The Angry Exile: I've signed.

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

Wednesday 17 February 2010

I've signed.

Have you?

The use of the term 'climate denier' in rational debate is up there with 'my dad's bigger than yours' or 'you're wrong because you smell'. Taking it literally it's patently wrong since there is probably no one who denies that there is a climate. 'Climate denier' makes as much sense as 'table denier' and so it should be easy to laugh off but for the nastier connotation.

That leads me on to the next thing that's wrong with it, the blatant appeal to emotion that is the linguistic link to Holocaust denial (in any case my Jewish neighbours tell me a better term is Shoah). I haven't asked them how they feel about the Shoah, the deliberate and systematic state sponsored persecutions, enslavement and eventually murder of six million or so Jews over just a dozen years or so, being trivialised by comparison with something that is neither premeditated nor likely to kill anything like as many so quickly even if the alarmists are right. Of course if we stick with the term Holocaust so as to include the eastern Europeans, gypsies, gays, disabled and anyone else the fluff lipped fucknuts running the show wasn't keen on we can add possibly as much as another six million, which makes the warble gloaming alarmists' use of the emotionally loaded term 'denier' to try to shut the argument down even more distasteful.

None of that goes away when the alarmists say that it's just short for 'climate change denier' - the trivialisation of the state sponsored murder of approximately a million people per year is still there, on top of which there is no serious denial of climate change among sceptics either. Most of us point out that as far as anyone knows the climate has been always been changing for the entire 4.5 billion history of the planet (which is one of the main points: what's happening now isn't new). Even the term climate change is stupid without the revolting 'denier' tag - a noun followed by the verb for what it does all the time. It makes as much sense as calling a trout a 'fish swim'.

The irony is that the ill informed may now believe that until the Industrial Revolution the climate was always stable and unchanging when nothing could be further from the truth. Much as I hate to use the term myself but making such a claim is truly denying the realities of climate change. Questioning the unproven and arguably rather shaky theory that it's all driven by CO₂ and a net positive feedback for which there's little or no evidence isn't denying a fucking thing - it's asking for more than the assurances of people with a vested interest in promoting public belief in what they espouse, and who keep fucking up their so-called settled science.

If Gordon can't tell the difference he's not bright enough to be Prime Minister. But that wouldn't be anything new either.

H/T Counting Cats in Zanzibar.

UPDATE: Of course 72,231 signed this petition and were not merely turned down but ignored. Colostomy Brown's (edited to add: much genuflection in the direction of Dungeekin for that) response was simply two sentences of cockwaffle that didn't even address the petition. Expect more of the same.