The Angry Exile: Incandescent.

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

Sunday, 29 August 2010

Incandescent.

For some people every concession granted to them and every victory they score is never enough, and this is particularly true of the Righteous. Well before the smoking bans, which aren't bans so much as restrictions on the use of private property, they got tobacco ads progressively removed from TV. Then it was the print media and hoardings, and then overt sports sponsorship. And when they'd achieved an almost total ban on any promotion of a product that is perfectly legal to own, use and sell they started looking at the loopholes. Nothing less than total victory would do for them, or they might have felt somewhat disheartened as they turned their attention to drinking and eating. So where logos were still allowed in place of actual brand names they demanded that this too must stop, thereby making certain transactions between one particular type of business and any others illegal - a bank can write a cheque to a racing team to get its logo on the side of the cars, but the same transaction by a tobacco firm became illegal. Smoking in films and TV programmes, where logos are usually hard to make out and often entirely fictional anyway, has almost gone and still they are not satisfied. Evidence of smoking in art and well known photos has been going down the memory holes lately, and now they're concerned about smoking on the internet.

The tobacco industry may be using websites such as YouTube to get around a ban on advertising cigarettes, a study says.

Note the important word there: 'may'.

Researchers in New Zealand studied the video-sharing site and found a number of pro-tobacco videos "consistent with indirect marketing activity by tobacco companies or their proxies".

They say governments should consider regulating such content on the net.

As if the fuckers aren't tumescent with eagerness to do that anyway.

Tobacco companies have always denied using the net to promote cigarettes.

Though why they shouldn't be able to do so is beyond me. As I've said a zillion times before, either ban smoking and live without all that wonderful tax revenue that every fucking government in the world is addicted to - and to a much greater degree than any smoker is to nicotine - or leave the industry and their customers the fuck alone.

No, I don't like the smell of cigarette smoke much either, but since my legs aren't just fucking painted on I'm comfortable taking a step or two backwards and not making my smoking friends feel like shit. Why can't the banstubators do that?

Amanda Sandford, research manager at anti-smoking group Action on Smoking and Health (Ash) said the study's findings were "disturbing but fairly typical of tobacco industry activity".

Angry Exile, an expat blogger who cares deeply about personal freedom, said that ASH's response is "disturbing but fairly typical of tobacco control obsessives and other authoritarian cock slots."

"As soon as one avenue of promotion is closed, companies will seek out alternative means of promoting their product and will do anything to get round advertising restrictions," she told BBC News.

"As soon as one avenue of free trade and individual liberty is closed, ASH and other bansturbators will seek out alternative means of restricting these legal products and will do anything to make smokers and tobacco firms look like scum," he told anyone who'd listen. And that might even be being a little economical with the facts (my emphasis):

But Catherine Armstrong, a spokesperson for British American Tobacco, one of the firms studied in the report, said it was "not our policy to use social networking sites such as Facebook or YouTube to promote our tobacco product brands".

"Not even the authors of this report claim we have done so," she said. "Using social media could breach local advertising laws and our own International Marketing Standards, which apply to our companies worldwide.

So the study didn't actually say they were using online media to advertise, but it seems to me that ASH want to try and make the connection in people's heads anyway. They really are unbearable cunts.

And being unbearable cunts, this is especially for them.

Declaration of interest - I am not a smoker, having given up a few years ago. I have never worked for or received money from any tobacco firms. Quite the opposite in fact, since I gave them plenty of money when I did smoke. All the same, I'd rather their company than that of ASH and the other ban happy illiberal fucktroons that infest what used to be a free society.