Sunday 22 August 2021

The Sunday Ishmael 22/08/21

 Master of War
 

PeepleovBritain, the best thing, the very best thing, is that the Nato allies stay in Afghanistan. 
 
Britain has a moral obligation to stay in occupation. 
 
To protect everyone.
 
I say to you that the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was driven not by grand strategy 
 
But by politics. 

We didn't need to do it.

We chose to do it.

In obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending "the forever wars".
   
Blair's financial assets are structured in such a complex manner that it is difficult to estimate exactly how wealthy he is, following his stint as Prime Minister, Master of War and subsequent endeavours. He said, back in 2014, that he was worth less than £20million, however an assertion in 2015 by Beckett, Hencke and Kochan was that Blair had acquired $90 million and a property portfolio worth $37.5million in the eight years since he had left office. God knows how much he is worth now.

 When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
  An' go to your Gawd like a soldier. 
 
Extract from : The Young British Soldier (1895) by Rudyard Kipling, written during the Second Afghan War, which resulted in 2,500 British deaths between 1878 and 1880. 
Hat tip to mr verge for bringing it to attention.
 
In 2009, during the Afghan War just concluded with the withdrawal of the US and UK troops,  an anonymous British squaddy fighting in the hellish Afghan conditions, wrote his pastiche on Kipling's Afghan protest:

 

Afghanistan poem 

Here's mr ishmael's thoughts on the War, in this extract from:

Remembrance Day Blues. B-y-y-y-y the left, quick Murder  9th November 2013.  

 


What, pray, the fuck are we doing in Afghanistan, except aiding a bandit puppet regime and shoring-up the CIA's drug operations? This isn't world war in the defence of Freedom, this is fuckery, globalisation and imperialism, greed for oil and gas dressed-up as women's liberation Asiatique, as if the revolting old fairy, Gordon Snot gives a fuck about Afghani girls going to school, and as if it's any of his fucking business, ChristAlfuckingMighty didn't he make a big enough bollocks of things here, without exporting his clapped-out moral compass to the alien and unconquerable Old Silk Road. What, exactly, has this occupation achieved, other than fuck all?

Hardly surprising, then, that fighting a wholly pointless and disreputable war of occupation turns its practitioners into bigger arseholes than they already were; already lacklustre bullies transformed into repugnant, homicidal lunatics; comrades not in arms but in crime, shooting defenceless, wounded men. It truly is fucking awful, British foreign policy.

And in the following draft, Mariners 12/7/11, mr ishmael fires a round of fucks on the complicity of the Royal Family in the Afghan War (2001 - 2021)

Mariners, water-skiers, cockle-gatherers and plucky, disabled transatlantic rowers were all breathing a sigh of relief today as the Irish Sea re-opened for business. The waterway has been closed in the absence of Principal Rescue Pilot, His Serene Highness Prince William Gormless who has been holidaying in North America with his bride, Miss Kate Middleton, although not with her sister, the Honourable Miss Pipper Arse who has been detained in the family mail-order business, selling chocolate helicopters to braindead customers. Not since Wills’s Aunt, Bent Fergie, wrote her famous stories about whirlybirds, has there been such a demand for chocolate choppers, giggled Miss Arse, on the front page of the Daily Filth-O-Graph.

