on building a new town (remotely)

the attitudes of the occupying forces towards the citizens of iraq were yesterday betrayed as contemptibly complacent, arrogant and detached, with the announcement that Llewellyn Davies Yeang (LDY) have signed a million pound contract to redesign the ancient city of najaf

bad enough that the contract has been outsourced to a london-based architectural company (rather than employing iraqi engineers/architects, further evidence of the coalition dividing the spoils of war), but in an allegorical twist worthy of Orwell, the announcement included details of the fact that LDY's architects will at no point visit the site they are to develop "because of the security situation"

the new najaf will be designed in an office in london

najaf, a bombed out town in southern iraq with insurgency problems, is deemed unsafe for LDY's prospectors

then don't take the fucking job

bush can wax eloquent about the symbol of this new town till LDY casts another set of ridiculous concrete cows and sends them home to najaf, but such a blatant disenfranchisement of najaf's people (and professional/intellectual community) shows the appalling depths to which the coalition's attitudes towards the iraqi people have fallen

the concept of invading a country on false premises (albeit with the tangible but questionably motivated benefit of removing a dictator), destroying large chunks of that country and then divvying up the rebuilding contracts among companies based in the invading countries that don't even have the consideration to visit the site...

fuck, that sentence just wasn't gonna end

but then, this situation may not either

LDY were keen to point out that they are confident of the success of the scheme, even though they won't be there to oversee it

using aerial photos and the firm's iraqi partners (returned exiles) as their "eyes and ears", LDY still hopes to meet with representatives "at some stage in the Kurdish north, which is a lot safer"

dandy

the symmetry of the whole affair is a little appealing, however

a country bombs a town in to oblivion from the skies, killing innocent civilians, and then that same country rebuilds that same town using the same (or similar) aerial photos that had been used to pick out targets

appealing, but hardly a humanitarian watershed

up to 70% of najaf's people are unemployed

it therefore seems galling, even by coalition standards, to hand out a contract that will benefit not the people of najaf (who had a relatively nice town before the coalition came to call), but a company like LDY

if eye-rack is to be rebuilt, let the iraqi people themselves make the decisions on how this will be done

stop lining your pockets with blood money, carving up a country that was beaten in to submission and profiting from projects that the actions of fucks like you made necessary

on irving's imprisonment

murder cannot be hid long;
a man's son may,
but at the length truth will out

(Launcelot, from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice)

this guy Irving is clearly a prick

no argument there

his partner has been quoted as saying "he's banned from Austria and still went. David doesn't take advice from anyone. He thought it was a bit of fun, to provoke a little bit."

clearly the actions of an arrogance beyond the pale of the average sound mind

but i'm dismayed

the holocaust is, to say the least, a delicate issue

especially if you're a nazi-apologist that questions its extent

but you can't (or shouldn't be able to, for you clearly can) throw people in prison for their opinions or beliefs, just because they jar with the common sensibility

imprisoning someone because they deny that an event took place does nothing but serve to promote the untruths they purvey and elevate the individual in question to the level of martyr in the eyes of his or her followers

denying the holocaust took place is insensitive, but can hardly be classed as incitement to hatred or "glorification" or any of those current hot-phrases

the extreme far-right, anti-semites, racists: they will always believe what they want, and self-delusion is essential when your beliefs are contradicted by morality and fact

sending this decrepit mouth-piece for the dark-side of western civilisation to prison suggests that his lies are a threat to our world

which they aren't

his audience is a willing one and need little convincing

if they don't deny, they'll justify, and so the way to challenge their position is not to treat them as a threat but to ensure that the truth remains unavoidably present in any discussion of the issue

the "truth will out", and with regards the holocaust it already has

lying about it at this stage is an act of petulance that only becomes dangerous if we begin to take it seriously enough to challenge it in court

what's next?

if we can prosecute and imprison based on opinion, no matter how wrong or inaccurate that opinion may be, we're going down a very dark road indeed

on bird flu

There are fears that the deadly H5N1 virus is behind the sudden illness of a swan on Dublin's Aungier Street.

The swan, which until last night appeared to be healthy, was apparently overrun with symptoms that bear all the hallmarks of the killer virus that has been stalking the area for some time now.

While people that know the swan seem confident that the illness is only a temporary one, the signs are nonetheless still worrying.

The symptoms include; bad manners; extreme and inconsiderate verbosity; premature and messy drunkenness; the excessive application of hugo boss aftershave; and primal attempts at mating (or "scoring") rituals, with the ultimate goal of the deranged creature becoming to rut blindly and violently in a rathmines bed-sit beneath a Free The Weed poster, whilst listening to a Pink Floyd Best-of CD, (2001).

Locals expressed their hope that the virus may only be in the early stages, as several samples taken from the swan suggest that the offending cells were first year bacterium, emboldened by the recent cold snap and the onset of rag week.

However, vigilance must be shown by all, as an enforced cull of so rare and beautiful a creature would surely be a tragedy from which the area would struggle to recover.

on a worrying text

Just watching the
grammys... the
gorillas (sic) are
great byt when you
look at madonna
you realise that
the taliban still
has a very
important role to
play!

Sender:
Mum
14-Feb-2006
21:14:09

on cheney's quayle shoot (would that it was)

it's just too easy

so let's not

on being back in the studio

standing outside room1004 with a crate of beer under your arm, stubbing a cigarette and waiting to be buzzed back downstairs to the studio, you can't help but watch three greasy pigeons picking their way through a puddle of vommit that sits at the bottom of a streaked graffiti wall across the lotts

inspired, you return to the studio downstairs to find that the two new members still haven't turned up

nor would they

you just can't get good help these days