Latest Weekend Argus column. As submitted for publication. -- AD
IT was with no small surprise here at the Mahogany Ridge that we noted that the UN Security Council had finally voted to authorise a no-fly zone over Libya and approved a resolution permitting “all necessary measures” to protect civilians from Muammar Gaddafi’s soldiers.
“All necessary measures”, by the way, is bureaucratese for “brute arse-whipping military action” -- something the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, hinted at when he told a congressional hearing in Washington: “Let’s just call a spade a spade. A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defences.”
For those beleaguered rebels in Benghazi, digging in to prepare themselves for Bother Leader Daffy’s much-vaunted “moment of truth”, the security council’s vote was all very in-the-nick-of-time stuff, and there has been much in the way of celebrating in the streets of the eastern Libyan port as a result.
But nowhere, I’d imagine, was the relief more immensely tangible than at Nkandla and, indeed, in the the corridors of Luthuli House.
The no-fly zone ruling means that next week’s high-level African Union mission impossible to Tripoli to somehow sweet-talk Daffy into stop laying waste to those who want to see an end to his rule will, alas and sorry for that, now have to be called off.
Quite how the members of that mission -- which included President Jacob Zuma and his counterparts from Mauritania, Mali, Congo and Uganda -- ever supposed they’d be able to convince an utter nutter like Daffy to do the right thing is perhaps a little beyond our ken.
Naturally, being the top chops on their own patches of turf they are a little dysfunctional themselves, and perhaps one characteristic of their own base urges to power is the delusion they are capable of miracle work.
Here at the Ridge we thought it far more likely that Zuma and his fellow presidents would somehow wind up as Daffy’s hostages.
You could imagine them all held against their will, far from their families and many loved ones, and the unbearable torture they’d have to endure, forced to recline on big cushions in a luxurious tent somewhere in the perfumed desert night with sloe-eyed beauties popping dates into their mouths as they watch an endless stream of Daffy’s henchbabes performing the dance of the seven veils.
But we digress.
There is a tidy symmetry to the prospect of the Libyan air force being destroyed, or rendered incapable of being used against the rebels in Benghazi.
This, after all, is the year in which we mark the 100th anniversary of the world’s first aerial bombardment of a civilian population -- an atrocity that coincidentally took place in Libya, which was then part of the Ottaman empire.
Italy, with imperial ambitions of its own, had invaded the country in October 1911 and, retaliating to local resistance, an aircraft from its fledgling air force was dispatched to drop bombs on Arab tribesmen at oases outside Tripoli shortly afterwards, thus opening a whole new dimension to modern warfare.
Which brings me, conveniently, to another atrocity -- this time closer to home. Exactly what is this drivel we’re hearing that the disasters from the massive earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis in Japan are all part of some karmic come-uppance -- because of the way they fish?
As I was told, one evening at the Ridge, “It’s the revenge of the tuna and the whales and the parrot fish.”
It’s of course nothing of the sort. But why do some of us believe that is the case? Are we that screwed up, that insensitive to the suffering of others?
There’s a fluffy sentimentality out there, and there are people, usually those who eat cheeseburgers and still believe in the magic of Disney, who can comfortably rank certain species -- dolphins, for example -- as being more important than others, like humans. What do these people feel for the rights of the tapeworm, I wonder?
On a related, and perhaps more serious matter, events at Japan’s Fukushima power station have reawakened the fear over nuclear energy, a fear which can be traced all the way back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Unsurprisingly, Eskom officials have had to reassure nervous parliamentarians that our Koeberg plant has been designed to withstand both earthquakes and tsunamis.
Maybe. But here’s something to ponder. Imagine the worst-case scenario at Fukushima. There’s a complete meltdown with adverse weather conditions and wind blowing radiation over Japan’s most populated areas. Is there a problem? This is what the UK’s chief scientific adviser, John Beddington, told the British embassy in Tokyo: “The answer is unequivocally no.”
Does he know something we don’t?
