You will almost certainly heard of a best-selling book called “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”. It purports to be a guide to help men and women get along with each other, and it did so largely by exhorting men to hack off their genitals and bow in slavish worship of the superior sex. Naturally enough, it is one of the biggest piles of rancid goatshit ever to stain the pages of literary history. Even for the self help industry (which I have heard some ladies I know refer to as “brilliant; they’re really good for training the boyfriend!”) this book surpasses all other contenders in terms of trying to take away our poor quality 70’s TV buddy-cop shows, and place men firmly at the bottom of the social pile.
And do you know what the worst of it is? A man wrote it. No, this wasn’t some Dworkinesque fun-free lady intent on conditioning her future husband to enjoy ‘Sex in the City’ who was scribbling away. It was another man who did this. What on earth, I thought, could have driven him to collaborate on such a grand scale? Had he been promised better rations and access to an Xbox 360 in the Brave New World he was helping create? Well, what better way to try and get into somebody’s clearly disturbed psyche than to read his misguided words? I hope you all appreciate this; I read the bloody thing so that you don’t have to. Donations for my recuperation will be gratefully received…
The Introduction
And before we even get that far, things are looking bad! A glance at the acknowledgements tells it’s own terrifying story: nearly every person he thanks is a woman! His wife, his three daughters, his mother, his sisters…oh my GOD, the poor bloke has obviously been brainwashed!
As for the intro proper…well, it was the standard explanation of why any disagreement between a man and a woman is inevitably the fault of the testicle owner. Naturally enough, my urine began to boil freely and I had to take a break before continuing. So once I had bleached my eyeballs and scraped the dirt from my brainstem, I was ready to continue my journey
Chapter 1 – Men are from Mars, women are from Venus
The eyeball bleach was, however, required almost immediately I turned the page. Not that there is anything horrifically wrong about this chapter. Assuming that is that you don’t find reading stuff that treats you like a retarded Disney child offensive. Jesus…this is the kind of twee bullshit that is usually found in the Mr Men books…a lot is said about imagination, but one question does remain unanswered. If men and women are from two different planets and survived perfectly happily, then why didn’t we just stay on Mars and watch the lesbian show through the telescope? Astronomy would have replaced watching football as the number one activity for the average man…
Chapter 2 – Mr Fixit and the Home Improvement committee
It seems that women prefer to reflect on their troubles, whereas men will always try and offer a solution. According to this, our number one ambition is to try and solve women’s problems when they tell us all about them. He seems to be missing the point. The reason that we come up with solutions to their problems is so that they will shut the fuck up with their endless complaining (oh dear God, sometimes I think that half of my life has been spent listening to women ranting about what their stomach looks like, with a degree of self importance not seen since Razorlight released their last album, “I’m Fucking Great Me; Look at my skinny jeans”) and leave us to contemplate who we’d rather shag if we had the choice between Cheryl Cole and Kirsten Dunst.
The book seems to be working on one fatally flawed assumption: that we have hidden depths to our characters that women can unlock if we modify our behaviour. Trust us, we really are as shallow as our beer fixated ‘façade’ suggests.
Chapter 3 – Men go to their caves and women talk
Finally, a chapter that seems to have some sort of grounding in reality! Men, we are told, get withdrawn when faced with a lot of stress. Perhaps this is the first in a series of coded messages to the female world at large. “When you nag the fuck out of us, and we go quiet that means you’re stressing us out and could you please SHUT UP!”
Alas, this does not seem to be the case. All too soon, the writer (perhaps having been bitch-slapped to within an inch of his life by his agent upon reading this section. His female agent…) returns to the approved party line. It seems that we should learn to talk more. Well, allow me to let any women reading this on a little secret; we can talk until our throats are dry. We just don’t want to talk to you. Your musings on what shade of aubergine would look best on the kitchen wall are very sweet. But I’d prefer to discuss how to shoot down the helicopter on the last mission in Grand Theft Auto IV with my mates. You get interested in my world, and I’ll get interested in yours, ‘kay?
Chapter 4 – How to motivate the opposite sex
A delightful series of pages entitled “How to Motivate the Opposite Sex”. 17 pages in all, which is 16 and a half too many. This is what he should have written:
Men: For fucks sake, don’t stare at her tits too obviously. And tell her that she looks beautiful at least once a week. Women like that kind of shit.
Women: Stop nagging about tidying up and housework. Yes, we would live in a pigsty if we had to, and no we don’t care what other people think if they saw the state that the living room is in.
As a side note, the insistence on stretching the whole “different people from different planets” metaphor to explain everything is starting to make me feel cancerously ill.
Chapter 5 – Speaking different languages
Oh for fu…now it seems that men and women speak different languages from each other! Unless your girlfriend retailed at £69.95 and was imported from Manila, this is bollocks. I personally can understand every word that gets shat from a woman’s mouth. Equally, they understand my semi-coherent headspew about why £15 million for a football player is money well spent. What we both seem to have a problem with is why we’re trying to spoil a perfectly good relationship by opening our mouths and making noise that neither one of us wants to hear. Unless you really do care about the intricately layered trifle of nonsense that is laughably referred to as the plot to Eastenders, or unless she has a deep and abiding interest in Steven Gerrard’s mystifying loss of form, stick to screwing each other. It will mean less hassle in the long run for both of you.
Chapter 6 – Men are like rubber bands
Men are NOT like rubber fucking bands! Men LIKE rubber bands, yes. Ask any man about this and he will wax lyrical about the first time he felt the joy of flicking a loop of brown rubber across the classroom, and into the unsuspecting face of the faux posh kid who’s mummy won’t let him mix with the boys from the council estate.
The only way this could remotely be considered true is if you are a woman. To them, men are indeed like rubber bands: to be stretched and twisted according to whatever passing whim they may have. To ensure I wasn’t brainwashed by this piece of feminist subterfuge, I hammered some nails into a plank of wood after I had finished it. With the sweat of manliness upon me, I continued reading.
Chapter 7 – Women are like waves
Only like the waves of nausea that creep over me every single time I hear two women discussing yeast infections.
Chapter 8 – Discovering our different emotional needs
This is a missed opportunity. He could have broken free of the mental chains his extended female menagerie has undoubtedly placed on him. He could have said that our emotional needs can pretty much be addressed by a selection of Playstation 3 games and the occasional viewing of a David Attenborough documentary. Instead, we get told that there are 12 different types of love and that we have to master all of them before we can be considered to be an evolved human being. Talk about overcomplicating an already difficult issue…
For the record, Men don’t have any trouble saying the words “I love you”. It’s just that it’s difficult to say it with a straight face when your girlfriend has just spent the previous half-hour making grunting noises interspersed with the occasional plea to be fucked. Why do you think men prefer to shag with the lights off?
Oh, and there is a mention of men as “Knights in shining armour”. That is the first recorded instance, and I hope the last, of a man using this ladywrong phrase.
Chapter 9 – How to avoid arguments
Have a sex change. Show me a world where men and women don’t argue and I’ll show you a world where one gender is completely under the control of the other. These days, men and women can be more or less equal. But they’re different. So they’ll disagree. And argue. And what’s more, no arguments mean no post-argument sex. I rest my case.
Chapter 10 – Scoring Points with the opposite sex
Oh, the poor bastard. It seems that this man has spent his entire married life with a woman who follows him round with a clipboard giving him marks out of ten depending on how much his every action shows his love for her. What in the name of Joseph’s underused cock is it with the female desire to give a point score to every aspect of a relationship?! If you’re happy, then enjoy it. If you’re not, then tell us. But please, whatever you do, stop acting like a judge at the Olympic Husbandry finals. If you want point scoring, then go watch Torvill and Dean. Otherwise, go and bitch about us to your friends in the pub toilets. You’re good at that.
Chapter 11 – How to Ask for support and get it
Or to put it another way, how to allow your girlfriend to dictate every aspect of your life. From what kind of clothes you wear to what kind of music you listen to; rest assured that your woman will want to change it all! I mean really, are there any women left in the world who don’t hear the sentence “Can I ask your advice?” as “Can you stick your nose into my affairs to an intolerable degree whilst making me feel like an emotionally stunted and inadequate little turd?”
Now, I’m not saying that there isn’t a place for emotional support in a relationship. That place is in the pub with our mates. Any advice can be sought at around 15 minutes before closing time, and you can be safe in the knowledge that all of you can pretend that you can’t remember the specifics of whatever it was thanks to excessive drunkenness!
Chapter 12 – Keeping the magic of love alive
This can be achieved by ignoring every single word of advice that the previous 11 chapters have given. Live your own lives as best you can. Make sure that you spend lots of time doing the things you want, and not compromising your ambitions in order to keep the peace. And always make sure that you both do whatever makes you happiest. That way, when you get together with your other half you will have plenty to talk at each other about whilst totally ignoring whatever the other person is saying.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Saturday, 9 August 2008
The Funniest Joke in History
These days, hardly anyone gets the joke and if I’m entirely honest? I can’t see the situation getting any better. History will, I suppose, say we were so sharp that we cut ourselves fatally. Assuming History even bothers to note the joke in the first place. It seems more people are missing the point each day, so who is to say that posterity will get even the faintest notion that Plato was the greatest satirist who ever lived?
My name, for what it is worth, is Lachesis. I may be one of the last men walking under the bronzed sky who remembers the laughter of the Symposium as Plato gave his first reading of Apology. I know for certain that no-one but me remains of those clever, desperate men who came up with the idea of using our respective gifts to both promote and defend the ideal of Athenian democracy after our city had lost so much in the ruinous war against Sparta. The times were dark (though not, I must concede, so dark as they are now) and we were by no means alone in fearing that the conquering Spartans would enslave and extinguish Athens and it’s culture in much the same way as they had done to the Messenians al those years ago. Armed resistance was not an option, and even if it had been I must confess, somewhat shamefacedly, that we would never have taken that option. Our talents lay in other arenas; those of philosophy, poetry, rhetoric, and politics.
You may very well snigger at that. And, in truth, I would not blame you for doing so. The last Athenian government did not, and they were perhaps the only ones who didn’t. The Spartan conquerors did, and it was that condescending laughter from them that spared our lives and allowed us to continue writing, adding to the great joke that would rescue democracy. As I have mentioned, the times were doom-laden and the city was rife with mutterings against the government who were to be the stewards of the fall of Athens. How, asked the mob, had the great Democracy which was the envy of cities all over Greece and beyond, been driven to the brink of defeat by a city of rapacious, barely civilised warriors whose barbarity would’ve shocked even barbarians? How had we not been able to lead the rest of Greece into the enlightened age that the fathers of Democracy had promised? Was this not a sign that Athens’ experiment had failed, and should be abandoned in favour of something more in line with the leaderships of their enemies? “A tyrant would never have allowed this to happen!” was a common enough cry in the streets, jostling for pre-eminence amongst others who favoured monarchies, oligarchies, and the like.
It was with this as our backdrop that we presented our counter-propaganda proposal to the Council of 500. Cratylus spoke first;
“My fellow citizens, on behalf of my comrades I thank you for gifting us your precious time. I swear that gift we have to offer in exchange is of an equal value to you.
You know (how can you not?) that the streets are awash with talk of abandoning democracy in the face of our most desolate hour. You know too that to do so would invite not just defeat, but ignominy that will echo down the ages. The Athenians will gain a reputation for high-minded talk when it suits them, and for abandoning any of the principles that we have tried to instruct the world in when things go against us. We share what is no doubt your view that even, in fact especially, in times such as these we must hold fast to the course set for us by Solon and by Ephialtes.
Yet you must also have arrived at the same conclusions that we have; that to try to force the mob to see that Democracy must be adhered to would be counter-productive. To enforce a measure by strength of arms and tell the people that it is for their own good? That would be folly on the scale of Midas!”
At this point, I confess to a certain watery feeling in my bowels. Judging by the angered expressions that peppered the council at that last remark of Cratylus’, almost a quarter of that august body did not think that such a thing would be folly in the least. I suppose that in any system of government, no matter what its overall virtues, there will always be those who will see those that oppose them as an implacable enemy. Furthermore, they see an enemy that can only be curbed with harsh words and brutal treatment in order to impose the ‘correct’ beliefs on them. Whilst I of course abhor the blood thirst of such men, I had no wish to be seen aligning myself directly against them at such a delicate juncture in our history. Cratylus continued;
“No, to win back the mob to acceptance the true ways of governance will require something quite different from the oppressive measures that our enemies of the Peloponnesus use to whip their people into obedience. We need to appeal to the hearts of our people.”
Cratylus paused, and allowed a half smile to slowly appear. This had the usual effect in that the council, even those still outraged by the implication that they were of a no better heart and morality than the Spartans who sought our destruction, quieted down and waited to see where these fine words were leading them.
“Fellow citizens, if I were to ask you who was the worst fruit of the Athenian tree, would you tell me ‘Peisistratus; that fellow was the rankest that ever there was’? Judging by your silence (and, if I may say so of such eminent men, your puzzlement) I would assume you think he is not.
Would you all cry “There have been none so foul in our history as Hippias! The cur betrayed us to Spartans and Persians for his own profit!”? Again, I would say that the answer would be no.
And why should that be? Why should these two vice-sodden men be counted only among the lower ranks of those who have done evil to our fair city? Fellow citizens, I think we all know the answer to that question. It is because we have the worst example of what Athens has to offer within our living memory, and so we have no reason to plunder tales of our ancestors to find our city’s darkest demon.
Who is it that I speak of? Why, I am sure that I do not even need to recount any of his infamy for you to know. The man who, in the name of Philosophy, filled the heads of the sons of our greatest citizens with blackened, charred obscenities. The man who stood by, smugly claiming that the attempted coup of his students was ‘no business of his’. The man who the mob would have torn to pieces with their bare hands once the depth of his venal, self-serving sophistry was revealed had he not beat a hasty retreat to Hades with the aid of a cup of Hemlock. Fellow citizens, I see by your faces that you know of whom I speak. But I ask of you, say his name to me so that we are all in agreement before my friends and I continue.”
Cratylus’ voice had strengthened and the rhythm of his words quickened as he approached this point of his speech. I could see the puzzlement that had been so impertinently mentioned begin to melt away and be replaced with savage amusement as Cratylus led them down a merry path to the name of the man who would have seen Athens fall to a tyranny worse even than the yoke of Sparta. As one, they answered his question;
“Socrates!”