Duke Wills, described by his friend, the honourable Mr Hooray Henry, as just a brilliant pilot, wicked, OK, has been in the States meeting with the cream of Hollywood’s prostitutes, drug-addicts and posturing egomaniacs; superstar arsehole Mr Tom Wanks said he was thrilled to meet a real Royal. Not since I saved Private Ryan from the battlefields of Normandy, even if it cost me my own life, has it felt so good to be alive; just to be in the same room as a Prince is almost better than money. Vintage babe Miss Sharon Stain said that his Royal Highness could fly his chopper up her windy valley anytime, while pint-sized tough guy Mr Len Bigsom marred the event somewhat by yelling These Limey Royals, they’re all fucking Jews, ain’t they, bring that Prince Hymie on and I’ll kick his ass. I’ll teach him to fuck about with freeborn Scotch Aust-ralicans, like me, boomed the woady nutter as he was led away by security. Famous Hampstead Heath cruiser, Mr Curvin Space said that in all my time looking for rough sex with strangers in London’s bushes I have never had His Highness’s knob in my mouth, although I might have had his Dad’s. Clarence House later issued a firm denial that Prince Charles had buggered his servants and even if he had they were obviously mental patients or alcoholics and making it all up, especially about His Majesty flogging off gifts sent him by members of the public and not paying any tax; that was definitely wrong, but had all been forgotten about anyway. The Prince of Wales’s friend and personal spokesman, Steven Fag, said, My Dears, it is simply outrageous to suggest that Prince Gormless and his most charming doxy, Miss Wotsername, are anything other than wonderful ambassadors for our country, rather like myself; have you tried one of these sperm canapés, they really are most delicious, provided by young Puerto Ricans, if I’m not mistaken. (Ever fancied a career in PR, yourself, darling?)
The PBC correspondents, Jayne Tits and Martin Gob, have been endlessly rehashing that old tripe about Holywood Royalty being in awe of True British Royalty, just like their predecessors with the cockmad Duchess of Windsor, the cockmad Princess Margaret, the browncockmad Princess Diana and Christ knows how many other royal slappers.

 Later, His Most Excellent Majesty, Duke Wills talked a load of old-warrior rot to some proper soldiers who had been shit on after returning from Afghanistan. You know, like my great grandfather, Colin Firth the Sixth, I’m a fucking idiot, too, only I get medals  and ribbons and fortunes just for getting out of bed in the morning and how I envy you all, struggling to get a meaningful role in Mc-Donalds or WalMart, whereas all I can look forward to is flying around the world in luxury and being fawned upon for the rest of my life by arse-licking groupies with titles. What? If the marriage goes wrong? Well, we’ll always have Paris.

Back now in RAF Anglesey, Duke Wills is itching to get into some real rescue work, with TeeVee crews in attendance and Miss Kate Middleton standing by to give him a medal. I can’t wait to get down to some real rescuing before my next holiday, I mean Official Duties, joked the future King. I’d love to work for a living, properly, like, but it’s just the luck of the draw; somebody has to live in the palaces and be driven about in the Rollers. I mean, Granny can give me all the counties she likes, all the regiments to be Colonel-in-Chief of but it’s not the same as living one’s early married life  in married quarters with one’s wife, like I’m pretending to do, only not very well.

Her Serene Majesty, the Duke’s Granny - as the nation disintegrates under public service cuts, neglected and betrayed manufacturing and bandit privatisations, as her cheesepared forces are deployed upon ever more dubious adventures overseas in support of GlobaCorp and its parent organisation, DeathCorp, and as nation after nation is pushed further and further into poverty, barbarism and eventual feudalism - has stuck rigorously to the schedule she set herself so many years ago; stay on the throne at all costs. A few weeks of opening hospitals and then a few months resting in Scotland, another few weeks opening parliament and sitting on a horse for photographers and then another well-deserved few months’ break in Norfolk. Never once has the Nation’s Granny uttered a word of criticism of Her Govamint, through Thatcher’s SpivWars, Major’s desultory uselessness, the Blair and Brown war-crimes and their bending over for International Financial Terrorism, and now as an unmandated, unelected coalition of convenience dismantles all the welfare and human rights reforms of her reign, as the cops are revealed, truly, as filth, shitting even on her and her precious, parasitic family, this worthless, pampered old biddy still says nothing; she has never said anything, or done anything, except hang on to her gilded throne. No wonder Prince Gormless is such an empty-headed, snivelling wretch. Constitutional monarchy? Good for fuck-all.

Still, the RAF is up to strength again; Flight Lieutenant Wales is back on the case.

