The Angry Exile: The Daily Mash.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday 15 October 2009

The Daily Mash.

As usual:

CARTER-RUCK TO SUE EVERYONE

LAW firm Carter-Ruck is to send you a letter telling you to shut it right now or they will have your house.

The libel lawyers acted after thousands of bloggers and Twitter users ignored a legal bid to suppress information about their client Trafigura and its decision to hose down some Africans with a big boat full of shit.

The injunction, brought against the Guardian, was withdrawn last night after Trafigura and Carter-Ruck decided it would be more fun to try and intimidate everyone with a computer.

The injunctions will be posted later this week, although the firm have also threatened to sue every postman in Britain if strike action affects their delivery.

DHL will be used to deliver injunctions to the postmen, but if anyone from DHL looks at the addresses then it will be sued and its injunctions will be delivered by UPS who will also be sued and have its injunctions delivered by Federal Express.

Senior partner Denys Finch-Hatton, said: "I have taken advice from myself and will see absolutely everybody in court later this month. As a precaution, I have also taken out an injunction preventing you from telling anyone that I told you that I would see everybody in court and an injunction preventing you from telling anyone that I told you about the previous injunction. And so on."

He added: "As for Trafigura, our clients have stated consistently that they only ever intended to poison the west African coastline with 400 billion gallons of shit in a perfectly legal way."

Just gold.

UPDATE: And then there's this:

As Internet coverage focussed on its client Trafigura, law firm Carter Ruck has joined massive corporations everywhere in longing for the days when intimidation and blackmail was enough to get them what they wanted.

Despite using the legal process to secure their desired outcome - a media blackout of their clients wrong-doing - users of the Internet were quick to disseminate the news around the globe.

“This wouldn’t have happened in my day,” said a former lawyer specialising in news media.

“We would have put the frighteners on them nice and early, there’d have been no mention of it in the paper, and the first blogger to allude to it would have mysteriously disappeared.”

“I ask you, what is the point in being a billion dollar entity if you can’t buy the type of news coverage you want?"

...

Carter Ruck have been quick to point out that they haven’t been defeated, but this global exposure was in fact their plan all along.

A spokesperson told us, “The dumping of hazardous waste is an extremely competitive industry, and if someone now has tonnes of lethal chemicals they want to make ‘disappear’, what is the first name that springs to mind?”

“That’s right, Trafigura. We are confident our client will be delighted with the outcome of our campaign.”