Of Bush, Blair, Che Guevara, Castro and Chavez
By Aleksander Boyd
London (20.11.03) – I was running some errands today around Malet Street. For those of you not familiar with the area, the street hosts many University of London’s buildings. In one of them the ULU (University of London Union) headquarters are located.
The place was like a hive. A myriad of students were listening in awe to the final encouraging speech by some chap, whom appeared to have escaped from some dodgy manual of the perfect revolutionary from the 60’s. The content of the speech was, of course, the paramount importance of joining the protest against Bush. Images of Che Guevara were plentiful, as well as stand of the “Stop the War” coalition, selling everything from t-shirts to books on Marxism, such a sacrifice being an activist in London these days…
I stood there for a minute or two thinking “what could I ask these people conducive to the understanding of their behaviour”? I approached a group of “senior” individuals –the rest had an average age of 18-. They seemed to be quite immersed in a conversation about the route of the rally and so on. I asked “Gents, may I ask a quick question?” The one who was doing the talking looked at me angrily adding “piss off! We are in the middle of a meeting here!” Oh the bliss of dealing with the people’s people. None of them were interested in talking to me so I carried on.
My second interviewee was a man in his age selling the Socialist Worker. I asked him whether I could question him about Bush, he said “yes”. My question was “please tell me four words that spring to your mind when you think about George Bush”. He took about five minutes to respond and then he said; “cowboy, annoying, Christian fundamentalist and ignorant”. I asked the same question regarding Tony Blair, the response this time was quicker; “undemocratic, war-monger, liar and elitist”. How about Che Guevara I said (there were plenty of posters of him); “revolutionary, guerrilla and opportunist”. And Fidel Castro? By that moment a group of young people had gathered round us and Castro was defined as “Stalinist, communist, veteran, indispensable, homophobic and counter-revolutionary”. Then I asked them about Hugo Chavez, the young faces went blank –embarrassed for lack of knowledge- and the gentleman said “an opportunist”.
I repeated the exercise with people from the “Stop the War Coalition” stands, professors coming out of buildings, students and protesters. Summarising their response it could be said that the most periodic adjective for Bush was killer, in Blair’s case was git, Che’s revolutionary, Castro is known as oppressive and Hugo Chavez is a populist demagogue.
When asked if they could categorize all these men as disrespectful of human rights they said yes, although a clear effort was made by most of them to point out that the circumstances of each case have been different, placing always the largest amount of hatred in Bush and Blair.
It is rather interesting to see the work of the so-called socialists. They act as patrons, as commanders of an ideologically gullible adolescent army. For the price of one “Stop the War Coalition” t-shirt a family can be fed a meal in Venezuela, however the socialist leaders of the lot are not interested in anything that do not accommodate the concept of London-style social justice, i.e. “we rally to Westminster with the full protection of the Metropolitan police, we throw some rotten eggs or tomatoes to the gates at number 10, we make some money selling t-shirts, we print some more revolutionary pamphlets, no one dares to violate our right to protest or freedom of speech, our physical integrity is guaranteed by the state and after the whole event finishes we meet at the pub to enjoy a good pint of lager”. I wish I could see their expressions if they were shot at by some government sponsored urban militias.
Talking about scams geared to the weak of mind, the American section of Amnesty International released a statement yesterday condemning the appointment of Gen Carlos Ospina Ovalle to the position of commander of the Colombian armed forces. DR. William F. Schulz, Executive Director of AI USA deemed the appointment as “outrageous” stating in his communiqué “with so many questions raised about the general's human rights record, President Uribe appears to be signalling once again his disdain for human rights and his willingness to tolerate abusive commanders”. Now these Amnesty International people have got some bloody nerve, what in the hell are they expecting to make a statement about the human right’s record of Hugo Chavez? Has he not shown in enough opportunities his disdain for human rights? Can his policies or behaviour be not considered as abusive?
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