 Coda: 

I think that might be the start button, Dad
Flight Lieutenant William Wales completes RAF Search and Rescue duties:

 During his last shift, Flight Lieutenant William Wales and his crew had an uneventful 24 hours which ended at 9.30am on Tuesday, 10 September 2013.

During the preceding 24 hours, they conducted a routine training flight, but thankfully, there were no incidents requiring their services across North Wales or the Irish Sea.

They simply can't keep away from air borne transport, those Wales boys,  even whilst telling the rest of us to save the planet: Did you notice young Harry, who has told the world that he is restricting his breeding to just the two, for climate change reasons, having a ride on a private $45 million Gulfstream aircraft  belonga his chum,  Marc Ganzi, 750 miles from his home in California to a polo match in Colorado and back again. But that's okay, cos he likes polo.

Caption contest - the usual suspects

 

The casual observer might conclude that there were many different contributors to the caption contest - but I detect the hand of the usual suspects. All the proffered captions were inventive and hilarious. One is particularly drawn to the ghastly incident of the abduction and dismemberment of the FlowerPot Men. Sir Simon Rattlesnake and mr verge both went with the astonishing reach of Monty's floriferous appendage, but for elegant simplicity, I'm going with mr mike's: "Ah, Camelia...."
And as for Her Royal Ruthlessness' plaintive complaint that she is always being picked on in these caption competitions - ahh, that's a shame.


Wots on Telly
Panorama: David Cameron and the Missing Billions  
on BBC iPlayer
Key points
  • Former Prime Minister David Cameron personally promoted Greensill Capital to investors before its collapse, leaving the bank's clients with losses of billions of dollars.
  •  Mr Cameron appeared with the company's founder, Lex Greensill, at an event hosted by the Swiss bank Credit Suisse in 2019. Credit Suisse was marketing and selling Greensill investments, telling investors they were low risk.
  • Greensill lent $850 million of investor's money to Bluestone Resources, a coal company, of which $780 million was "secured" against potential and possible sales to companies, some of which were not and never had been Bluestone customers.
  • David Cameron says he did nothing wrong. Gavin Williamson (Education Secretary) says Cameron did nothing wrong. 
  • Cameron worked for the company as a part-time adviser for two-and-a-half years after stepping down as prime minister. His role earned him about $10 million before tax. His spokesman has said his remuneration was a private matter, and that it was "preposterous to suggest that he would work for any company if he was aware that it was behaving improperly, or was in any way seeking to mislead investors."
mr ishmael, of course, has written at length on the iniquities of Cameron and his Bullingdon chums. This is an essay that you may not have read, as I came across it in his drafts, dated the 2nd November 2013
 
WHAT THE 'PAPERS SAY. THE ONGOING CHINESE TAKEAWAY,  THE FILTH-O-GRAPH REPORTS GIDEONITE LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE. 2/11/13
 
ENTER THE ALBINO DRAGON.
Me BoJo, velly big man in UK, ride bike in London,
gimme plenty yen and me fuck you long time; wha'  have some coke? Me? Hokay, make it chop-chop, am busy man.

Only MediaMinster takes CallHimDave even remotely seriously;  the unelected prime minister just staggers from one fuck-up to another, his arrogance and conceit leavened only by the most expensively acquired stupidity, the Old Etonian variety, the variety which has plunged us from war to depression and back again for centuries now, a stupidity which is so off-the-scale that it sometimes meets itself in a blackhole of dumbness where it weirdly passes for cleverness;  so incomprehensibly, incalculably stupid are these people that we think, Wow! they're so clever that it must be me who's stupid, obviously they know better than I.   And when you see all the yelling and jeering at PMQs and see how Cameron twists himself back and forth, eye-contacting, to make his backbenchers smirk and wheeze in sadistic delight at his  Flashman bullying of some dog-eared arsehole on the other side you think, Shit, if they all think he's clever, then he must be. 
But of course he is a fucking idiot.  He's so piss ignorant that he must've spent his schooldays wanking and taking drugs.  Oh, and trashing stuff, later, dressed-up  in his Bullingdon gear, the cunt.  
"Unable to remember who wrote Rule, Britannia! or the English translation of Magna Carta, David Cameron was embarrassed on David Letterman’s chat show on America TV.
He is, however, no intellectual lightweight. I speak with authority – I was his tutor at Oxford University, where he achieved a First in Philosophy,  Politics and Economics." Vernon Bogbrush, Daily Mail.

