and their retailers have helped bump up Mr Bush's poll figures, while journalists are universally puzzled over how such blatant slanders could have gained so much currency - as they replay the ad yet again.
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http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/html/20040828T230000-0500_65369_OBS_AND_WHO_CREATED_CHAOS_.asp

A slightly uneven column which gives the once-over to a surprising amount of recent news (the anniversary of the Haitian slave revolt, M. Thatcher and EQ, impeaching Tony the Poodle, SBVT, Allawi-as-terrorist, Abu-Ghraib, the Plame case, voting in Florida) while generally noting: "It's been that sort of week, where we can sympathise with the commentators who perceive democracy to be in distress."