The Sunday Ishmael: 14/01/2024

 

Woops, he's done it again.

"He's smooth, he's persuasive, he powers along, the great Rolls Royce is back," according to Geordie Greig, editor of The Independent, for some strange reason, interviewed today by Laura Kuenssberg. 

Well, that's one way of looking at Ham Face, graduate of the Bullingdon Club, 

Cameron second from left, back row. Johnson, right, front row.

survivor of the great pig initiation scandal, (illustration removed to comply with Blogger's good taste policy. "porcine fop boning a torn monarch" anag. Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton. ed. verge) and frustrated Romeo (who could forget his immortal chat-up line, "I want to push you into the bushes and give you one" or words to that effect).
And now he's dragged us into another Middle Eastern war, without even discussing it with Parliament ( issues of security).Here's another way of looking at Cameron's abilities:

The US is clearly telling the Baron what to do. My concern is that Parliament was not consulted before The Baron launched the US/UK joint military action against the Houthis on Friday. Had Parliament been recalled, it is just possible that someone might have piped up and said - Hang on a minute, is this a great idea? Really? Stephen Flynn, for example, the SNP Westminster leader. I don't usually have much time for him, but who could disagree with his comments to Martin Geissler today on The Sunday Show? He described the UK government's decision to launch air strikes without consulting MPs as "farcical" and said he was looking for answers on the UK Government's long term aspirations in Yemen: "What comes next  and how does this feed into the wider regional picture, which we know is extremely volatile?" the Aberdeen South MP asked. 

Volatile? Understatement, or what? I would have inserted the Houthi banner at this point, but have desisted, in order to comply with Blogger's community guidance, so here's the translation instead:

It translates, from top to bottom, as:

God is the Greatest
Death to America
Death to Israel
A Curse Upon the Jews
Victory to Islam

I suppose they'll add in another line now - Death to the U.K.

For those who have been living in a news-free zone lately, and who can blame you, the Houthi movement, officially known as Ansar Allah (Supporters of God), is a Shia Islamist political and military organization that emerged from Yemen in the 1990s as an opposition movement to the then Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who they accused of corruption and being the puppet of Saudi Arabia and the United States. The Houthis have now taken to piracy in the Red Sea, attacking shipping, claiming it is a reaction to Israel's response to Gaza following Hamas' invasion of Israel on October 7th 2023. And so it continues - attack, counter-attack, counter-counter attack, any old excuse for a good ruck, looting, raping and so on and so forth.

I wondered if it would be possible to send protected convoys of shipping through the Red Sea, you know, like in the Second World War, and charge China for the costs - on the basis that it would be enhanced Post and Package costs, and most of the goods are heading to the West from China. My chum reckoned that would be seen as escalation - what?- and dropping bombs on the Houthis wouldn't? Or the goods could go the long way round, round the Cape of Good Hope. Or, of course, we could buy local, and try wanting less stuff. All and any of that could only be an attempt at mitigation - the bit is firmly beneath the teeth of the Middle East and we're stuffed. America is being confronted everywhere by the consequences of its interference in the domestic affairs of foreign parts - the turned worm, and, unfortunately the UK is seen as its best chum, especially under the smooth and persuasive hand of the Baron of Chipping Norton, the great Rolls Royce.

A couple days ago, mr inmate sent me down a rabbit hole with his recommendation of the documentary Creating Christ.

You know how it is with YouTube - one thing leads to another and before you know it you've binge-watched the entirety of the history of the first century A.D. or Common Era, everything Mary Beard has to say about the Romans and a side order of the Minoans, courtesy of Bettany Hughes, when she was a fetching young classical historian photographed in deep cleavage, clinging dresses and diaphanous skirts against ancient sunsets.

and she can speak classical Greek and Latin, honest, not invent.

What I've learned from my deep Youtube dive is that we're fucked. Those Middle Easterners are stone mad, addicted to religion, violence and politics, noisy bastards who enjoy killing, not shaving, ululating and worshipping a mean old God who has weird ideas about eating, sex and being revolting to animals and your neighbours. The Flavian Emperors invented Christianity as a religion of peace in order to draw off the pus and fever from the East and its opposition to the conquering Roman Empire - it worked for the north western European countries but the East remains just as cantankerous and opinionated as it was 2000 years ago. Like the multi-headed Hydra, cut off one head and another one grows. At the moment, we seem to be up against Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Taliban, the Islamic Jihad and all their splinter  groups. None of them are cults of peace and coexistence. None of them admire the Western ways of secularism, tolerance and making large profits. All of them seem to have sprung from, or exploited, idealistic students. None of them seem too keen on women.

mr ishmael would say nuke them all.   

When Harry Windsor was a mere ginger child, he was provided with a weapon and instructed how to shoot and kill wild animals, up there in the Highlands. His nanny, Tiggy Leggy-Totty-Burkey (four O levels and finishing school), instead of telling him that psychopaths start by torturing and killing animals before moving on to people, praised him for his manliness and wiped the hot blood of the just shot rabbit onto his forehead and cheeks, murmuring, there, darling, you're blooded now. A few summer holidays later and he's graduated to roaming the Cairngorms all day in the sole company of a grizzled old ghillie, stalking and shooting deer. When he killed his first deer, the old family retainer cut open its abdomen and stuffed Harry's head into the stinking hot body of the beast. When he finally let him out, he refused to allow Harry to wipe the guts and gore off his face, telling him that now he's properly blooded.  They really aren't like normal people. Then they let him go to kill people in Afghanistan, in furtherance of America's wars. No wonder he's bonkers in the nut.

