The Angry Exile: Palin drones.

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

Saturday 4 December 2010

Palin drones.

I haven't blogged on the Wikileaks story partly because plenty of others already have, so I'm not going to go into it in much depth now beyond passing a few comments on the rumblings and ramblings of Sarah Palin and others. Palin bashing is not normally my thing, but it's hard to resist when headlines are saying she wants him hunted down. Hunted down? Seriously? For what? Look, I realise this is all very embarrassing for the US but come on, how damaging is it really? Yes, it's classified information, but I have a feeling that there's a clue to the value of much of that information in the fact that the US soldier who leaked it was a Private First Class, a rank which I believe you get in the US Army automatically just by sticking around for a certain amount of time.

And the actual content itself. Jesus Christ, is it really a big deal? So now we know what we only suspected last week, that politicians and political appointees can be bitchy, craven and stupid. Wow, who knew? It's a shock revelation alright, the shock being that they bothered to classify it in the first place. Okay, I'm exaggerating. As I said, it is embarrassing for the US but if was really that sensitive what the fuck were they doing allowing a lowly Pfc access to it all? As for hunting down Julian Assange, you've got the leaker in custody. Wikileaks published it, but if it had been the editor of the New York Times would there be calls to hunt him down? But where Palin really put me at risk of spewing tea all over the keyboard was with this:

Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders?

Sarah, honey, what fucking urgency would this be, eh?

Pursued with urgency since 1998.

If the US does decide to go after Assange "urgently" can we presume that he can hole up until at least the mid to late 2020s in a Swedish ski lodge somewhere?

The 46-year-old, who is known for her conservative views, questioned on Twitter why the US government couldn't "stop WikiLeaks' treasonous act", perhaps unaware that Mr Assange is not an American citizen, and that the activist website is hosted in Sweden with servers across the globe.

Not much I can say that The Age didn't. Treason is betraying one's own country and Assange is not an American. How much he may or may not have betrayed Australia by publishing leaked American diplomatic data is another thing, but he's certainly not a traitor to the US. By definition he can't be. John McCain's daughter understands that.

Kind of.

Last month, the daughter of Senator John McCain, Sarah Palin's presidential running mate, said Mr Assange's release of military documents on Afghanistan and Iraq as "unAmerican".

"He looks like a James Bond villain. He harbours a lot of ill will towards America. To me he's a villain," Meghan McCain said, adding that Mr Assange was a "creepy rogue Swedish guy".

Points for being literally correct about Assange being unAmerican, but he's not a Swede either. He's fucking Australian for Christ's sake. Australia? You know? Big island. Bottom right hand corner of most world maps. You can't miss it. Though Mrs Exile suspects that really he's from Gallifrey.

And these are two of the comparatively sane voices on the US right. There are people talking about having him assassinated or kidnapped, presumably for later execution after a few years of softening up in Gitmo. All for some poxy diplomatic gossip, which even the US government isn't getting too excited about.

...the US Defence Secretary today played down the impact of WikiLeaks' latest documents' release, calling them embarrassing and awkward but only having a "fairly modest" impact on US foreign policy.

"Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for US foreign policy? I think fairly modest," Robert Gates said in a Pentagon press conference.

Though that's not stopping them from wanting to charge him as well.

The US government is seeking to charge Mr Assange and other WikiLeaks representatives under its Espionage Act, although it is unclear whether such moves are possible.

A US defence lawyer specialising in intelligence cases, Mark Zaid, told Reuters it would be "very difficult for the US government to prosecute [Mr Assange] in the US for what he is doing".

Under US law, anyone charged would had to have been in contact with a foreign power and also provided them with secrets. Mr Assange has not been accused of doing either.

Quite. He's a pain in the arse and he's probably not going to shut up until we're all bored with him leaking what this Ambassador said about that Ambassador's wife's dress at the other Ambassador's party and stopped paying attention. The Yanks have the guy who did the actual leaking in custody, and as a soldier presumably he's covered by some American version of the Official Secrets Act. Content yourselves with that would be my advice, and certainly don't fall for the temptation of extra-judicial killing of the citizens of allied nations. America is still supposed to be leading the free world, and the implication was that it's leading it to more freedom rather than less.

'Kinell.