As for his degree, well his tutor, Vernon BogBrush,

Yes, I suppose I am rather clever - all these books, says something about a chap, being photographed in front of all these books. Read 'em? Don't be fucking stupid, this is Oxford: nothing to do with learning stuff.

insists that he was a brilliant student - can't speak English proply (in his own usage), can't frame a sentence, he's even more of a grammarless gabshite than Blair, rants on about education even though at whatever age he is now he wouldn't pass the eleven-plus, not unless he paid someone to take it for him, which is probably how he got his degree in whatever shit, made-up conman rubbish it is; PPE, the wankers' degree.   

Victor Bogbrush, I'm sure, would say that the prime minister, any prime minister, was brilliant even if he was, like Cameron, a gobby, platitudinising moron;  

Gosh, Prime Minister, now that you mention it in connection with a peerage I can see that you are brilliant; mind you, I always said so; pretty, too, in a chubby way. And to think: you were one of my students......

these dons and fellows and masters of this-and-that, what are they like;  what sort of a shithole would tolerate having the insufferable thieving blowhard  Patten as its public face?  Double-whammy, that's his contribution to the erudition of the nation, worthless cunt.

 

Oxbridge?  Creme de la creme? Bollocks. Nuke 'em and everybody in them - staff, students, visiting relatives, toast 'em, pour encourager les autres. 

Cameron believes  America won the Battle of Britain,  has said so, before the entire world.

And I'd just like to thank you for winning the Battle of Britain; we couldn't have done it without you, Mr President. Dave, over in LimeyLand, ain't you what they call a dickhead?


 And even so, for all his abject fawning, Uncle Sam still treats him like a cunt. Syria, I mean, how can he hold his head up among his fellow tyrants?
Look at any opinion poll, any formerly Tory-leaning blog; Tory voters despise Cameron  probably more so than do Labour voters and are likely to defect to the KipperNutters in enough numbers to oust him from Downing Street;  the right candidate would see him fucked-off from his rotten borough in the Cotswolds;  the smell of blood is on the Treasury Bench.   And how much more humiliation can this wittering poltroon absorb and still remain on his feet?

 Let's just examine the Chinese TakeAway - Cameron, the prime minister, is arseholum-non-grata with the Chinks simply because he spoke to some simpering, stateless old fraud  who cracks-on  he's a  godly reincarnation, an episode  in the eternal, cyclical  life of the  Enlightened One. 

Tell me, your Lamaness, this reincarnation stuff, is it like Time Travel? I mean, can you tell me will I win the next election outright? All life is suffering, my son.

Having invaded the Dalai Lama's homeland and subjugated his congregation to Chairman Mao, the Chinks don't want any of their satraps so much as talking to his serene holiness and are saying  to the UK prime minister: You'll dance with who we tell you to, or you won't dance at all.  But your keenest and most treacherous rivals for the Great Latrine of State, they are welcome here,  they can come to the People's Paradise  but you cannot. Imagine that, not even Gordon Snot would put up with that.

Armed Chink security goons make sure that Gordon Snot doesn't make off with the Olympic Torch

Instead of BoJo and Osborne telling the Chinks to shove their Chop-Suey  where the Sun don't shine,  they're over there like shit off a shovel, strutting their dubious and inconsequential stuff for all back home to see, giving our energy future to a dictatorial, torturing,  extortionist communist  regime, promising SlopeEyeNukesInc that, Yes, Oh yellow master, Brits will pay three times the going rate for their leccy bills, that's how stupid they have become.  These two prats are kow-towing like this instead of, as they should be, immediately re-nationalising the British energy industry.  