Cratylus beamed at the council, as if they had just unpicked a riddle set by Apollo himself.
“Socrates. The pot-bellied, pig brained degenerate himself. Yes my fellow citizens, Socrates. Of whom the best that can be said about his teaching is that if he was filling a pupil’s arse with his cock then at least he wasn’t filling their hearts with horseshit”.
A few scandalised gasps at this (surely forced and faked for the benefit of reputations more than anything else), but mainly the council rumbled with what mirth could still be coaxed from a leadership staring into the abyss.
“But what about him, you may be asking yourselves. Who cares about a dead villain? What use is idle talk of a monster from the past when we now have other monsters on our doorstep? My fellow citizens, I shall presently give way to my friend Plato who will explain in words more apt than I just how we shall use Socrates. It will be a great irony my friends, for we shall be using the man who tried to sow the seeds for the death of democracy to ensure that it does not just weather the Spartan storm, but thrives!”
To his credit, he clearly didn’t expect applause as he gave way to Plato. As you may have gathered from his words, he was a great one for self-promotion through rhetoric, old Cratylus. We’d always assumed that was another joke; the loquacious Cratylus of Athens, direct descendant of that other Cratylus who renounced the spoken word and communicated only by pointing at words he’d drawn in the dust. His boy is one of Aristotle’s pupils now. I’d say his father did a good job with him, although he’s too serious by half; he thinks of the whole world as a logic puzzle that can never be solved. Anyway, please excuse an old man’s digressions. Cratylus swiftly gave way to Plato, allowing not one moment between the ending of his speech and the beginning of Plato’s so that the council could not interrupt the flow of what was being said.
Plato was an unusual man to be speaking to the council. He was making a name for himself as a poet and satirist in Athens, and was a young man at the time. He had spoken at the Symposium a few times, and even once at the Assembly. But never before the Council, though if he truly was nervous then he did not show it.
“Citizens of the Council, I thank you. Socrates and his teachings are a byword for greed, venality, treachery, and vice. No decree was required from any leading citizen to destroy his books after his trial; so complete was his fall from grace that even those few philosophers outside of Greece and Alexandria burnt such works of his that they had in their possession rather than risk his poison dripping into the ears of antiquity. Within a few more years it will be as if he had never existed, save as the punchline to a ribald cookhouse joke. I think we can all agree that this is a good thing, can we not?”
A sea of furiously nodding heads erupted at this. Plato nodded sagely; a good move, as the council always liked to hear from men who agreed with them.
“Yet although he is dead and his teachings anathema to all, we do not live in a city that is content with the Democracy that he tried so hard to destroy. Many are of the opinion that, although Socrates railed and raged against we democrats, his aim of getting rid of Democracy was not such a bad one. It was only that which he sought to replace it with (which was, as I hardly need remind you, a travesty of good governance with himself as a debauched and flaccid ‘Philosopher Prince’ at the titular head of such a state) which made him such a villain.
Citizens of the Council, I ask you this; would these people be so keen to abandon democracy to some lesser form of government if they thought that these other forms would have been Socrates’ final aim? I ask you to consider this; if the people of Athens felt that Socrates had been in favour of, perhaps, an Oligarchic government under the watch of his beady eyes? Or a tyranny? A monarchy perhaps? Can any of you imagine how utterly bankrupt something would become in the eyes of the mob of Athens if it was seen to be allied with the desires of Socrates himself?
If you will allow, I have taken the liberty of composing a satire taking this very notion as my starting point. In it, I have placed the honeyed and plausible words of those enemies of democracy in the mouth of Socrates himself. I have made him unrecognisable from the uncouth lout that we all know he was, and made him into a man who (if Athens did not know the truth of him) is a paragon of reason and intellect. And I have then made him speak approvingly of both those people and those ideas that run contrary to the survival of Athenian democracy. If I may…”
And Plato began to read. The smiles came quickly to the faces of the council, far quicker than they had during anything Cratylus said and quicker still than when it came to be my turn to speak to them. The laughs took longer, but slowly and inexorably they came. Plato was a writer of true genius; starting with a nod to the feigned ignorance that hid Socrates’ base cunning, he built up a verbal picture that was hilarious precisely due to its utterly bizarre nature. The replies to the charges brought against him by Anytus, Meletus, and Lycon were far from the incoherent vitriol that he had actually brought to bear. They were plausible sounding and had the ring of a deeper truth about them. But to be delivered by such a grotesque, darkly comic figure as Socrates would have left the listener in no doubt that these words, though they may seem soothing to a mind fogged with the terror of the oncoming Spartans, were nothing more than the lies of a traitor.
Plato gave way to rapturous applause as I came forward to outline to the Council just how we would use satires such as this to bolster the Athenian commitment to democracy. There were some on the council who disapproved of what we were proposing, feeling that it was little better than trickery on their part. They said that they had no wish to deceive the Athenians into backing Democracy. At the time, I was able to dismiss such concerns as the worrying of womanish old men (and being of no small comedic gifts myself, was able to do so whilst keeping even those who had objected smiling). With the benefit of hindsight, I am inclined to think that those womanish old men were the wisest people in the council. Ah, but regrets are the main coin of we who have seen all that they have sown grow into a bitter harvest. You will, I trust, forgive me for more digression from the main thrust of what I have to say, but I will remind you again; we were young. We were fiercely intelligent, and believed that we knew better than the old men of the Council. Whilst they had shepherded Athens’ democracy, we believed we would be its sheepdogs; fighting off the many wolves who would tear our flock apart. Now I am older and I recognise our naivety for what it truly was.
The Apology was read out across the city within a few days. Our allies too wished to take advantage of our propaganda, subtly altering here and there to ensure that their citizens too would get the joke; that anything championed by Socrates was a sure path to damnation and suffering. We all received the warm thanks of the council, Plato more so than anyone. Seemingly inspired by the use of Socrates as a Philosophical device, he wrote many more works designed to ridicule those who held views contrary to those of the greater body of the Assembly and Council; Crito saw Socrates arguing for justice from a prison cell, and caused hilarity when first read. Laches silenced those citizens who called for surrender to the Spartans, saying that perseverance in the face of fortitude was no courage at all. Other works such as these helped rally Athens to the common good of our Democracy.
And it was all for naught. Athens still fell, and the 30 Tyrants began their rule. We were fortunate that they cared little for our wordplay and linguistic games. So we wished to write comedies that glorified an old sot? As long as we contented ourselves with clever words that did not stray into politics too overtly, then we were left to our own devices. The Tyrants ruled in the name of their Spartan masters, and did so with no small degree of viciousness. Plato for his part revisited the Apology, rewriting some parts to make Socrates (for all his incalculable vices) seem morally superior to those people who now controlled our city. So subtle were the changes that they were not noticed by any of the Tyrants’ men until the whole city had heard the new version. Similar changes were put into all of his other works to that point. This Socrates, whilst still the epitome of all that could be wrong with Athens, was used to make the Tyrants and their masters seem even lower than he.
Plato’s words were far too clever by half for the Tyrants. The end of their reign was brought about in no small part by the democratic fervour whipped up by his seemingly endless river of witty, inventive satires that helped make the people unafraid of their bullying masters. Once such a mindset had been forged, the Tyrants were doomed to meet their end.
After that, Athens was free from the dominion of anyone but Athenians. Plato had no reason to continue his polemics and savage attacks on the enemies of democracy, and he began gradually to work on matters that were closer to his actual philosophical interests; the cosmological musings of Empedocles and Protagoras were his chief passions. However, he still held bitterness in his heart for the militarism and vicious arrogance of the Tyrants, and for the many still-extant tyrannies that pock-marked Greece like boils on a Persian Princess. So he dusted off Socrates-as-literary-device one final time, and wrote a scathing rebuke of those who believed that a perfect state involved having one man sat at its head; The Republic.
Had Plato been content to read it in his newly founded Academy, then no doubt things would have ended there. But he was growing proud as well as old, and the acclaim afforded to him by his fellow Athenians was not enough for him. He wanted universal recognition of his gifts, and so he charged his Academy students to take Republic back to their homelands so that other cities would hear of and appreciate his work.
Unfortunately, Plato’s naivety had not shrunk in proportion to the growth of his ego. What was recognisable as satire to even the most ignorant Athenian was less so to a Persian, or a Syracusian, or even someone so near as a Corinthian. Where we saw the morally bankrupt words of a cunning fool, they saw the well reasoned arguments of an intelligent man. What we knew to be Socrates’ hack-Sophism was translated by Plato’s beautifully written comedy into compelling philosophy.
At first, we all thought little of this. We didn’t care whether more ignorant cities missed the point; that gave us one more thing to laugh at them for. In our hatred of the arrogance of our conquerors, it appears that we had allowed ourselves to sink into the arrogance of the conquered, in that we sneered at any and every man who was not an Athenian. We had lost because we were not as obsessed with force of arms as these barely-cultured Greeks surrounding us were. So it therefore followed that we Athenians were the most cultured, and the most concerned with matters of intellect out of all the cities of Greece. I suppose that such was the puncture to our armour of pride caused by our defeat against Sparta that we thought along such lines purely as a method of preserving our Athenian identities. But then again, maybe I’m just making excuses. For whatever the reason, we allowed the misconceptions to spread unchallenged for almost 15 years.
By this time, there were few outside of Athens who thought of Socrates as he really was. From villages on the highest mountains to colonies across the bronze sea, everyone spoke of the erudition and common sense of Socrates. Plato has recently tried to correct this misconception, charging one of his finest pupils to counter the fallacious Socratic thought that has swept the world. But it seems that this Aristotle is as much concerned with chiding his teacher for his pride as he is for ending the insidious spread of the venomous teachings that Plato placed in the mouth of Socrates. Disheartened and ashamed, Plato writes little these days. He seems tired, too tired to even attempt to correct the mistake that is starting to see works of satire being treated with the utmost po-faced seriousness by men who must surely lack a developed sense of humour.
I too feel I can do little to combat this monster of Plato’s creation. I am merely a poet whose works number less than 30, none of which can even be quoted now even though the most recent was written less than 2 years ago (and I would be lying if I said that that did not sting my soul more than a little). This, then, is my attempt. Not for me the duplicity and trickery that Plato first used, and which now seems to be getting compounded by Aristotle. No, I shall settle on what I now believe we should have stuck to in the first place. I have told you the truth. Though if Plato is as good a writer as I believe he is, much good it will do you. Soon the joke will become the truth. And if anyone actually tried to apply the thoughts and ideals outlined in, say, Republic? Then I truly don’t believe that anyone will be laughing.
My name, for what it is worth, is Lachesis. I may be one of the last men walking under the bronzed sky who remembers the laughter of the Symposium as Plato gave his first reading of Apology. I know for certain that no-one but me remains of those clever, desperate men who came up with the idea of using our respective gifts to both promote and defend the ideal of Athenian democracy after our city had lost so much in the ruinous war against Sparta. The times were dark (though not, I must concede, so dark as they are now) and we were by no means alone in fearing that the conquering Spartans would enslave and extinguish Athens and it’s culture in much the same way as they had done to the Messenians al those years ago. Armed resistance was not an option, and even if it had been I must confess, somewhat shamefacedly, that we would never have taken that option. Our talents lay in other arenas; those of philosophy, poetry, rhetoric, and politics.
You may very well snigger at that. And, in truth, I would not blame you for doing so. The last Athenian government did not, and they were perhaps the only ones who didn’t. The Spartan conquerors did, and it was that condescending laughter from them that spared our lives and allowed us to continue writing, adding to the great joke that would rescue democracy. As I have mentioned, the times were doom-laden and the city was rife with mutterings against the government who were to be the stewards of the fall of Athens. How, asked the mob, had the great Democracy which was the envy of cities all over Greece and beyond, been driven to the brink of defeat by a city of rapacious, barely civilised warriors whose barbarity would’ve shocked even barbarians? How had we not been able to lead the rest of Greece into the enlightened age that the fathers of Democracy had promised? Was this not a sign that Athens’ experiment had failed, and should be abandoned in favour of something more in line with the leaderships of their enemies? “A tyrant would never have allowed this to happen!” was a common enough cry in the streets, jostling for pre-eminence amongst others who favoured monarchies, oligarchies, and the like.
It was with this as our backdrop that we presented our counter-propaganda proposal to the Council of 500. Cratylus spoke first;
“My fellow citizens, on behalf of my comrades I thank you for gifting us your precious time. I swear that gift we have to offer in exchange is of an equal value to you.
You know (how can you not?) that the streets are awash with talk of abandoning democracy in the face of our most desolate hour. You know too that to do so would invite not just defeat, but ignominy that will echo down the ages. The Athenians will gain a reputation for high-minded talk when it suits them, and for abandoning any of the principles that we have tried to instruct the world in when things go against us. We share what is no doubt your view that even, in fact especially, in times such as these we must hold fast to the course set for us by Solon and by Ephialtes.
Yet you must also have arrived at the same conclusions that we have; that to try to force the mob to see that Democracy must be adhered to would be counter-productive. To enforce a measure by strength of arms and tell the people that it is for their own good? That would be folly on the scale of Midas!”
At this point, I confess to a certain watery feeling in my bowels. Judging by the angered expressions that peppered the council at that last remark of Cratylus’, almost a quarter of that august body did not think that such a thing would be folly in the least. I suppose that in any system of government, no matter what its overall virtues, there will always be those who will see those that oppose them as an implacable enemy. Furthermore, they see an enemy that can only be curbed with harsh words and brutal treatment in order to impose the ‘correct’ beliefs on them. Whilst I of course abhor the blood thirst of such men, I had no wish to be seen aligning myself directly against them at such a delicate juncture in our history. Cratylus continued;
“No, to win back the mob to acceptance the true ways of governance will require something quite different from the oppressive measures that our enemies of the Peloponnesus use to whip their people into obedience. We need to appeal to the hearts of our people.”
Cratylus paused, and allowed a half smile to slowly appear. This had the usual effect in that the council, even those still outraged by the implication that they were of a no better heart and morality than the Spartans who sought our destruction, quieted down and waited to see where these fine words were leading them.