Showing posts with label Libya. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Libya. Show all posts
Monday, March 21, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
A Famous Grouse: February 26
Weekend Argus column, as submitted. -- AD
TO the shores of Tripoli, where there seems to be no end to Muammar Gaddafi’s bad hair days.
Despite the fact that the Colonel shares a milliner with Mrs Madikizela-Mandela and enjoys a reputation for doing absolutely fabulous things with old Errol Arendz frocks, he has of late been losing it rather badly in front of the television cameras, and the red carpet fizz could well be a thing of the past.
His latest outburst had even the most jaded of the Mahogany Ridge regulars stunned into silence, their flabbers very, very gasted.
Daffy would now have us believe that not only have the Libyan protesters been manipulated by al Qaeda, but they are all teenagers on drugs. “Their ages are 17,” the Siren of the Sands explained on national television. “They give them pills at night, they put hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee, their Nescafe.”
Oh dear, oh dear. And they’ve probably been listening to pop music as well.
The bad hair days, though, could soon be a thing of the past. This however is not good news for Daffy. Even in his most delusional moments, and there certainly have been a lot of those recently, he must be aware that one of the more prominent traits of the jasmine revolution sweeping the region is that these are not drawn-out affairs, and the killing of civilians certainly won’t change this.
In fact, the swiftness with which the Tunisian and Egyptian tyrannies fell perfectly complements the social networking era. It’s like so digital, man, that if this was The Arabian Nights, it would be a thousand and one tweets. “Meet in square, topl govt, then off 2 Ali’s disco. Rock on, dudes.”
Brother leader’s furious avowal, then, that he would die like a martyr may not be such empty blather after all, and here at the Ridge we’ve opened a book on Daffy’s last days.
True, there is a good chance that he’ll be allowed to leave the country -- but, given the universal condemnation of his murderous behaviour, who would have him? The smart money’s on Zimbabwe.
And should it end very badly for Daffy? Well, the odds are strong that it would be at the end of a rope or by firing squad, and less so by stoning or beheading. Given the mysteries of the Sahara, however, anything is possible up there, and it may well come to pass that a revolutionary tribunal will order him staked out in the desert and be trampled to death by stampeding camels.
Our thoughts, meanwhile, are with the Amazonian Guard, Daffy’s elite force of henchbabes. The 40 members of this bodyguard unit are all virgins, cherry-picked -- figuratively, of course -- by Daffy himself.
These young women undergo extensive martial arts and firearms training. They wear their berets at a suitably coquettish angle, bring a certain something to battle fatigues and jumpsuits and, with appropriate use of lipgloss and other beauty products, smoulder with an intensity that, let’s say, is wholly absent in our female Metro cops.
What is to happen to them when Daffy goes? It would be a shame if the unit disbanded. Maybe they could get film work. As it is, they already look like something out of a James Bond movie. And what about a job at Mavericks or Teazers? A lap dance from a virgin who can kill you in six different ways with an eyeliner pencil certainly has dangerous appeal. When she says no touching, you know she means it.
Closer to home, meanwhile, our attention has been drawn to Jimmy Manyi, the recently appointed appointed government spokesman who appears to have been freely helping himself to Daffy’s Nescafe.
Manyi believes there are too many coloured people in the Western Cape -- “this over-representation . . . is not working for them” -- and it would be better for all if they scattered themselves far and wide across the whole country.
Unfortunately, there are far too many people who think like this in government. Politicans who wonder why large sections of the population regard them with such disgust may well ponder the words of the late writer and philosopher, Auberon Waugh, who once suggested that their distasteful urges to power were personality disorders in their own right, “rather like the urge to sexual congress with children or the taste for rubber underwear”.
Manyi’s racist outburst, however, goes so much further than the mere urge to bother ordinary citizens. It rather ominously echoes all the other social engineering horrors: lebensraum, apartheid, the pogroms, the displacements and the final solutions.
Such people, it hardly needs saying, are well advised to take note of events in Libya, Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen and elsewhere.