It is on this bizarre national betrayal that the innumerate smirking fuckpig, Osborne, bases his claim to the Tory crown;  that and his lunatic philosophy that a sound economy is one wherein prices rise whilst wages fall; only an Old Etonian could make this claim and not be pelted with stones; he doesn't even understand capitalism, doesn't understand arithmetic, understands only that he is entitled to whatever he wants.  He needs shooting.
As for the cock-waving cokehead, bicycling BoJo, he simply trusts that his fourth-form bluster will carry all before him - as it has, so far - and that the sclerotic, redneck, masturbating horde at the Filth-O-Graph will annoint him Tory leader anytime he feels like it, anytime he grows fed-up with his part-time job as Mayor of Londonistan. He should, actually, read the responses to his hugely lucrative schoolboy rants in the Filth-O-Graph, where  readers are cunt-calling him by a ratio of a hundred-to-one, cursing his hanged-by-the-neck Turkish grand-dad, cursing his gobby dad and calling Bojo, himself, an anti-British, foreign-devil wog, a walking miscarriage who disgraces the office of Mayor, selling us out to his bosses in Europastan.  Anybody but Livingstone would've seen Boris's vanity, of course, bicycling back, wobbling, to Rich CokeHead Paradise.  A fence post would've beaten BoJo; Livingstone, however, was just ahead of him in the Oh-fer-fucks-sake-not-this-cunt-again stakes. Ken's vanity, of course, was insurmountable;  had he been concerned more with keeping Boris out than he was with getting Ken in he would've stood down, in favour of the fence post, or a paving slab;  typically, what used to be the Labour Party, a gang of warring shitbags,  was too frightened to tackle Livingstone. And now BoJo, the man Labour should've beaten, wants to be prime minister.  I read somewhere that we are two heartbeats away from having White Powders Johnson as prime minister and Harry Ginger as King... Would that make shit  any worse than it already is? Probably, I suppose; things always get worse  
...........................................................

This week's crossword clue from mr verge:
Did George & Tony spill blood to renew altar? (7,3)
 .............................................................
mr ishmael's essays today are:
 

Remembrance Day Blues. B-y-y-y-y the left, quick Murder    posted 9/11/2013

Mariners                                                                                 drafted 12/07/2011 

 
 What the 'Papers say. The ongoing Chinese Takeaway. The Filth-o-graph reports Gideonite Leadership Challenge                                          drafted 2/11/2013

Both anthologies of the work  of mr ishmael and his young Polish friend, Stanislav, Plumb Cheap for You:  Honest Not Invent and Vent Stack - are available to purchase for mere money at Lulu or Amazon. It is cheaper to buy from Lulu. Here's how to buy your own copies: 
Please register an account with them first. This will save you a couple of quid, as going straight into the link provided below seems to make paypal think it's ok to charge in dollars, and apply their own conversion rate, which will put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow our link; a pop-up box asks for age confirmation - simply set the date to (say) 1 January 1960, and proceed. (If you type the title, the anthology will not appear as a search result until the "show explicit content" box - found at the bottom left by scrolling down - has been checked.  You may also see the age verification box, as above, at this point.) 
 The full title is "Vent Stack love from stanislav" by ishmael smith, and the cover you'll see is red with white titles and a picture of Buster the Previous Blog Dog having a green thought in a green shade. 