“Fellow citizens, if I were to ask you who was the worst fruit of the Athenian tree, would you tell me ‘Peisistratus; that fellow was the rankest that ever there was’? Judging by your silence (and, if I may say so of such eminent men, your puzzlement) I would assume you think he is not.
Would you all cry “There have been none so foul in our history as Hippias! The cur betrayed us to Spartans and Persians for his own profit!”? Again, I would say that the answer would be no.
And why should that be? Why should these two vice-sodden men be counted only among the lower ranks of those who have done evil to our fair city? Fellow citizens, I think we all know the answer to that question. It is because we have the worst example of what Athens has to offer within our living memory, and so we have no reason to plunder tales of our ancestors to find our city’s darkest demon.
Who is it that I speak of? Why, I am sure that I do not even need to recount any of his infamy for you to know. The man who, in the name of Philosophy, filled the heads of the sons of our greatest citizens with blackened, charred obscenities. The man who stood by, smugly claiming that the attempted coup of his students was ‘no business of his’. The man who the mob would have torn to pieces with their bare hands once the depth of his venal, self-serving sophistry was revealed had he not beat a hasty retreat to Hades with the aid of a cup of Hemlock. Fellow citizens, I see by your faces that you know of whom I speak. But I ask of you, say his name to me so that we are all in agreement before my friends and I continue.”
Cratylus’ voice had strengthened and the rhythm of his words quickened as he approached this point of his speech. I could see the puzzlement that had been so impertinently mentioned begin to melt away and be replaced with savage amusement as Cratylus led them down a merry path to the name of the man who would have seen Athens fall to a tyranny worse even than the yoke of Sparta. As one, they answered his question;
“Socrates!”
Cratylus beamed at the council, as if they had just unpicked a riddle set by Apollo himself.
“Socrates. The pot-bellied, pig brained degenerate himself. Yes my fellow citizens, Socrates. Of whom the best that can be said about his teaching is that if he was filling a pupil’s arse with his cock then at least he wasn’t filling their hearts with horseshit”.
A few scandalised gasps at this (surely forced and faked for the benefit of reputations more than anything else), but mainly the council rumbled with what mirth could still be coaxed from a leadership staring into the abyss.
“But what about him, you may be asking yourselves. Who cares about a dead villain? What use is idle talk of a monster from the past when we now have other monsters on our doorstep? My fellow citizens, I shall presently give way to my friend Plato who will explain in words more apt than I just how we shall use Socrates. It will be a great irony my friends, for we shall be using the man who tried to sow the seeds for the death of democracy to ensure that it does not just weather the Spartan storm, but thrives!”
To his credit, he clearly didn’t expect applause as he gave way to Plato. As you may have gathered from his words, he was a great one for self-promotion through rhetoric, old Cratylus. We’d always assumed that was another joke; the loquacious Cratylus of Athens, direct descendant of that other Cratylus who renounced the spoken word and communicated only by pointing at words he’d drawn in the dust. His boy is one of Aristotle’s pupils now. I’d say his father did a good job with him, although he’s too serious by half; he thinks of the whole world as a logic puzzle that can never be solved. Anyway, please excuse an old man’s digressions. Cratylus swiftly gave way to Plato, allowing not one moment between the ending of his speech and the beginning of Plato’s so that the council could not interrupt the flow of what was being said.
Plato was an unusual man to be speaking to the council. He was making a name for himself as a poet and satirist in Athens, and was a young man at the time. He had spoken at the Symposium a few times, and even once at the Assembly. But never before the Council, though if he truly was nervous then he did not show it.
“Citizens of the Council, I thank you. Socrates and his teachings are a byword for greed, venality, treachery, and vice. No decree was required from any leading citizen to destroy his books after his trial; so complete was his fall from grace that even those few philosophers outside of Greece and Alexandria burnt such works of his that they had in their possession rather than risk his poison dripping into the ears of antiquity. Within a few more years it will be as if he had never existed, save as the punchline to a ribald cookhouse joke. I think we can all agree that this is a good thing, can we not?”
A sea of furiously nodding heads erupted at this. Plato nodded sagely; a good move, as the council always liked to hear from men who agreed with them.
“Yet although he is dead and his teachings anathema to all, we do not live in a city that is content with the Democracy that he tried so hard to destroy. Many are of the opinion that, although Socrates railed and raged against we democrats, his aim of getting rid of Democracy was not such a bad one. It was only that which he sought to replace it with (which was, as I hardly need remind you, a travesty of good governance with himself as a debauched and flaccid ‘Philosopher Prince’ at the titular head of such a state) which made him such a villain.
Citizens of the Council, I ask you this; would these people be so keen to abandon democracy to some lesser form of government if they thought that these other forms would have been Socrates’ final aim? I ask you to consider this; if the people of Athens felt that Socrates had been in favour of, perhaps, an Oligarchic government under the watch of his beady eyes? Or a tyranny? A monarchy perhaps? Can any of you imagine how utterly bankrupt something would become in the eyes of the mob of Athens if it was seen to be allied with the desires of Socrates himself?
If you will allow, I have taken the liberty of composing a satire taking this very notion as my starting point. In it, I have placed the honeyed and plausible words of those enemies of democracy in the mouth of Socrates himself. I have made him unrecognisable from the uncouth lout that we all know he was, and made him into a man who (if Athens did not know the truth of him) is a paragon of reason and intellect. And I have then made him speak approvingly of both those people and those ideas that run contrary to the survival of Athenian democracy. If I may…”
And Plato began to read. The smiles came quickly to the faces of the council, far quicker than they had during anything Cratylus said and quicker still than when it came to be my turn to speak to them. The laughs took longer, but slowly and inexorably they came. Plato was a writer of true genius; starting with a nod to the feigned ignorance that hid Socrates’ base cunning, he built up a verbal picture that was hilarious precisely due to its utterly bizarre nature. The replies to the charges brought against him by Anytus, Meletus, and Lycon were far from the incoherent vitriol that he had actually brought to bear. They were plausible sounding and had the ring of a deeper truth about them. But to be delivered by such a grotesque, darkly comic figure as Socrates would have left the listener in no doubt that these words, though they may seem soothing to a mind fogged with the terror of the oncoming Spartans, were nothing more than the lies of a traitor.
Plato gave way to rapturous applause as I came forward to outline to the Council just how we would use satires such as this to bolster the Athenian commitment to democracy. There were some on the council who disapproved of what we were proposing, feeling that it was little better than trickery on their part. They said that they had no wish to deceive the Athenians into backing Democracy. At the time, I was able to dismiss such concerns as the worrying of womanish old men (and being of no small comedic gifts myself, was able to do so whilst keeping even those who had objected smiling). With the benefit of hindsight, I am inclined to think that those womanish old men were the wisest people in the council. Ah, but regrets are the main coin of we who have seen all that they have sown grow into a bitter harvest. You will, I trust, forgive me for more digression from the main thrust of what I have to say, but I will remind you again; we were young. We were fiercely intelligent, and believed that we knew better than the old men of the Council. Whilst they had shepherded Athens’ democracy, we believed we would be its sheepdogs; fighting off the many wolves who would tear our flock apart. Now I am older and I recognise our naivety for what it truly was.
The Apology was read out across the city within a few days. Our allies too wished to take advantage of our propaganda, subtly altering here and there to ensure that their citizens too would get the joke; that anything championed by Socrates was a sure path to damnation and suffering. We all received the warm thanks of the council, Plato more so than anyone. Seemingly inspired by the use of Socrates as a Philosophical device, he wrote many more works designed to ridicule those who held views contrary to those of the greater body of the Assembly and Council; Crito saw Socrates arguing for justice from a prison cell, and caused hilarity when first read. Laches silenced those citizens who called for surrender to the Spartans, saying that perseverance in the face of fortitude was no courage at all. Other works such as these helped rally Athens to the common good of our Democracy.
And it was all for naught. Athens still fell, and the 30 Tyrants began their rule. We were fortunate that they cared little for our wordplay and linguistic games. So we wished to write comedies that glorified an old sot? As long as we contented ourselves with clever words that did not stray into politics too overtly, then we were left to our own devices. The Tyrants ruled in the name of their Spartan masters, and did so with no small degree of viciousness. Plato for his part revisited the Apology, rewriting some parts to make Socrates (for all his incalculable vices) seem morally superior to those people who now controlled our city. So subtle were the changes that they were not noticed by any of the Tyrants’ men until the whole city had heard the new version. Similar changes were put into all of his other works to that point. This Socrates, whilst still the epitome of all that could be wrong with Athens, was used to make the Tyrants and their masters seem even lower than he.
Plato’s words were far too clever by half for the Tyrants. The end of their reign was brought about in no small part by the democratic fervour whipped up by his seemingly endless river of witty, inventive satires that helped make the people unafraid of their bullying masters. Once such a mindset had been forged, the Tyrants were doomed to meet their end.
After that, Athens was free from the dominion of anyone but Athenians. Plato had no reason to continue his polemics and savage attacks on the enemies of democracy, and he began gradually to work on matters that were closer to his actual philosophical interests; the cosmological musings of Empedocles and Protagoras were his chief passions. However, he still held bitterness in his heart for the militarism and vicious arrogance of the Tyrants, and for the many still-extant tyrannies that pock-marked Greece like boils on a Persian Princess. So he dusted off Socrates-as-literary-device one final time, and wrote a scathing rebuke of those who believed that a perfect state involved having one man sat at its head; The Republic.
Had Plato been content to read it in his newly founded Academy, then no doubt things would have ended there. But he was growing proud as well as old, and the acclaim afforded to him by his fellow Athenians was not enough for him. He wanted universal recognition of his gifts, and so he charged his Academy students to take Republic back to their homelands so that other cities would hear of and appreciate his work.
Unfortunately, Plato’s naivety had not shrunk in proportion to the growth of his ego. What was recognisable as satire to even the most ignorant Athenian was less so to a Persian, or a Syracusian, or even someone so near as a Corinthian. Where we saw the morally bankrupt words of a cunning fool, they saw the well reasoned arguments of an intelligent man. What we knew to be Socrates’ hack-Sophism was translated by Plato’s beautifully written comedy into compelling philosophy.
At first, we all thought little of this. We didn’t care whether more ignorant cities missed the point; that gave us one more thing to laugh at them for. In our hatred of the arrogance of our conquerors, it appears that we had allowed ourselves to sink into the arrogance of the conquered, in that we sneered at any and every man who was not an Athenian. We had lost because we were not as obsessed with force of arms as these barely-cultured Greeks surrounding us were. So it therefore followed that we Athenians were the most cultured, and the most concerned with matters of intellect out of all the cities of Greece. I suppose that such was the puncture to our armour of pride caused by our defeat against Sparta that we thought along such lines purely as a method of preserving our Athenian identities. But then again, maybe I’m just making excuses. For whatever the reason, we allowed the misconceptions to spread unchallenged for almost 15 years.
By this time, there were few outside of Athens who thought of Socrates as he really was. From villages on the highest mountains to colonies across the bronze sea, everyone spoke of the erudition and common sense of Socrates. Plato has recently tried to correct this misconception, charging one of his finest pupils to counter the fallacious Socratic thought that has swept the world. But it seems that this Aristotle is as much concerned with chiding his teacher for his pride as he is for ending the insidious spread of the venomous teachings that Plato placed in the mouth of Socrates. Disheartened and ashamed, Plato writes little these days. He seems tired, too tired to even attempt to correct the mistake that is starting to see works of satire being treated with the utmost po-faced seriousness by men who must surely lack a developed sense of humour.
I too feel I can do little to combat this monster of Plato’s creation. I am merely a poet whose works number less than 30, none of which can even be quoted now even though the most recent was written less than 2 years ago (and I would be lying if I said that that did not sting my soul more than a little). This, then, is my attempt. Not for me the duplicity and trickery that Plato first used, and which now seems to be getting compounded by Aristotle. No, I shall settle on what I now believe we should have stuck to in the first place. I have told you the truth. Though if Plato is as good a writer as I believe he is, much good it will do you. Soon the joke will become the truth. And if anyone actually tried to apply the thoughts and ideals outlined in, say, Republic? Then I truly don’t believe that anyone will be laughing.
Friday, 4 July 2008
What do Beans Mean?
Someone challenged me to write a short story about cannibals and a giant tin of baked beans. So I did. Sort of.
The first thing that Jamie became aware of was the unpleasant smell and sensation emanating from and focused around his trousers. It says much about the strange workings of the human brain that his first conscious thought was that of disgust; at some point between passing out in what he presumed to be a drugged haze and now, Jamie had shat himself. And he was mortified as to what his companion might think. Even as the urgent demands of his recent memories began to make themselves heard, and he was reminded of some of the rather more excellent reasons to feel upset, the nagging feeling that he had somehow rendered himself less manly stayed with him.
“Beenz meenz Heyenz!”
The words were barked out a few feet in front of Jamie. Although fear (and self loathing) had kept his eyes closed, his curiosity (which had no times for faeces-related self pity) was piqued by hearing this vaguely familiar phrase in this unexpected context. That same curiosity fought a brief battle with his mewling fear, was victorious, and forced Jamie’s eyes open as its prize.
“Beenz meenz Heyenz!” said the ragged, rangy, filthy figure on the left, presumably to return the…greeting? Let’s go with greeting…to return the greeting of the equally dishevelled and marginally more hairy man on the right. It was difficult to make out much more detail than that due to the opaque cloth that had been used to blindfold him; it was night now, and the two men were stood in front of a large fire. Had Jamie been a little less concerned with the smell of shit, and a little more anxious to find out just what was happening, he might have wondered a little more about the 10 foot tall metal tube sat in the centre of the fire. He would certainly have been professionally intrigued by the scratchily written “Heyenz!!” that had been scored into the metal tube over and over again.
Instead, his brain picked this moment to provide him with a full summary of his current situation.
The field work for his Anthropology doctorate was, basically, not going very well. As a lover of the easy life, Jamie had thought that studying some of the remote settlements of the Appalachian Mountains was a stroke of genius. Not only were these hillbilly hamlets relatively untouched by academia (thus guaranteeing him publication once he’d completed his thesis), but he wasn’t too far away from the creature comforts of the big city. He’d only need to endure one night of camping. Two at the most. And he’d be hailed as the first man to try and untangle the anthropological roots of the modern redneck. That he had an attractive undergraduate with him on the trip made it all the sweeter. He may be an overweight, prematurely bald, middle aged man with a scattered brain and questionable hygiene, but like all men he was convinced that any woman who spent enough time with him would find herself unable to resist his obvious charms.