TO the shores of Tripoli, where there seems to be no end to Muammar Gaddafi’s bad hair days.
Despite the fact that the Colonel shares a milliner with Mrs Madikizela-Mandela and enjoys a reputation for doing absolutely fabulous things with old Errol Arendz frocks, he has of late been losing it rather badly in front of the television cameras, and the red carpet fizz could well be a thing of the past.
His latest outburst had even the most jaded of the Mahogany Ridge regulars stunned into silence, their flabbers very, very gasted.
Daffy would now have us believe that not only have the Libyan protesters been manipulated by al Qaeda, but they are all teenagers on drugs. “Their ages are 17,” the Siren of the Sands explained on national television. “They give them pills at night, they put hallucinatory pills in their drinks, their milk, their coffee, their Nescafe.”
Oh dear, oh dear. And they’ve probably been listening to pop music as well.
The bad hair days, though, could soon be a thing of the past. This however is not good news for Daffy. Even in his most delusional moments, and there certainly have been a lot of those recently, he must be aware that one of the more prominent traits of the jasmine revolution sweeping the region is that these are not drawn-out affairs, and the killing of civilians certainly won’t change this.
In fact, the swiftness with which the Tunisian and Egyptian tyrannies fell perfectly complements the social networking era. It’s like so digital, man, that if this was The Arabian Nights, it would be a thousand and one tweets. “Meet in square, topl govt, then off 2 Ali’s disco. Rock on, dudes.”
Brother leader’s furious avowal, then, that he would die like a martyr may not be such empty blather after all, and here at the Ridge we’ve opened a book on Daffy’s last days.
True, there is a good chance that he’ll be allowed to leave the country -- but, given the universal condemnation of his murderous behaviour, who would have him? The smart money’s on Zimbabwe.
And should it end very badly for Daffy? Well, the odds are strong that it would be at the end of a rope or by firing squad, and less so by stoning or beheading. Given the mysteries of the Sahara, however, anything is possible up there, and it may well come to pass that a revolutionary tribunal will order him staked out in the desert and be trampled to death by stampeding camels.
Our thoughts, meanwhile, are with the Amazonian Guard, Daffy’s elite force of henchbabes. The 40 members of this bodyguard unit are all virgins, cherry-picked -- figuratively, of course -- by Daffy himself.
These young women undergo extensive martial arts and firearms training. They wear their berets at a suitably coquettish angle, bring a certain something to battle fatigues and jumpsuits and, with appropriate use of lipgloss and other beauty products, smoulder with an intensity that, let’s say, is wholly absent in our female Metro cops.
What is to happen to them when Daffy goes? It would be a shame if the unit disbanded. Maybe they could get film work. As it is, they already look like something out of a James Bond movie. And what about a job at Mavericks or Teazers? A lap dance from a virgin who can kill you in six different ways with an eyeliner pencil certainly has dangerous appeal. When she says no touching, you know she means it.
Closer to home, meanwhile, our attention has been drawn to Jimmy Manyi, the recently appointed appointed government spokesman who appears to have been freely helping himself to Daffy’s Nescafe.
Manyi believes there are too many coloured people in the Western Cape -- “this over-representation . . . is not working for them” -- and it would be better for all if they scattered themselves far and wide across the whole country.
Unfortunately, there are far too many people who think like this in government. Politicans who wonder why large sections of the population regard them with such disgust may well ponder the words of the late writer and philosopher, Auberon Waugh, who once suggested that their distasteful urges to power were personality disorders in their own right, “rather like the urge to sexual congress with children or the taste for rubber underwear”.
Manyi’s racist outburst, however, goes so much further than the mere urge to bother ordinary citizens. It rather ominously echoes all the other social engineering horrors: lebensraum, apartheid, the pogroms, the displacements and the final solutions.
Such people, it hardly needs saying, are well advised to take note of events in Libya, Algeria, Bahrain, Yemen and elsewhere.
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