Link for the paperback:

 https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/vent-stack/paperback/product-q8jzk2.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Or...

shorter link, which might make it easier if you wish to paste it into an email and tell a friend:

 https://tinyurl.com/naajavmu

 Honest, Not Invent is available in paperback or hardback.
Link for Hard Back : 

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/hardcover/product-njr7vg.html

Link for Paper Back

https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/ishmael-smith/honest-not-invent/paperback/product-wq2kpg.html

At checkout, try PROWRITINGAID15, WELCOME15 or TREAT15 in the coupon box, which  takes 15% off the price before postage.  If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.  
With the 15% voucher, the book (including delivery to a UK address) should cost £10.89

 

10 comments:

mongoose said...

What to say about the twenty year nonsense which was the Fourth Afghan War? (Or was it the fifth? Ed.) I am afraid that I am not at all convinced that the original casus belli was a slam dunk truth. I think 9/11 was used to renew the project. And the project is cash.

If we really wanted to show the various factions of militant Islam that they should not be naughty, how about going to Riyadh and stringing up the entirety of the ruling family? Oh, it's not about that, you say?

(Ooh, are we going to have crosswords? Eternal war.)

Anonymous said...

Nicely done, mr mongoose. Here's one more :

Not to mention paralipsis? (9)

v./

(I can only do - a few - clues, though. No actual grid in prospect.)

mongoose said...

I shall give that some thought, mrv. Surely a mr ishmael grossword of rude abuse would a fine addition to the arsenal?

mongoose said...

The Kabul disaster is going to get messy IMO. Much messier seems to be the accidental rearming of the Taliban with some proper US left over whizzbangs and even attack helicopters. What the heck do they think they are doing? Even Uncle Sam isn't that clumsy.

I'll have a go at "apophasis", mr v, but I fear that I may have disappeared up my own fundament.

(I see that the clicking traffic lights nonsense is back. Have I been naughty?)

Anonymous said...

A distinguished guess, mr mongoose, but the answer in question is "tautology".

v./

mongoose said...

Good one, mr v!

'Course, mr i, would have chucked the pair of us out by now.

Anonymous said...

No doubt, mr mongoose. And as for having the gall to edit his collected works, no well too deep nor brick too sharp. But on we go...

v./

Mike said...

In the Pantheon of useless arseholes, Patton is high on my list. Saw him in action when I lived in Hong Kong for a year. A lump of blubber that the universe does not need.

ultrapox said...

for chrissakes, "hammer-horror" blair looks more like a b-movie-baddie with every unwanted and superfluous appearance he inadvisably makes...

however, he's no christopher bloody lee - just a cheap cardboard british broadcasting configured imitation - and for the good of the national health, i wish this neo-liberal narcissist nut-job would cease to torture the british public by showing his evil neo-imperialist mug on telly - since i, for one, really can't bear hearing either of him or his cia-subverted "wars-r-us" labour party ever again; seems to me the cunt's pr-machine has blown a fucking fuse - and maybe he'd do better hiring darth vader cosmetics as image-consultants.

now, as for fuck-all-use "fat pang" patten, mr mike, i fear you do the two-bit tub of low-grade lard a serious disservice in deeming him a lump of blubber which couldn't even cut it as household-soap, because in consummate contrast to the international running-joke "comatose" joe and his slap-dash side-salad "bombed out" boris, at least "community charge" chris, the perennial poll-tax-pillock, managed to hand over his take-away chop-stick-colony to the ting-tong-totalitarians with some passing semblance of dignity - and without anyone hanging embarrassingly onto helicopters.

indeed, given the currently unfolding fiesta of in flight fiascos, i fully anticipate a seamless transatlantic transition - from the present paralytic partnership of "running-joke" joe's asleep-at-the-wheel presidency with "snuffling-coke" johnson's under-the-influence premiership - straight to the tits-up toil-and-trouble-double-act of "mad driver" kamala hubris and white van woman priti "bat-outta-hell" patel.

yep, trapped in a towering inferno of inverse ideological irredentism, big heap boris is about to implement a hasty back to bullingdon strategy, i imagine.

Mike said...

Mr ultrapox: Looking at Blair, I expect we will be reading his obit in the Filth-o-graph soon. I might even sign up for a subscription.