This last thought, having nagged at him for a short while, kicked his conscience back into gear; where the hell was Lucy? They had both been sat in one of the 5 desolate looking shacks that made up this hillbilly hell when he had began to feel woozy. He’d knocked back his draught of moonshine (to his hosts obvious delight; Jamie had always prided himself on being able to relate to the lesser peoples he studied), whilst Lucy had looked on smiling. She had refused hers, which had annoyed Jamie no end; she’d NEVER make a decent anthropologist in his opinion. Too stand offish, and unwilling to get her hands dirty. Too concerned with keeping up appearances, thought the man who was taking time out of contemplating his imminent doom to fret about having shit in his trousers.
From behind him, a hoarse female voice erupted;
“You shower of fucking CUNTS! People know we’re here! They’ll come looking for us, and then you hillbilly ARSEHOLES will be FUCKED!”
Said pair of hillbillies made a strangled, snickering noise at this outburst, which continued without hesitation, repetition, or deviation regardless of the men’s seeming amusement at it. Jamie tried to turn his head. His failure to do so gave him his first clue that, just maybe, he was bound and gagged. In fact, this was a perfect opportunity to use the words “trussed up like a turkey”. Perhaps Jamie’s brain was being kind to him by not providing this alarming turn of phrase; he would then have had no choice but to consider what happens to turkeys once they’re trussed up, and then his last few minutes on earth would’ve been even more horrifying than they actually were.
He started to half-heartedly struggle, but after a few ineffectual moments, he instead began to cry. This seemed to break Lucy’s concentration from her efforts to break the world record for the longest uninterrupted stream of abuse.
“Jamie? JAMIE! Are you awake? Can you hear me?”
He paused in his weeping, strained to turn his head properly to see her through his makeshift blindfold, failed, nodded an acknowledgement, and then he carried on with the important business of crying.
Unfortunately, this also seemed to attract the attention of the two men. He felt rough hands on his face, and the blindfold and gag were pulled away.
“Izhee ruddy fur tost?‘
”Ah reckun.”
And with that, the hairier of the two hawked up a gobbet of phlegm. He did so in truly epic style, spending almost 20 seconds snorting and clearing his tubes before, satisfied with the mouthful he had acquired, he spat in onto the ground next to Jamie, where it landed with an audible thwack.
Jamie became aware of some movement around the edge of the fire, He could make out the hunched, ungainly shapes of what he assumed were the other villagers. Something like 15 to 20 people were beginning to gather, seemingly only showing their faces after hearing the apocalyptic spit of what, had he asked her, Lucy would have identified as the Head Hillbilly.
He wouldn’t have asked her, even if his throat wasn’t dry and parched. Because right now, he had finally noticed the enormous steel cylinder and the fire. He had also noticed the steam rising from the top of the cylinder. And, now that he REALLY concentrated, the bubbling noise coming from within. Despite himself, and regardless of the fact that he estimated that he already voided himself completely, he shat himself a little more.
Lucy, having remained conscious for the 4 hours of Jamie’s drugged sleep, was already well aware of the contents of the vast tin can. She’d watched the 5 hillbilly women fill it with pail after pail of water. They had dumped handfuls of what might have been either beans or seeds in there as well. Then they’d lit the fire and waited. She may only have been a 1st year student, but she didn’t need any sort of degree to speculate on just what these grinning, moonshine-swilling savages had lined up for her. As such, she spent most of her time bellowing insults and venom at the increasingly amused rednecks. This suited her just fine, because whilst they were amused, they also assumed she was expending all of her energy on impotent fury. This further meant that they hadn’t noticed her free herself from her bonds, or that she was tensed and ready to grab whichever one of their captors came anywhere near her.
Disappointingly, they were concentrating entirely on Jamie. The two men hoisted him up and carried him toward the tin can. Her eyesight wasn’t great without her glasses, so she couldn’t quite make out the “Heyenz!” scrawlings on its surface. Jamie, however, could. He could also hear the low murmuring of the crowd that was now gathered. “Been zontost…Been zontost…Been zontost”. Initially with some solemnity, but with a rising undercurrent of excitement as the two men brought Jamie closed to the tin can, the crowd chanted in unison.
Lucy was in a dilemma. She could, at any moment, make a run for it. All eyes were focused on the shaking corpulence that was Jamie (quite a few noses were too, even through the sour stench of redneck sweat).She knew the trail they’d taken to get here, and she was confident she could get back to the hired pickup within a few hours. She was young, fit, and could run at a decent speed even without the incentive of not being killed and eaten by morons. But what about Jamie? Okay, so he had treated her as a glorified note taker, and if his hand had “accidentally” brushed against her arse or her chest once more, then she would’ve probably killed him herself and cheated the cannibals out of a hearty, if somewhat fatty meal.
Fortunately for her, though not for him, the decision was taken out of her hands.The men put Jamie down, and the senior hairy bastard raised his hands aloft. The crowd went suddenly silent.
“Woss Beenz meen?!” was his shouted question.
“BEENZ MEENZ HEYENZ!!” came the bellowed reply from the crowd.
This was quickly taken up as a chant by the assembled hillbillies. As they gleefully yelled their bastardised slogan, the two men once again hoisted Jamie up, and took him toward the enormous tin can.
For his part, Jamie had time for two final thoughts. His second-to-final thought, he was pleased to note, spoke volumes of his dedication to his discipline; he wondered what had led this isolated hamlet to set up what appeared to be a bizarre, cannibalistic cargo cult. Why were they all so entranced by an advertising slogan from 20 years ago? What made them ritualistically worship a vast idol representing a tin of beans? He would love to spend more time trying to unpick the threads of this mystery, but time was something that was in diminishing supply.
His final thought, as he was hurled into the boiling mass of water, herbs, and beans amidst the whooping and hooting of the crowd was a certain satisfaction that the hot water would at least clean the shit off his bottom. “Because no-one wants to die an undignified death” he thought, as his eyes melted from their sockets and his organs burst inside him.
As the crowd hollered their approval and their bellies gurgled in anticipation, there was no attention paid at all to the Lucy-less area of the enclosure where the two had been tied up. She had made her decision to make a run for it just before poor Jamie was sent fatally into the beans. It was over 40 minutes before her absence was noticed, and by the time they started their pursuit, she was almost back at the car. She had driven almost 70 miles away before she saw a billboard advertising Heinz beans.
The police were puzzled as to why she was screaming, laughing, and crying at the same time when they found her.
The first thing that Jamie became aware of was the unpleasant smell and sensation emanating from and focused around his trousers. It says much about the strange workings of the human brain that his first conscious thought was that of disgust; at some point between passing out in what he presumed to be a drugged haze and now, Jamie had shat himself. And he was mortified as to what his companion might think. Even as the urgent demands of his recent memories began to make themselves heard, and he was reminded of some of the rather more excellent reasons to feel upset, the nagging feeling that he had somehow rendered himself less manly stayed with him.
“Beenz meenz Heyenz!”
The words were barked out a few feet in front of Jamie. Although fear (and self loathing) had kept his eyes closed, his curiosity (which had no times for faeces-related self pity) was piqued by hearing this vaguely familiar phrase in this unexpected context. That same curiosity fought a brief battle with his mewling fear, was victorious, and forced Jamie’s eyes open as its prize.
“Beenz meenz Heyenz!” said the ragged, rangy, filthy figure on the left, presumably to return the…greeting? Let’s go with greeting…to return the greeting of the equally dishevelled and marginally more hairy man on the right. It was difficult to make out much more detail than that due to the opaque cloth that had been used to blindfold him; it was night now, and the two men were stood in front of a large fire. Had Jamie been a little less concerned with the smell of shit, and a little more anxious to find out just what was happening, he might have wondered a little more about the 10 foot tall metal tube sat in the centre of the fire. He would certainly have been professionally intrigued by the scratchily written “Heyenz!!” that had been scored into the metal tube over and over again.
Instead, his brain picked this moment to provide him with a full summary of his current situation.
The field work for his Anthropology doctorate was, basically, not going very well. As a lover of the easy life, Jamie had thought that studying some of the remote settlements of the Appalachian Mountains was a stroke of genius. Not only were these hillbilly hamlets relatively untouched by academia (thus guaranteeing him publication once he’d completed his thesis), but he wasn’t too far away from the creature comforts of the big city. He’d only need to endure one night of camping. Two at the most. And he’d be hailed as the first man to try and untangle the anthropological roots of the modern redneck. That he had an attractive undergraduate with him on the trip made it all the sweeter. He may be an overweight, prematurely bald, middle aged man with a scattered brain and questionable hygiene, but like all men he was convinced that any woman who spent enough time with him would find herself unable to resist his obvious charms.
This last thought, having nagged at him for a short while, kicked his conscience back into gear; where the hell was Lucy? They had both been sat in one of the 5 desolate looking shacks that made up this hillbilly hell when he had began to feel woozy. He’d knocked back his draught of moonshine (to his hosts obvious delight; Jamie had always prided himself on being able to relate to the lesser peoples he studied), whilst Lucy had looked on smiling. She had refused hers, which had annoyed Jamie no end; she’d NEVER make a decent anthropologist in his opinion. Too stand offish, and unwilling to get her hands dirty. Too concerned with keeping up appearances, thought the man who was taking time out of contemplating his imminent doom to fret about having shit in his trousers.
From behind him, a hoarse female voice erupted;
“You shower of fucking CUNTS! People know we’re here! They’ll come looking for us, and then you hillbilly ARSEHOLES will be FUCKED!”
Said pair of hillbillies made a strangled, snickering noise at this outburst, which continued without hesitation, repetition, or deviation regardless of the men’s seeming amusement at it. Jamie tried to turn his head. His failure to do so gave him his first clue that, just maybe, he was bound and gagged. In fact, this was a perfect opportunity to use the words “trussed up like a turkey”. Perhaps Jamie’s brain was being kind to him by not providing this alarming turn of phrase; he would then have had no choice but to consider what happens to turkeys once they’re trussed up, and then his last few minutes on earth would’ve been even more horrifying than they actually were.
He started to half-heartedly struggle, but after a few ineffectual moments, he instead began to cry. This seemed to break Lucy’s concentration from her efforts to break the world record for the longest uninterrupted stream of abuse.
“Jamie? JAMIE! Are you awake? Can you hear me?”
He paused in his weeping, strained to turn his head properly to see her through his makeshift blindfold, failed, nodded an acknowledgement, and then he carried on with the important business of crying.
Unfortunately, this also seemed to attract the attention of the two men. He felt rough hands on his face, and the blindfold and gag were pulled away.
“Izhee ruddy fur tost?‘
”Ah reckun.”
And with that, the hairier of the two hawked up a gobbet of phlegm. He did so in truly epic style, spending almost 20 seconds snorting and clearing his tubes before, satisfied with the mouthful he had acquired, he spat in onto the ground next to Jamie, where it landed with an audible thwack.
Jamie became aware of some movement around the edge of the fire, He could make out the hunched, ungainly shapes of what he assumed were the other villagers. Something like 15 to 20 people were beginning to gather, seemingly only showing their faces after hearing the apocalyptic spit of what, had he asked her, Lucy would have identified as the Head Hillbilly.
He wouldn’t have asked her, even if his throat wasn’t dry and parched. Because right now, he had finally noticed the enormous steel cylinder and the fire. He had also noticed the steam rising from the top of the cylinder. And, now that he REALLY concentrated, the bubbling noise coming from within. Despite himself, and regardless of the fact that he estimated that he already voided himself completely, he shat himself a little more.
Lucy, having remained conscious for the 4 hours of Jamie’s drugged sleep, was already well aware of the contents of the vast tin can. She’d watched the 5 hillbilly women fill it with pail after pail of water. They had dumped handfuls of what might have been either beans or seeds in there as well. Then they’d lit the fire and waited. She may only have been a 1st year student, but she didn’t need any sort of degree to speculate on just what these grinning, moonshine-swilling savages had lined up for her. As such, she spent most of her time bellowing insults and venom at the increasingly amused rednecks. This suited her just fine, because whilst they were amused, they also assumed she was expending all of her energy on impotent fury. This further meant that they hadn’t noticed her free herself from her bonds, or that she was tensed and ready to grab whichever one of their captors came anywhere near her.
Disappointingly, they were concentrating entirely on Jamie. The two men hoisted him up and carried him toward the tin can. Her eyesight wasn’t great without her glasses, so she couldn’t quite make out the “Heyenz!” scrawlings on its surface. Jamie, however, could. He could also hear the low murmuring of the crowd that was now gathered. “Been zontost…Been zontost…Been zontost”. Initially with some solemnity, but with a rising undercurrent of excitement as the two men brought Jamie closed to the tin can, the crowd chanted in unison.
Lucy was in a dilemma. She could, at any moment, make a run for it. All eyes were focused on the shaking corpulence that was Jamie (quite a few noses were too, even through the sour stench of redneck sweat).She knew the trail they’d taken to get here, and she was confident she could get back to the hired pickup within a few hours. She was young, fit, and could run at a decent speed even without the incentive of not being killed and eaten by morons. But what about Jamie? Okay, so he had treated her as a glorified note taker, and if his hand had “accidentally” brushed against her arse or her chest once more, then she would’ve probably killed him herself and cheated the cannibals out of a hearty, if somewhat fatty meal.
Fortunately for her, though not for him, the decision was taken out of her hands.The men put Jamie down, and the senior hairy bastard raised his hands aloft. The crowd went suddenly silent.
“Woss Beenz meen?!” was his shouted question.
“BEENZ MEENZ HEYENZ!!” came the bellowed reply from the crowd.
This was quickly taken up as a chant by the assembled hillbillies. As they gleefully yelled their bastardised slogan, the two men once again hoisted Jamie up, and took him toward the enormous tin can.