 Laura Kuenssberg was dressed in an all-encompassing voluminous black neck-to-ankle outfit this morning, obviously not wanting to arouse the Baron's lusts. She put it to him that for his dodgy role in the dodgy Greensill enterprise, which he undertook after leaving political office, whilst putting his erstwhile colleagues and contacts to good use, he had earned round £10 million. The Baron muttered that he hadn't, so she asked him how much he had earned. Petulantly sitting on his dignity, he said I shan't tell you. I was a private Citizen, and that's private.

Laura didn't get much further with her interview of Sir Keir Starmer, who contrived to carefully and precisely say nothing very much at all, other than that he deserves to win the next election because he has completed a root and branch reformation of the Labour Party, thus alienating the left wing of his own party and disenfranchising anyone who would like to vote for a candidate who isn't yet another Shade of Tory. He also wouldn't confirm that, in office, he wouldn't forbid British arms manufacturers selling the weapons to the Middle East with which they will do their level best to kill us. He used to think that not selling guns to the Saudis was a good idea. No doubt he was grateful to the Baron this morning for his advice on how to win the next election - "you have to have a plan". I fear that Starmer is the Tories' best election-winning plan. 

Anagram (editor verge): Sir Keir Starmer = a terrier smirks - 

The astounding thought occurs that perhaps, just possibly, Sunak will get in again, as the Baron seems to be delivering to him, under America's close supervision,  his very own war. And we know how the Great British Public likes a war.

Boris had his Ukraine/Russian war, and now Sunak will have his Middle Eastern war, personally delivered by his man, Cameron, the unelected Foreign Secretary. No doubt the Great British Public will rally round.  

Here's a couple of little pieces by mr ishmael, demonstrating that Cameron continues to stick to his winning strategy.

March 2011 :

                                        NEW WARS FOR OLD

CAN I SPEAK POODLE? COURSE I CAN.

I WENT TO ETON. WOOF-WOOF…

As his Big Society delusion withers around him and his hybrid cabinet of malformed, smirking retards is seen to be nothing but a bunch of incompetent chancers, braying closet inbreds, greedy, pie-munching, vindictive fatbastards, slimy pinstripe spiv bullyboy cocksuckers and downright clodhopping nincompoops who have, in a very short space of time, fucked up the armed forces, sent the economy backwards and demoralised the entire nation, unelected prime minister, and not just here, under Gordon Snot’s ruinous misrule. He thought, the cheeky fucking bastard, that Prince Gormless, wandering about, shaking hands gormlessly and getting married to some gormless bimbo would do, would divert attention from his catastrophic depre-dations, but it won’t, not even with all the help that *kymade-upnewsandfilth can give him - in exchange, let’s not forget, for him placing Rupert’s spunkfaced phonetapper, Coulson, right at the heart of govament, his master’s eyes and ears. The inbred, shit-stupid, overprivileged ponce, playing at prime minister, thought a wedding would do it, but, more swiftly than we would ever have thought, he needs a war...

 TOWARDS AN ERUDITE ARTISANRY: May, 2010.

D.C. History Homework

"When I said we were the junior partner in 1940, of course, what I meant to say was that we were the only partner, or rather that America was the senior partner, not that we were simply the junior partner. Or something. I most sincerely had no intention of belittling those among our servicemen and women who helped President Obama win the Battle of Britain, none whatsoever. Look, I’m just an ordinary bloke, I even let people call me prime minister, I went to a very ordinary public school, my very ordinary wife gets paid three hundred grand a year for having her name on a letterhead and we have a very ordinary personal fortune of only a few tens, or maybe hundreds of millions of pounds. But all that’s very much, in a very real sense, just history, which we in the Coalition make up as we go along, and what we are concerned about, as the legally unelected govamint, is the future. Which is why we have to keep blaming the past Labour Govamint for everything. Y’know, punishing people for voting Labour may not be popular with them but that’s why I came into politics. And it’s all their own fault, if they hadn’t voted Labour I wouldn’t have to take their benefits and jobs and pensions from them and give them to some very needy merchant bankers. It’s simply no use blaming me. That’s what Mr Clegg, the Gimp, is for. But anyway we’re here to congratulate the Americans for defeating Churchill, or was it Mr Hitler? No use saying I’m a stupid, empty-headed, vindictive PR man who couldn’t beat a one-eyed man in an arse-kicking competition, or is it leg? One leg, or legged, whatever they call disabled people who are stealing from decent folks. No, no use at all. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because I went to Oxford. And the chap who taught me, Victor Bogbrush, says I’m absolutely brilliant, which, if you think about it, he would."

................................................................................

This, and much, much more can be found in the four-volume Call Me Ishmael oeuvre, collected by editor mr verge.

Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.

Ishmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps :

please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.

Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr

Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux

https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4

At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) 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, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.