For his part, Jamie had time for two final thoughts. His second-to-final thought, he was pleased to note, spoke volumes of his dedication to his discipline; he wondered what had led this isolated hamlet to set up what appeared to be a bizarre, cannibalistic cargo cult. Why were they all so entranced by an advertising slogan from 20 years ago? What made them ritualistically worship a vast idol representing a tin of beans? He would love to spend more time trying to unpick the threads of this mystery, but time was something that was in diminishing supply.
His final thought, as he was hurled into the boiling mass of water, herbs, and beans amidst the whooping and hooting of the crowd was a certain satisfaction that the hot water would at least clean the shit off his bottom. “Because no-one wants to die an undignified death” he thought, as his eyes melted from their sockets and his organs burst inside him.
As the crowd hollered their approval and their bellies gurgled in anticipation, there was no attention paid at all to the Lucy-less area of the enclosure where the two had been tied up. She had made her decision to make a run for it just before poor Jamie was sent fatally into the beans. It was over 40 minutes before her absence was noticed, and by the time they started their pursuit, she was almost back at the car. She had driven almost 70 miles away before she saw a billboard advertising Heinz beans.
The police were puzzled as to why she was screaming, laughing, and crying at the same time when they found her.
Wednesday, 27 February 2008
Database Work
In the last fortnight, 3 hugely unpleasant murder cases (as opposed to those happy-go-lucky murders…) have been concluded in the UK. 2 serial killers and 1 stultifyingly sick fuck found themselves convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The two serial killers (Levi Bellfield and Steve Wright) were told that they will never be released. The aforementioned sick fuck, possible serial killer Mark Dixie, will serve at least 34 years. (Why do I call him sick and not the serial killers? Because his defence against the murder of Sally Anne Bowman, whose raped and brutalised corpse was pretty much hosed with his DNA, was that he’d not murdered her but happened upon her body and had sex with it. Speaking as a former solicitor, I would imagine his defence team will have been almost sexually excited themselves when they dreamt that up).
This trio of charmers sparked off 2 debates in this country. The first, that of the death penalty, is something I’ve discussed before. My opinion, for what it’s worth, hasn’t changed; baying for the blood of somebody (no matter what kind of repugnant scum they are) is, unless one is a family member of the victim, indicative of a stupid and cruel person to whom empathy has become a foreign feeling. Whether they’re assuaging some vague sense of guilt (Jamie Bulger’s killers are regularly mentioned in internet petitions demanding medieval justice. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that his killers walked him, crying and visibly scared, past dozens of people who did nothing to help him), or simply wallowing in grief and anger that has nothing to do with them, I have no time for anyone who belligerently insists on the death of another human being. The taking of a life should always be a matter of regret. Regretfully, I would agree that all three of these gentlemen need to be studied in some detail to find out just what makes them tick before being quietly put to sleep.
The other debate is one that, as someone whose job title is to all intents and purposes “Database geek”, holds quite a lot of interest for me. All of these men were convicted with the help of DNA evidence. In the case of Dixie and Bellfield, DNA samples were taken by the police on unrelated matters, and when DNA from their murders was checked against the DNA database, voila; the police had strong evidence that they had their murderer. The debate that has been forming on the basis of this is “Shouldn’t the state have a DNA database of every person in the UK to make it easier to catch people like this?”
Broadly speaking, 2 sides seem to have formed (well…3 sides; these days, in any debate and no matter how emotive it may be, there is always a good sized contingent who would vote “I really don’t care”); on the one hand we have people who say “Yes, of course we should because DNA is 99.99% reliable, and anything that helps society catch and rid itself of monsters like these 3 men is a good idea”. On the other, there are the people who say “Why exactly should we trust the state, which doesn’t exactly have a good record of looking after confidential information on its citizens, with a database containing DNA records? And in any case, we are not a nation of suspects; I resent being treated like one by having to provide a DNA sample.”
Both of these views have their relative merits, and it’s worth taking the time to look at both of them before making up ones mind.
First of all, what are the arguments in favour of a national DNA database? It seems to me that quite a lot of the support for the database is predicated on a false notion; that DNA evidence cannot lie, that because of the cold science behind it, it is therefore incapable of being biased or irrational. Therefore, no-one has anything to fear from a DNA database because it cannot be mis-used.
Well now, here’s a thing; whenever I’m working in a database, all of the information in there is just as cold and factual as the sequence of an individual’s DNA. However, I can manipulate that information in pretty much any way I choose to provide evidence of whatever it is I want to say. What’s more, because I’m good at my job (and oh so bashful about it), I can do so in a way that could not actually be called “lying”. What I get out of the database will be 100% factually accurate, yet on several occasions I would shy away from calling it “the truth”. More often than not, it simply provides evidence to back up my point of view in a discussion (or argument) with my boss.
What I’m trying to say here is that context is everything. We’re told that DNA is an infallible, unfailingly accurate method of identification? Well…so are fingerprints. We don’t have a national fingerprint database (yet…), but wouldn’t this help the detection of crimes? We’ve had fingerprinting as a technique for identifying suspects for over a century, yet we’ve gotten on rather well without trying to set up a monolithic database with everyone’s prints on there. As for being always accurate…well, I’m not going to pretend to understand all of the science behind matching DNA samples. However, I do find myself wondering; how exactly do they collect the DNA from the scene of the crime? What are the risks of contamination and a correspondingly lower chance of the DNA from the scene being a “pure” sample? On a more paranoid note, how easy would it be for someone to introduce a DNA sample taken from the database to the scene of a crime in order to make someone a suspect? Particularly if someone is already strongly suspected but their DNA has not made an appearance in the crime scene; how tempted would you be as a policeman to do that in order to try and get a conviction?
Personally, I feel that relying on DNA evidence alone can be a dangerous thing. In fact, reliance on a single piece of evidence is regarded as dangerous by the entire legal system. There used to be rules on how a judge had to direct the jury if a case relied on a piece of evidence uncorroborated by anything else. Although the legislation that set out those rules was wiped out by section 34 of the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, they lived on in the form of a discretionary warning given to juries by judges which is called a Makanjuola Warning (named after a case in the court of appeal). If such a warning was issued to juries in every such case, then I personally would have my main objection to DNA evidence wiped out in one stroke. I’m not entirely sure that it is at present, although Barry George winning his appeal against his conviction for shooting Jill Dando (based entirely on forensic and DNA evidence) might lead to a change there; I’ll certainly be interested to see the result of his retrial.
I haven’t yet addressed the more widespread fear that a police force with a database of the DNA of every citizen is a bad thing. I have that same feeling, though I’ve got difficulty articulating just why it makes me uneasy. Perhaps the fact that I’ve never had anything but good experiences of the police has kept my view in this regard from hardening (my DNA is nestling in the current database of people who’ve been arrested whether they were subsequently charged or not, and I find I don’t really care). In other words, I accept that I don’t fully buy into the argument for completely personal reasons. Therefore I can’t dismiss it as a load of old mungbeans, nor can I support it wholeheartedly. Suffice to say that I believe it should be up to the Police to convince us why we have to have such a database, rather than for us to give reason why we shouldn’t.
We do, at the opposite extreme, have some people who feel that DNA evidence doesn’t have a place in investigation of a crime. Not unreasonably, they feel that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime should have their DNA sample destroyed.
I think this view comes from two wellsprings. The first is something we’ve just looked at; that uneasy fears that it will somehow be used against us, or at least our awareness of the potential for that to happen. The second is a rather more traditional form of pride; if I’ve done nothing wrong, I’m innocent. And if I’m innocent, why are you keeping hold of my DNA? It’s been used in the solving of this crime, and I resent the implication that I may decide to commit future crimes. It’s like you’re using my DNA as a deposit to ensure my future good behaviour.
This viewpoint, whilst opposing the “DNA Database helps catch murderers” opinion, is just as valid. And when we are left with two equally valid attitudes, how do we reconcile them? If our government’s track record is anything to go by, they’ll do so by either ignoring both until the furore dies down, or making a cack handed compromise that manages to please no one unite both sides in their anger at the government for being so inept.
Perhaps I’m being unfair, because such balancing acts are what governments are meant to do on a daily basis and with every issue imaginable. But hey, that’s what they say they’re going to do when they’re elected, so fuck ‘em. They have deliberately tried to get to the top rung of society’s ladder, and they get whatever privilege that entails. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in asking them to discharge their duties too.
Which brings us back to “how do we settle this argument?”. I’m buggered if I know, but I think I know why it arose in the first place. We live in a democratic society, and one of the definitions of that society is that we as individuals give up certain rights and have certain duties we should perform in order to enjoy the protections of that society. However, these days we have the perception that those at the top couldn’t give a shit about our rights and are only concerned with adding to our duties. And that society itself is sick and broken, so we are resentful of doing anything to benefit it. With that backdrop, is it any wonder that a measure that has unquestionably stopped 3 remarkably vile men from committing further atrocities is facing such a groundswell of justifiable opposition?
This trio of charmers sparked off 2 debates in this country. The first, that of the death penalty, is something I’ve discussed before. My opinion, for what it’s worth, hasn’t changed; baying for the blood of somebody (no matter what kind of repugnant scum they are) is, unless one is a family member of the victim, indicative of a stupid and cruel person to whom empathy has become a foreign feeling. Whether they’re assuaging some vague sense of guilt (Jamie Bulger’s killers are regularly mentioned in internet petitions demanding medieval justice. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that his killers walked him, crying and visibly scared, past dozens of people who did nothing to help him), or simply wallowing in grief and anger that has nothing to do with them, I have no time for anyone who belligerently insists on the death of another human being. The taking of a life should always be a matter of regret. Regretfully, I would agree that all three of these gentlemen need to be studied in some detail to find out just what makes them tick before being quietly put to sleep.
The other debate is one that, as someone whose job title is to all intents and purposes “Database geek”, holds quite a lot of interest for me. All of these men were convicted with the help of DNA evidence. In the case of Dixie and Bellfield, DNA samples were taken by the police on unrelated matters, and when DNA from their murders was checked against the DNA database, voila; the police had strong evidence that they had their murderer. The debate that has been forming on the basis of this is “Shouldn’t the state have a DNA database of every person in the UK to make it easier to catch people like this?”
Broadly speaking, 2 sides seem to have formed (well…3 sides; these days, in any debate and no matter how emotive it may be, there is always a good sized contingent who would vote “I really don’t care”); on the one hand we have people who say “Yes, of course we should because DNA is 99.99% reliable, and anything that helps society catch and rid itself of monsters like these 3 men is a good idea”. On the other, there are the people who say “Why exactly should we trust the state, which doesn’t exactly have a good record of looking after confidential information on its citizens, with a database containing DNA records? And in any case, we are not a nation of suspects; I resent being treated like one by having to provide a DNA sample.”
Both of these views have their relative merits, and it’s worth taking the time to look at both of them before making up ones mind.
First of all, what are the arguments in favour of a national DNA database? It seems to me that quite a lot of the support for the database is predicated on a false notion; that DNA evidence cannot lie, that because of the cold science behind it, it is therefore incapable of being biased or irrational. Therefore, no-one has anything to fear from a DNA database because it cannot be mis-used.
Well now, here’s a thing; whenever I’m working in a database, all of the information in there is just as cold and factual as the sequence of an individual’s DNA. However, I can manipulate that information in pretty much any way I choose to provide evidence of whatever it is I want to say. What’s more, because I’m good at my job (and oh so bashful about it), I can do so in a way that could not actually be called “lying”. What I get out of the database will be 100% factually accurate, yet on several occasions I would shy away from calling it “the truth”. More often than not, it simply provides evidence to back up my point of view in a discussion (or argument) with my boss.
What I’m trying to say here is that context is everything. We’re told that DNA is an infallible, unfailingly accurate method of identification? Well…so are fingerprints. We don’t have a national fingerprint database (yet…), but wouldn’t this help the detection of crimes? We’ve had fingerprinting as a technique for identifying suspects for over a century, yet we’ve gotten on rather well without trying to set up a monolithic database with everyone’s prints on there. As for being always accurate…well, I’m not going to pretend to understand all of the science behind matching DNA samples. However, I do find myself wondering; how exactly do they collect the DNA from the scene of the crime? What are the risks of contamination and a correspondingly lower chance of the DNA from the scene being a “pure” sample? On a more paranoid note, how easy would it be for someone to introduce a DNA sample taken from the database to the scene of a crime in order to make someone a suspect? Particularly if someone is already strongly suspected but their DNA has not made an appearance in the crime scene; how tempted would you be as a policeman to do that in order to try and get a conviction?
Personally, I feel that relying on DNA evidence alone can be a dangerous thing. In fact, reliance on a single piece of evidence is regarded as dangerous by the entire legal system. There used to be rules on how a judge had to direct the jury if a case relied on a piece of evidence uncorroborated by anything else. Although the legislation that set out those rules was wiped out by section 34 of the 1988 Criminal Justice Act, they lived on in the form of a discretionary warning given to juries by judges which is called a Makanjuola Warning (named after a case in the court of appeal). If such a warning was issued to juries in every such case, then I personally would have my main objection to DNA evidence wiped out in one stroke. I’m not entirely sure that it is at present, although Barry George winning his appeal against his conviction for shooting Jill Dando (based entirely on forensic and DNA evidence) might lead to a change there; I’ll certainly be interested to see the result of his retrial.
I haven’t yet addressed the more widespread fear that a police force with a database of the DNA of every citizen is a bad thing. I have that same feeling, though I’ve got difficulty articulating just why it makes me uneasy. Perhaps the fact that I’ve never had anything but good experiences of the police has kept my view in this regard from hardening (my DNA is nestling in the current database of people who’ve been arrested whether they were subsequently charged or not, and I find I don’t really care). In other words, I accept that I don’t fully buy into the argument for completely personal reasons. Therefore I can’t dismiss it as a load of old mungbeans, nor can I support it wholeheartedly. Suffice to say that I believe it should be up to the Police to convince us why we have to have such a database, rather than for us to give reason why we shouldn’t.
We do, at the opposite extreme, have some people who feel that DNA evidence doesn’t have a place in investigation of a crime. Not unreasonably, they feel that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime should have their DNA sample destroyed.
I think this view comes from two wellsprings. The first is something we’ve just looked at; that uneasy fears that it will somehow be used against us, or at least our awareness of the potential for that to happen. The second is a rather more traditional form of pride; if I’ve done nothing wrong, I’m innocent. And if I’m innocent, why are you keeping hold of my DNA? It’s been used in the solving of this crime, and I resent the implication that I may decide to commit future crimes. It’s like you’re using my DNA as a deposit to ensure my future good behaviour.
This viewpoint, whilst opposing the “DNA Database helps catch murderers” opinion, is just as valid. And when we are left with two equally valid attitudes, how do we reconcile them? If our government’s track record is anything to go by, they’ll do so by either ignoring both until the furore dies down, or making a cack handed compromise that manages to please no one unite both sides in their anger at the government for being so inept.
Perhaps I’m being unfair, because such balancing acts are what governments are meant to do on a daily basis and with every issue imaginable. But hey, that’s what they say they’re going to do when they’re elected, so fuck ‘em. They have deliberately tried to get to the top rung of society’s ladder, and they get whatever privilege that entails. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable in asking them to discharge their duties too.
Which brings us back to “how do we settle this argument?”. I’m buggered if I know, but I think I know why it arose in the first place. We live in a democratic society, and one of the definitions of that society is that we as individuals give up certain rights and have certain duties we should perform in order to enjoy the protections of that society. However, these days we have the perception that those at the top couldn’t give a shit about our rights and are only concerned with adding to our duties. And that society itself is sick and broken, so we are resentful of doing anything to benefit it. With that backdrop, is it any wonder that a measure that has unquestionably stopped 3 remarkably vile men from committing further atrocities is facing such a groundswell of justifiable opposition?
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
It Couldn't Happen Here
Kenya is a fabulous country. Whilst I can’t claim to know a huge amount about it on the basis of a 2 week holiday and some friendships with Kenyans dating back to university, I can sing its praises. It seemed to be filled to the brim with confident, humble, entirely gorgeous people (seriously, I have never met a Kenyan who was not physically gorgeous. Even the men. Which, what with homosexuality being illegal in Kenya, could lead to a lot of sexual frustration for those people who are good with colours).
So when the whole country seemed to turn to shit a few weeks ago, I was more than a little surprised. After all, this is a nation with a mix of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Pagan believers. In other countries (Sudan for example, or Somalia which borders Kenya) this has been a sure-fire recipe for bigotry, intolerance, and civil war. In a moment of drunken candour, I asked a Kenyan gentleman named Bough to explain just why Kenya boasted such stability when other African countries were degenerating into civil wars fought by followers of Religions that battle in the name of peace and brotherhood. Bough told me that any disagreements were regarded as either personal or family affairs. Religion didn’t enter into it, and was universally regarded as a private matter. For someone brought up in a family who loudly proclaimed Africa to be a continent full of savages, this was a pleasing confirmation that everything I had been told by my parents was horseshit.
And even now, as we’re told that Kenya has turned into a land where children are thrown back into a fire to die because they are of the wrong ethnic group, religion doesn’t seem to be the divisive force behind such horrors. Rather, we are told, the divisions run along tribal lines. Though it’s not yet been said directly by the media, the implication of “Bloody Africans; always ethnically cleansing each other for belonging to the wrong tribe” has been fairly strong; Rwanda and Sudan keep getting mentioned in the same breath and we’re invited to draw our own conclusions.
For those of you who haven’t been following this story, Kenya had an election in December of last year. The incumbent, President Mwai Kibaki, seemed to be heading for defeat at the hands of Raila Odinga. I’m not totally sure, but I think this would have represented the first time an incumbent president lost a contested election. It seems Kibaki was uncomfortably aware of this too, and at the last minute there was a sudden and not-at-all suspicious surge in the number of votes for Kibaki. Pressure was also put on the Kenyan electoral commission to declare Kibaki the winner, even though the result was still uncertain. Unsurprisingly, Odinga was less than pleased with this and accused Kibaki of rigging the election. It seems that Kibaki regards the presidency as his right, and Odinga has responded with populism and demagoguery. Chaos and death then ensued, although a semblance of normality now seems to be resuming.
Now maybe this is just my left-wing sensibilities talking here, but I get the overwhelming sense from most reports that we should be viewing this through colonial eyes; in other words, what can one expect from a country that haven’t yet learned how to do democracy properly. It’s not that long ago that Kenya was run by a hugely unpleasant dictator, Daniel Arap-Moi. So who is surprised that a tin-pot nation has a tin-pot election which has led to political stalemate and (rather more importantly) rioting and death?
Yet it’s not so long ago that we saw another disputed election where supporters of the gentleman who lost waged a bitter battle to reclaim what they said was a stolen and unfair vote. It was an election that resulted in a polarised and divided nation. Although it didn’t lead to the rioting we’ve seen in Kenya, it had exactly the same effect on the politics of that country; everything came to a grinding halt. I am of course talking about the election of pretzel swallowing, speech mangling half-man half-chimp gruppenfuhrer, Dubya.
In the coverage of the Kenyan election, we are hearing a lot about tribes. “The dispute is basically on a tribal basis” we are told. “The Kikuyu tribe have done well under successive Presidents, and the other tribes feel oppressed by this”. And with that, we can safely dismiss the whole sorry and sordid business as an inevitability in the land of White Mischief. Yet I didn’t read a single report on the US election discussing the tribal differences between the people of Florida and the people of Ohio. We heard no discussion about the Hispanic, Black, Asian, and White “tribes” of the USA and their different viewpoints. What we did hear about were “communities”. Of how the different communities in America voted, and what those communities wanted from a President.
So what’s the difference? I’d hope it’s obvious, but for the sake of clarity…we, like most Western nations, are a country with an imperial past (or, if you’re a septic, an imperial present). It is a past where the word “tribe” has developed negative connotations of savagery and barbarism (due mainly to European subjugation of Africa and Asia in the 18th and 19th centuries). When the media use that word to describe the basis of the divisions in Kenya now, I would contend that a lot of the white, middle class tribes of the UK conjure up a picture involving the film Zulu, Michael Caine, and the phrase “…’fousands of ‘em!”. Had the word “tribe” been used to describe the different communities in the USA, does anyone doubt that there would have been bewilderment at the use of the term at best, howls of outrage at worst?
I am loathe to characterise this as racism, if only because I find the tendency to overuse that label has devalued it. It’s perhaps more accurate to describe it as parochialism on our part. We use language that helps distance ourselves from what is happening in Kenya, and assure ourselves that we’re far more civilised. This also helps us to forget about the fact that exactly the same sort of thing has happened in the nation that boasts of its democracy (and tries to impose it on strategically unimportant countries). Or that we in the UK are no strangers to vote-rigging scandals (from the 1987 vote-buying allegations in Westminster to the rather more recent Olympic vote-buying storm), allegations of corruption (the Little London PFI scandal in Leeds in 2006) or politics and violence mixing queasily together (a Solihull counsellor was doused in petrol and set on fire back in the late 90’s).
What is happening right now in Kenya is abhorrent. But let’s not kid ourselves that it can be explained away by tossing in a few sentences about savagery and tribalism. And let’s never think, as a friend of mine in Kenya told me she did, that it could never happen here. It already is. It’s just we’re better at keeping our political catastrophes cosier.
So when the whole country seemed to turn to shit a few weeks ago, I was more than a little surprised. After all, this is a nation with a mix of Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and Pagan believers. In other countries (Sudan for example, or Somalia which borders Kenya) this has been a sure-fire recipe for bigotry, intolerance, and civil war. In a moment of drunken candour, I asked a Kenyan gentleman named Bough to explain just why Kenya boasted such stability when other African countries were degenerating into civil wars fought by followers of Religions that battle in the name of peace and brotherhood. Bough told me that any disagreements were regarded as either personal or family affairs. Religion didn’t enter into it, and was universally regarded as a private matter. For someone brought up in a family who loudly proclaimed Africa to be a continent full of savages, this was a pleasing confirmation that everything I had been told by my parents was horseshit.
And even now, as we’re told that Kenya has turned into a land where children are thrown back into a fire to die because they are of the wrong ethnic group, religion doesn’t seem to be the divisive force behind such horrors. Rather, we are told, the divisions run along tribal lines. Though it’s not yet been said directly by the media, the implication of “Bloody Africans; always ethnically cleansing each other for belonging to the wrong tribe” has been fairly strong; Rwanda and Sudan keep getting mentioned in the same breath and we’re invited to draw our own conclusions.
For those of you who haven’t been following this story, Kenya had an election in December of last year. The incumbent, President Mwai Kibaki, seemed to be heading for defeat at the hands of Raila Odinga. I’m not totally sure, but I think this would have represented the first time an incumbent president lost a contested election. It seems Kibaki was uncomfortably aware of this too, and at the last minute there was a sudden and not-at-all suspicious surge in the number of votes for Kibaki. Pressure was also put on the Kenyan electoral commission to declare Kibaki the winner, even though the result was still uncertain. Unsurprisingly, Odinga was less than pleased with this and accused Kibaki of rigging the election. It seems that Kibaki regards the presidency as his right, and Odinga has responded with populism and demagoguery. Chaos and death then ensued, although a semblance of normality now seems to be resuming.
Now maybe this is just my left-wing sensibilities talking here, but I get the overwhelming sense from most reports that we should be viewing this through colonial eyes; in other words, what can one expect from a country that haven’t yet learned how to do democracy properly. It’s not that long ago that Kenya was run by a hugely unpleasant dictator, Daniel Arap-Moi. So who is surprised that a tin-pot nation has a tin-pot election which has led to political stalemate and (rather more importantly) rioting and death?
Yet it’s not so long ago that we saw another disputed election where supporters of the gentleman who lost waged a bitter battle to reclaim what they said was a stolen and unfair vote. It was an election that resulted in a polarised and divided nation. Although it didn’t lead to the rioting we’ve seen in Kenya, it had exactly the same effect on the politics of that country; everything came to a grinding halt. I am of course talking about the election of pretzel swallowing, speech mangling half-man half-chimp gruppenfuhrer, Dubya.
In the coverage of the Kenyan election, we are hearing a lot about tribes. “The dispute is basically on a tribal basis” we are told. “The Kikuyu tribe have done well under successive Presidents, and the other tribes feel oppressed by this”. And with that, we can safely dismiss the whole sorry and sordid business as an inevitability in the land of White Mischief. Yet I didn’t read a single report on the US election discussing the tribal differences between the people of Florida and the people of Ohio. We heard no discussion about the Hispanic, Black, Asian, and White “tribes” of the USA and their different viewpoints. What we did hear about were “communities”. Of how the different communities in America voted, and what those communities wanted from a President.
So what’s the difference? I’d hope it’s obvious, but for the sake of clarity…we, like most Western nations, are a country with an imperial past (or, if you’re a septic, an imperial present). It is a past where the word “tribe” has developed negative connotations of savagery and barbarism (due mainly to European subjugation of Africa and Asia in the 18th and 19th centuries). When the media use that word to describe the basis of the divisions in Kenya now, I would contend that a lot of the white, middle class tribes of the UK conjure up a picture involving the film Zulu, Michael Caine, and the phrase “…’fousands of ‘em!”. Had the word “tribe” been used to describe the different communities in the USA, does anyone doubt that there would have been bewilderment at the use of the term at best, howls of outrage at worst?
I am loathe to characterise this as racism, if only because I find the tendency to overuse that label has devalued it. It’s perhaps more accurate to describe it as parochialism on our part. We use language that helps distance ourselves from what is happening in Kenya, and assure ourselves that we’re far more civilised. This also helps us to forget about the fact that exactly the same sort of thing has happened in the nation that boasts of its democracy (and tries to impose it on strategically unimportant countries). Or that we in the UK are no strangers to vote-rigging scandals (from the 1987 vote-buying allegations in Westminster to the rather more recent Olympic vote-buying storm), allegations of corruption (the Little London PFI scandal in Leeds in 2006) or politics and violence mixing queasily together (a Solihull counsellor was doused in petrol and set on fire back in the late 90’s).
What is happening right now in Kenya is abhorrent. But let’s not kid ourselves that it can be explained away by tossing in a few sentences about savagery and tribalism. And let’s never think, as a friend of mine in Kenya told me she did, that it could never happen here. It already is. It’s just we’re better at keeping our political catastrophes cosier.
Thursday, 22 November 2007
A Matter of Trust
There has been something of a fuss lately about public trust in the media. For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last 8 months, and for those of you who are foreign (one and the same thing to an Englishman), there has been hand-wringing and soul-searching aplenty about the cavalcade of lies that the tellybox spews out on a daily basis. This has led to the print media doling out "TV Lies!" exclusives like a mad paedophile throwing sweets in a playground. Which has in turn caused the BBC to behave like a 12th century flagellant, so keen are they to reassure the braying herd that the Beeb is really sorry and can be trusted.
My initial thoughts about this were, it would appear, much the same as the initial thoughts of anyone who tries to project an image of themselves as cynical, world weary, and unsurprised by anything (i.e. anyone with a pair of testicles): "God, everyone knows that the media lie! What kind of loser doesn't realise that the information we're presented is manipulated with more skill than a Thai masseuse manipulates a lonely man to a happy ending?” Possibly you found that seam of thought was shot through with streaks of "Who cares if some mouthbreathing dolescum spunk all their coins on Richard and Judy phone in quizzes". Maybe that was just me.
That is all well and good, and I'm guessing that it's the best response that the Shitbox Overlords could hope for. In fact, judging by the recent "TV lies!" exclusives we've been seeing (does anyone really think that a children’s program calling a kitten by a name that wasn't voted for by all the sweet kiddies is an abuse of our trust?) one would be forgiven for thinking that we're being manipulated into thinking "Who gives a shit?" about the whole debacle.
But as I've thought about it a little more, I've found myself a little puzzled. Our reaction as a society to the notion that the people whom we rely on to bring us the facts about the world we live in are liars is something of a strange one. Rather than displaying the outrage that the print media has so desperately tried to manufacture, we've responded with breathtaking insouciance. We're all, it seems, at pains to point out that we were never so stupid as to believe what we were told by any media. We're all too clever and independent minded for that. Nobody has pointed out the very legitimate concern that if we cannot trust the media to deliver the facts about what is going on in the world, then none of us will actually know what is going on in the world. And in our ignorance, we'll be that much easier to render frightened and impotent.
Okay, I should explain myself before I'm written off as unduly paranoid. What I'm saying is that our collective reaction to the Media Lies To The Plebs shitstorm is not a healthy one for society. The role of the media in society should be to present us with the facts, perhaps with some basic analysis to help make complexities clearer, and allow us to make up our own mind. The role that it actually plays is to give us a version of events so skewed by subjectivity as to render it almost worthless. For example, any report on Fox News is going to present the right wing view of that event. The Guardian will always present a left wing view. So the same story will be presented with a totally different emphasis. We, the people, are (despite my more misanthropic moments) not that stupid, and so we will notice the disparity.
The logical conclusion to draw when presented with such disparities on a daily basis is "Sections of the media are lying to us". We can then either decide that the media that represents the political faction we agree with are telling the truth and condemn those opposing. Or (and this is the approach I suspect most of us take) we get so frustrated at being force fed conflicting viewpoints, each one presented as the unvarnished truth, that we decide that nothing in the media can be trusted and so grow apathetic about it. Thus when actual media lies are uncovered we simply sigh in amused detachment rather than reacting with the boiling fury that it warrants.
I think one of the reasons that this apathy is so terrifying to me is that it indicates that we don't actually care about the world around us any more. We don't care that we're lied to on a daily basis. All we seem to be fussed about is being made to look stupid or ill informed. But as it's the media who we rely on to keep us informed, we end up with the paradoxical situation where we don't listen to what they tell us (because we know they're lying, and we don’t want to be laughed at for believing their lies), but neither do we know what is actually happening because we have no easy alternative way to get the information. In other words we carefully maintain our own ignorance in order to avoid being mocked for our ignorance.
Some might say that the breakdown of trust in the media is no bad thing. We live in the Internet age and so we can avail ourselves of any information in an instant. Well yes, we can. However, being as any old yahoo can produce the information one finds in the self-professed Independent Internet Media, it's often of less value than the subjective news acquired from traditional media sources. An over-reliance on such sources leads inevitably to a Legion of Ottos (Otto being a fantastically stupid character from A Fish Called Wanda who insists, in the face of all available evidence, that he isn't stupid) who will make dunce-like proclamations of Oil being an inexhaustible natural resource that is produced by the earth's core, or that a high school shooter was being mind controlled by the government because "I saw it on the Manchurian Candidate" (I have talked to people who genuinely believe both of these things, and go so far as to take the piss out of anyone who doesn't go along with them. And people wonder why I have such a low opinion of humanity…).
So we find ourselves in a position where we cannot trust what we are told by the traditional media. Nor can we believe the reams of shite on the Internet. And because we cannot trust those sources, we have to make our minds up based on…well, based on nothing more than whatever our gut instincts might be. We have absolutely no frame of reference to help us come to an opinion. About the only news items that we can guarantee are not lies are those increasingly popular sections where once-respected journalists mindlessly read out the texted opinions of a public that, as members of, we know to be as ignorant as us. It seems that the media has seamlessly shifted from providing facts to recycling public stupidity.
So why do I find that so terrifying? Why am I, noted by all who know me as an anti-social despiser of people, so thoroughly pissed off at the willful ignorance of my fellow man? Jesus, isn't it obvious? The apathy generated by an endlessly lying media isn't just confined to our opinions of what is in the news. That apathy seeps into every aspect of our lives, because our lives are the news. We all know that governments are lying, self-serving, authoritarian drinkers of Lucifer’s jism. But rather than get annoyed, we tell a few ironic jokes. We're well aware that our working hours and conditions are causing health problems across the land, but we content ourselves with some blackly humorous grumbling. Because of our apathy, we're unconcerned at starting a war on terror that will last longer than the precious oil that is its root cause. And we dismiss anyone who points out that perhaps we might want to take better care of the only planet we have, or that our loss of civil liberties is a dark and terrible thing as someone who is just taking it all too seriously and should just relax because, hey, everyone knows the media are lying to us when they talk about global warming/terrorism/whatever.
And because of our apathy we're allowing people in positions of authority to abuse that trust with impunity. I don't wish to sound smugger than usual, but I'm no longer content to reassure myself that I'm still independent minded and clever enough to realise that we're fed daily doses of bullshit to keep up ignorant and compliant. I am, as the film says, as mad as hell. And I'm not going to take it any more.
My initial thoughts about this were, it would appear, much the same as the initial thoughts of anyone who tries to project an image of themselves as cynical, world weary, and unsurprised by anything (i.e. anyone with a pair of testicles): "God, everyone knows that the media lie! What kind of loser doesn't realise that the information we're presented is manipulated with more skill than a Thai masseuse manipulates a lonely man to a happy ending?” Possibly you found that seam of thought was shot through with streaks of "Who cares if some mouthbreathing dolescum spunk all their coins on Richard and Judy phone in quizzes". Maybe that was just me.
That is all well and good, and I'm guessing that it's the best response that the Shitbox Overlords could hope for. In fact, judging by the recent "TV lies!" exclusives we've been seeing (does anyone really think that a children’s program calling a kitten by a name that wasn't voted for by all the sweet kiddies is an abuse of our trust?) one would be forgiven for thinking that we're being manipulated into thinking "Who gives a shit?" about the whole debacle.
But as I've thought about it a little more, I've found myself a little puzzled. Our reaction as a society to the notion that the people whom we rely on to bring us the facts about the world we live in are liars is something of a strange one. Rather than displaying the outrage that the print media has so desperately tried to manufacture, we've responded with breathtaking insouciance. We're all, it seems, at pains to point out that we were never so stupid as to believe what we were told by any media. We're all too clever and independent minded for that. Nobody has pointed out the very legitimate concern that if we cannot trust the media to deliver the facts about what is going on in the world, then none of us will actually know what is going on in the world. And in our ignorance, we'll be that much easier to render frightened and impotent.
Okay, I should explain myself before I'm written off as unduly paranoid. What I'm saying is that our collective reaction to the Media Lies To The Plebs shitstorm is not a healthy one for society. The role of the media in society should be to present us with the facts, perhaps with some basic analysis to help make complexities clearer, and allow us to make up our own mind. The role that it actually plays is to give us a version of events so skewed by subjectivity as to render it almost worthless. For example, any report on Fox News is going to present the right wing view of that event. The Guardian will always present a left wing view. So the same story will be presented with a totally different emphasis. We, the people, are (despite my more misanthropic moments) not that stupid, and so we will notice the disparity.
The logical conclusion to draw when presented with such disparities on a daily basis is "Sections of the media are lying to us". We can then either decide that the media that represents the political faction we agree with are telling the truth and condemn those opposing. Or (and this is the approach I suspect most of us take) we get so frustrated at being force fed conflicting viewpoints, each one presented as the unvarnished truth, that we decide that nothing in the media can be trusted and so grow apathetic about it. Thus when actual media lies are uncovered we simply sigh in amused detachment rather than reacting with the boiling fury that it warrants.
I think one of the reasons that this apathy is so terrifying to me is that it indicates that we don't actually care about the world around us any more. We don't care that we're lied to on a daily basis. All we seem to be fussed about is being made to look stupid or ill informed. But as it's the media who we rely on to keep us informed, we end up with the paradoxical situation where we don't listen to what they tell us (because we know they're lying, and we don’t want to be laughed at for believing their lies), but neither do we know what is actually happening because we have no easy alternative way to get the information. In other words we carefully maintain our own ignorance in order to avoid being mocked for our ignorance.
Some might say that the breakdown of trust in the media is no bad thing. We live in the Internet age and so we can avail ourselves of any information in an instant. Well yes, we can. However, being as any old yahoo can produce the information one finds in the self-professed Independent Internet Media, it's often of less value than the subjective news acquired from traditional media sources. An over-reliance on such sources leads inevitably to a Legion of Ottos (Otto being a fantastically stupid character from A Fish Called Wanda who insists, in the face of all available evidence, that he isn't stupid) who will make dunce-like proclamations of Oil being an inexhaustible natural resource that is produced by the earth's core, or that a high school shooter was being mind controlled by the government because "I saw it on the Manchurian Candidate" (I have talked to people who genuinely believe both of these things, and go so far as to take the piss out of anyone who doesn't go along with them. And people wonder why I have such a low opinion of humanity…).
So we find ourselves in a position where we cannot trust what we are told by the traditional media. Nor can we believe the reams of shite on the Internet. And because we cannot trust those sources, we have to make our minds up based on…well, based on nothing more than whatever our gut instincts might be. We have absolutely no frame of reference to help us come to an opinion. About the only news items that we can guarantee are not lies are those increasingly popular sections where once-respected journalists mindlessly read out the texted opinions of a public that, as members of, we know to be as ignorant as us. It seems that the media has seamlessly shifted from providing facts to recycling public stupidity.
So why do I find that so terrifying? Why am I, noted by all who know me as an anti-social despiser of people, so thoroughly pissed off at the willful ignorance of my fellow man? Jesus, isn't it obvious? The apathy generated by an endlessly lying media isn't just confined to our opinions of what is in the news. That apathy seeps into every aspect of our lives, because our lives are the news. We all know that governments are lying, self-serving, authoritarian drinkers of Lucifer’s jism. But rather than get annoyed, we tell a few ironic jokes. We're well aware that our working hours and conditions are causing health problems across the land, but we content ourselves with some blackly humorous grumbling. Because of our apathy, we're unconcerned at starting a war on terror that will last longer than the precious oil that is its root cause. And we dismiss anyone who points out that perhaps we might want to take better care of the only planet we have, or that our loss of civil liberties is a dark and terrible thing as someone who is just taking it all too seriously and should just relax because, hey, everyone knows the media are lying to us when they talk about global warming/terrorism/whatever.
And because of our apathy we're allowing people in positions of authority to abuse that trust with impunity. I don't wish to sound smugger than usual, but I'm no longer content to reassure myself that I'm still independent minded and clever enough to realise that we're fed daily doses of bullshit to keep up ignorant and compliant. I am, as the film says, as mad as hell. And I'm not going to take it any more.
Friday, 5 October 2007
Short Story: The Female of the Species
She checked her watch again; T minus 20 seconds. She’d been in place for six minutes and she was impatient to begin. There was no thought of whether the other three were in position; she had enough faith in them to expect nothing less than complete success on this mission. Nevertheless, she had enough experience to beware overconfidence. Once they moved in, they would only have a few minutes to take down the few perimeter guards and get Cassie inside, to the nearest terminal. That was going to be the biggest challenge; if a single guard managed to raise the alarm…well, then they’d have the whole base to deal with. And not on the terms she’d like either. Extraction was not an option unless the mission had been completed. As with so many previous missions, they all had to be perfect. Anything less would get them killed. Or worse, captured.
At exactly 26 minutes past 3 in the morning, the power for the electrified fence went down, and 3 grey clad figures emerged from the darkness and made their separate ways to the perimeter fence. They stealthily made their climb over the perimeter wall and were inside the facility by 26 minutes and 54 seconds past 3. At 27 minutes past, a soft crackling noise indicated that the fence’s power was back on. Though the three women had no reason to doubt Cassie’s ability to take down the power and delay the alarm, they all breathed a sigh of relief that the first phase had gone off without a hitch.
There were eight guards to deal with before the three women could send the signal for Cassie to join them. They had chosen their points of entry with the split of the guards in mind; both Lucy and Clare were to take down two guards apiece. This left Amanda to deal with the remaining four; one patroller and three gate guards. The Captain had been insistent that Amanda do the lion’s share in phase 2. This had annoyed Lucy to an extent; so Amanda had screwed up on the last mission. Everyone made mistakes, but as far as the rest of the team were concerned, Amanda atoned for hers by making sure all 6 of them got out alive. Yes, Nicky was still in hospital but in a few months she’d be back and good as new.
The Captain, though impressed with Amanda’s initiative subsequent to that (admittedly horrendous) cock-up was furious at the lapse in protocol that had led to it. This, Lucy reasoned, was her way of making Amanda prove her professionalism. “And if she doesn’t and winds up dead, will the Captain be sorry? Or will she just shrug and take on another team member?” Lucy, annoyed at herself for the distracting thought, shook her head to clear it. Amanda was one of the best Special Ops soldiers that Lucy had ever worked with. They could have told her to take down all eight and she’d probably still manage it quicker than with all five of them working together. But Nicky wasn’t here, and the Captain was co-ordinating this from the Eyrie. And so the three would have to do their tasks without the additional support. So be it.
Despite Lucy’s faith in Amanda’s ability, it was Clare who made the first contact. As the fence’s power had returned, one of her two guards had heard the crackle and made his way to the fence. Clare froze into perfect stillness as he passed her by without noticing, his eyes fixed on the fence. With a sweep of her arm executed with a ballerina’s grace, she took her Glock from it’s holster on her shoulder, brought it to bear and fired a single shot. She was close enough that the silencer had minimal effect on her aim, and the guard dropped to the ground. Working quickly in case anyone else had heard him hit the floor, she moved him into the shadows of one of the outlying facility buildings. She whispered “First contact, complete” into the microphone under her ski-mask.
Amanda smiled as Clare’s voice came through her earpiece. The others tended to write Clare off as lacking the killer instinct. “Too methodical and too damn slow” was the main complaint. Amanda on the other hand, never doubted Clare’s ability for a second. So she was methodical? Then she made fewer mistakes. And Amanda had recently had cause to really appreciate getting it right without any errors. Now Clare had just proved that she could be as good as making snap decisions as she was making them with the luxury of time on her side. All Amanda had to do was the work of two women against four Spetznaz trained guards. Simple, right?
She dealt with the patroller first. For all his Special Forces background, weeks of idly patrolling what had become the world’s most boring perimeter must have dulled his edge. She had gotten both arms into place before he even registered her presence, and the compression of his carotid artery made for a silent death. As she lowered him to the floor, she whispered “Second contact complete”. Almost instantaneously, Clare’s voice was heard “Se…third contact complete”.
In spite of herself, Lucy was impressed. She’d always regarded Clare as being fundamentally unsuited to field ops. As Intel, she was second to none but Lucy had misgiving about trusting her with the simple task of killing. It seemed her doubts had been misplaced. Once again, the Captain’s decisions were the right ones. The Captain was always right it seemed, and that fact provoked a faint, nebulous sense of irritation in Lucy.
Happily, she had an immediate opportunity to deal with it; both of her patrollers had met on their circuitous route. Amanda and Clare’s kills had made it imperative that these two not live to walk their patrol again. Rather unprofessionally, both had stopped to exchange a few words. This gave her a couple of seconds to decide on how she was going to do this. She couldn’t give either man a chance to shout or raise any sort of alarm that would lead to the alarm going off. And good as she was, it would be arrogant in the extreme to assume that she could get two perfect shots off in the short time it would take either man to draw breath and make a noise.
With the speed and grace that was her norm, she set a simple trip-trap. A volley of darts, loaded with Ketamine, would launch from the small box she positioned at chest height and at least one would hit the target’s flesh. She retreated back to the few shadows that the numerous floodlights in the facility grounds allowed, and waited.
The men finished their final chat, and made their way onwards. Their pace was maddeningly uneven; by the time that the first guard had triggered the trap, the second was at the very edge of her vision. Though they generally worked without night sights, Lucy found herself wishing for one as she fired the shot simultaneously with the darts finding their target.
She should have spared her wish for another time; a red Rorschach blot blossomed on the ground in front of the man as he fell, looking for all the world like a man who had drunkenly stumbled and fell. When she was satisfied that he wasn’t getting back up, she made her way over to the prone, pin-cushioned, and heavily drugged guard. She placed her gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger. A quick spasm marked the end of his life. Lucy checked both guards for a pulse. As she dismantled the trip trap, she muttered “Contacts four and five complete”.
Amanda had just finished getting the dead man’s fatigues on over her own grey combat suit when she heard Lucy’s voice. The final three contacts were all down to her, and it had to be done quickly. She tried to remember how the guard had walked, silently cursing herself for not allowing him a few more moments of life so that she could better observe how he moved. Not bothering to hide the body now that all the patrollers were dead, she took a deep breath and advanced on the gate.
One of the guards sat in the booth flipping idly through the worn pages of a magazine. The other two, a man and a woman, were at the gate itself. The man turned and nodded an acknowledgement to Amanda, confirming that her disguise was good enough for what was required of it. She nodded back and, head down, approached the booth. She walked around it to the door, opened it, and stepped inside. She closed the door behind her and turned to face the guard who looked up from his magazine
The report of the rifle rang out at an almost painful volume in the cramped booth. Although it muffled the shot to the outside world, it didn’t muffle it nearly enough to hide the sound from the two guards on the gate. The door was kicked open just as Amanda had turned to face it. Three shots sent him staggering back, and Amanda followed him, training her gun on the momentarily startled woman. Her life ended in that moment. The echo of the final shot faded away.
“Contacts six through eight complete. Cassie, in you come.”
Lucy and Clare joined Amanda at the booth.
- “No silencer?” Clare’s tone neutral, not implying any fault.
- “No need. All the other contacts were done. There’s no way the noise will have been heard in the facility.”
Lucy nodded in agreement with Amanda’s assessment, as did Clare. They waited for Cassie to join them. She was there in just over two minutes, her cheerful face red with exertion and perched on her stocky frame. She smiled at all three of her colleagues, then made her way to the terminal within the booth. From a pocket came a flash drive, filled with all manner of beautifully coded pieces of poison, which was inserted into a dock in the terminal.
“O-kay…lockdown is easy enough to initiate, but there’s a bitch of a failsafe to ensure that the main alarm goes off. The Captain says that there are 3 people in there who have the authorisation code to disarm the Suppression measures, and if they hear that alarm you can be damn sure that’s what they’ll do.”
Lucy sighed inwardly, knowing exactly where this was going. Amanda gamely played her part; “Can you deal with it Cass?”
Cassie’s grin broadened. “What do you think? Give me 10 minutes to bypass it and get the lockdown started. Unless one of them decides to come out for some air, the first they’ll know of it is when they hear the gas vents. At which point, they’re fucked. The corporation chiefs are so shit-scared of any of the fun that they’re researching finding it’s way out of that facility that the Suppression won’t leave fleas alive, let alone people.”
Lucy nodded. She hadn’t been happy at the unknown factor; what if one of them did decide to come out for air? She would have to trust Cassie to make sure that any disarm codes’ binary scream went unheard. Again though, she needn’t have worried. It was seven minutes later when Cassie said “Okay, we’re on.”
It would be three minutes before the Suppression measures began, and Cassie had hacked the facilities internal cameras to monitor things. The women clustered around the terminal and watched anxiously. The three minutes passed without incident. The majority of the people were sleeping in their bunks; the entire Research team were in bed. Only a few insomniacs and security staff were out of their beds.
The cameras showed those facility staff that were still awake reacting with puzzlement to the hissing noise from the walls. That soon gave way to shock, and then fear. Whatever that stuff was, it was effective. The twenty or so people who had been awake were unconscious within twenty seconds and dead in another twenty. Those who had been sleeping died quietly and without fuss.
Cassie touched a button and the monitor went dead. She retrieved her flash drive, and left the booth with the others. As they made their way from the facility gates, Lucy spoke into her face-mic.
“Facility staff neutralised. Lockdown complete. ETA at extraction point, 5 minutes”
A mellifluous voice answered. “Good work. See you all back at the Eyrie.”
From the Captain, that counted as the ringing praises of a choir of angels. Satisfied with a job executed professionally, the women made their way to the extraction point and from thence, home.
At exactly 26 minutes past 3 in the morning, the power for the electrified fence went down, and 3 grey clad figures emerged from the darkness and made their separate ways to the perimeter fence. They stealthily made their climb over the perimeter wall and were inside the facility by 26 minutes and 54 seconds past 3. At 27 minutes past, a soft crackling noise indicated that the fence’s power was back on. Though the three women had no reason to doubt Cassie’s ability to take down the power and delay the alarm, they all breathed a sigh of relief that the first phase had gone off without a hitch.
There were eight guards to deal with before the three women could send the signal for Cassie to join them. They had chosen their points of entry with the split of the guards in mind; both Lucy and Clare were to take down two guards apiece. This left Amanda to deal with the remaining four; one patroller and three gate guards. The Captain had been insistent that Amanda do the lion’s share in phase 2. This had annoyed Lucy to an extent; so Amanda had screwed up on the last mission. Everyone made mistakes, but as far as the rest of the team were concerned, Amanda atoned for hers by making sure all 6 of them got out alive. Yes, Nicky was still in hospital but in a few months she’d be back and good as new.
The Captain, though impressed with Amanda’s initiative subsequent to that (admittedly horrendous) cock-up was furious at the lapse in protocol that had led to it. This, Lucy reasoned, was her way of making Amanda prove her professionalism. “And if she doesn’t and winds up dead, will the Captain be sorry? Or will she just shrug and take on another team member?” Lucy, annoyed at herself for the distracting thought, shook her head to clear it. Amanda was one of the best Special Ops soldiers that Lucy had ever worked with. They could have told her to take down all eight and she’d probably still manage it quicker than with all five of them working together. But Nicky wasn’t here, and the Captain was co-ordinating this from the Eyrie. And so the three would have to do their tasks without the additional support. So be it.
Despite Lucy’s faith in Amanda’s ability, it was Clare who made the first contact. As the fence’s power had returned, one of her two guards had heard the crackle and made his way to the fence. Clare froze into perfect stillness as he passed her by without noticing, his eyes fixed on the fence. With a sweep of her arm executed with a ballerina’s grace, she took her Glock from it’s holster on her shoulder, brought it to bear and fired a single shot. She was close enough that the silencer had minimal effect on her aim, and the guard dropped to the ground. Working quickly in case anyone else had heard him hit the floor, she moved him into the shadows of one of the outlying facility buildings. She whispered “First contact, complete” into the microphone under her ski-mask.
Amanda smiled as Clare’s voice came through her earpiece. The others tended to write Clare off as lacking the killer instinct. “Too methodical and too damn slow” was the main complaint. Amanda on the other hand, never doubted Clare’s ability for a second. So she was methodical? Then she made fewer mistakes. And Amanda had recently had cause to really appreciate getting it right without any errors. Now Clare had just proved that she could be as good as making snap decisions as she was making them with the luxury of time on her side. All Amanda had to do was the work of two women against four Spetznaz trained guards. Simple, right?
She dealt with the patroller first. For all his Special Forces background, weeks of idly patrolling what had become the world’s most boring perimeter must have dulled his edge. She had gotten both arms into place before he even registered her presence, and the compression of his carotid artery made for a silent death. As she lowered him to the floor, she whispered “Second contact complete”. Almost instantaneously, Clare’s voice was heard “Se…third contact complete”.
In spite of herself, Lucy was impressed. She’d always regarded Clare as being fundamentally unsuited to field ops. As Intel, she was second to none but Lucy had misgiving about trusting her with the simple task of killing. It seemed her doubts had been misplaced. Once again, the Captain’s decisions were the right ones. The Captain was always right it seemed, and that fact provoked a faint, nebulous sense of irritation in Lucy.
Happily, she had an immediate opportunity to deal with it; both of her patrollers had met on their circuitous route. Amanda and Clare’s kills had made it imperative that these two not live to walk their patrol again. Rather unprofessionally, both had stopped to exchange a few words. This gave her a couple of seconds to decide on how she was going to do this. She couldn’t give either man a chance to shout or raise any sort of alarm that would lead to the alarm going off. And good as she was, it would be arrogant in the extreme to assume that she could get two perfect shots off in the short time it would take either man to draw breath and make a noise.
With the speed and grace that was her norm, she set a simple trip-trap. A volley of darts, loaded with Ketamine, would launch from the small box she positioned at chest height and at least one would hit the target’s flesh. She retreated back to the few shadows that the numerous floodlights in the facility grounds allowed, and waited.
The men finished their final chat, and made their way onwards. Their pace was maddeningly uneven; by the time that the first guard had triggered the trap, the second was at the very edge of her vision. Though they generally worked without night sights, Lucy found herself wishing for one as she fired the shot simultaneously with the darts finding their target.
She should have spared her wish for another time; a red Rorschach blot blossomed on the ground in front of the man as he fell, looking for all the world like a man who had drunkenly stumbled and fell. When she was satisfied that he wasn’t getting back up, she made her way over to the prone, pin-cushioned, and heavily drugged guard. She placed her gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger. A quick spasm marked the end of his life. Lucy checked both guards for a pulse. As she dismantled the trip trap, she muttered “Contacts four and five complete”.
Amanda had just finished getting the dead man’s fatigues on over her own grey combat suit when she heard Lucy’s voice. The final three contacts were all down to her, and it had to be done quickly. She tried to remember how the guard had walked, silently cursing herself for not allowing him a few more moments of life so that she could better observe how he moved. Not bothering to hide the body now that all the patrollers were dead, she took a deep breath and advanced on the gate.
One of the guards sat in the booth flipping idly through the worn pages of a magazine. The other two, a man and a woman, were at the gate itself. The man turned and nodded an acknowledgement to Amanda, confirming that her disguise was good enough for what was required of it. She nodded back and, head down, approached the booth. She walked around it to the door, opened it, and stepped inside. She closed the door behind her and turned to face the guard who looked up from his magazine
The report of the rifle rang out at an almost painful volume in the cramped booth. Although it muffled the shot to the outside world, it didn’t muffle it nearly enough to hide the sound from the two guards on the gate. The door was kicked open just as Amanda had turned to face it. Three shots sent him staggering back, and Amanda followed him, training her gun on the momentarily startled woman. Her life ended in that moment. The echo of the final shot faded away.
“Contacts six through eight complete. Cassie, in you come.”
Lucy and Clare joined Amanda at the booth.
- “No silencer?” Clare’s tone neutral, not implying any fault.
- “No need. All the other contacts were done. There’s no way the noise will have been heard in the facility.”
Lucy nodded in agreement with Amanda’s assessment, as did Clare. They waited for Cassie to join them. She was there in just over two minutes, her cheerful face red with exertion and perched on her stocky frame. She smiled at all three of her colleagues, then made her way to the terminal within the booth. From a pocket came a flash drive, filled with all manner of beautifully coded pieces of poison, which was inserted into a dock in the terminal.
“O-kay…lockdown is easy enough to initiate, but there’s a bitch of a failsafe to ensure that the main alarm goes off. The Captain says that there are 3 people in there who have the authorisation code to disarm the Suppression measures, and if they hear that alarm you can be damn sure that’s what they’ll do.”
Lucy sighed inwardly, knowing exactly where this was going. Amanda gamely played her part; “Can you deal with it Cass?”
Cassie’s grin broadened. “What do you think? Give me 10 minutes to bypass it and get the lockdown started. Unless one of them decides to come out for some air, the first they’ll know of it is when they hear the gas vents. At which point, they’re fucked. The corporation chiefs are so shit-scared of any of the fun that they’re researching finding it’s way out of that facility that the Suppression won’t leave fleas alive, let alone people.”
Lucy nodded. She hadn’t been happy at the unknown factor; what if one of them did decide to come out for air? She would have to trust Cassie to make sure that any disarm codes’ binary scream went unheard. Again though, she needn’t have worried. It was seven minutes later when Cassie said “Okay, we’re on.”
It would be three minutes before the Suppression measures began, and Cassie had hacked the facilities internal cameras to monitor things. The women clustered around the terminal and watched anxiously. The three minutes passed without incident. The majority of the people were sleeping in their bunks; the entire Research team were in bed. Only a few insomniacs and security staff were out of their beds.
The cameras showed those facility staff that were still awake reacting with puzzlement to the hissing noise from the walls. That soon gave way to shock, and then fear. Whatever that stuff was, it was effective. The twenty or so people who had been awake were unconscious within twenty seconds and dead in another twenty. Those who had been sleeping died quietly and without fuss.
Cassie touched a button and the monitor went dead. She retrieved her flash drive, and left the booth with the others. As they made their way from the facility gates, Lucy spoke into her face-mic.
“Facility staff neutralised. Lockdown complete. ETA at extraction point, 5 minutes”
A mellifluous voice answered. “Good work. See you all back at the Eyrie.”
From the Captain, that counted as the ringing praises of a choir of angels. Satisfied with a job executed professionally, the women made their way to the extraction point and from thence, home.
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