An AL Kennedy Primer

"Forget the mindless celebration of Murdoch's media as Christian tank tracks crush the DMU-irradiated Iraqi baby's skull and Halliburton shares rise on hopes of a cholera outbreak in Basra. Go to work, covet the neighbour's wife's girlfriend, watch the home shopping channel and spend everything you borrowed at exorbitant rates from a bank investing in the pharmaceutical companies that are drowning millions of Africans in their own (unfortunately non-Caucasian) blood. You know it makes sense."

Oh, alright. I made that one up. But I flatter myself that a couple more paragraphs like that, and you have the essence of AL Kennedy's Guardian work. This woman makes John Pilger look like a cautious, analytical sort of chap.

A fixation with blood (good to spill if it's English, otherwise bad), hatred of Christians (hypocritical murderers), reality TV (the new opiate of the people), consumer culture (T.N.O.O.T.P. II), the tabloid press (TNOOTP III), democracy (the deluded peasants keep voting for the wrong guys), above all Bush and Blair. For a good internationalist she has an alarming tendency to believe that a command of English is the mark of a civilised being, and she's not above stereotyping foreigners - seeming, for example, to be unaware of the fact that there are nearly a million Christians in Iraq (note - this originally read 'three million' - got from an old encyclopedia - the exact number seems a little uncertain).

22/8/2000 - "The Edinburgh Festival much increases my hatred of humanity"

29/8/2000 - on computer helplines - "they are exorbitant replacements for free information websites; they are based in foreign countries and haunted by alarming pronunciation mutations" Do we detect a hint of xenophobia ?

17/1/2001 - on rebranding. "Private individuals should model their behaviour on the sparkling examples offered by government and industry. Sadly, the opportunity to poison, swindle, murder and mislead thousands of complete strangers has never come my way". But you can poison their minds as best you may.

2/2/2002 - the online chat. In which we detect a self-aware, courteous and sensitive individual. Maybe the Guardian is where Ms Id comes out to play.

24/8/2002 - Edinburgh is really good, although "Boringly, the cobbles of Auld Reekie are not running with Sassenach blood"

25/11/2002 - Polly Curtis reports - "Renowned Scottish novelist to teach at St Andrews. Speaking to EducationGuardian.co.uk today, she said she intended to work 60 hours a year at the university." Can I have a job there please ?

9/12/2002 - Germany is so civilised that she can address an audience in English. "Two generations ago, they allowed themselves to let racist pride, paranoia and greed force them into appalling crimes on a worldwide scale. Now they're looking at the UK and the US and recognising all the symptoms of the same disease." I wonder if she told her German audience why Bush and Blair are like the Nazis.

10/1/2003 - war turns Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheyney, Kissinger on. I don't know why, but when AL gets down and dirty with middle aged white enemy males it makes me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps she just seems to get into it too much. Her dreams she daren't remember - or tell us what she's seen.

"Every woman loves a fascist
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you"


13/2/2003 - war turns Bush and Blair on.

7/5/2003 - Blair prays - "If innocent civilians weren't intended to die, then Thou wouldst have saved them - and made them proper Christians." You see, all Iraqis are Muslim.

10/6/2003 - "Iraqi children are also having fun, scampering about between the cluster bombs"

10/7/2003 - Depleted uranium - our gift to Iraq

13/8/2003 - She's been away to civilised Europe and isn't glad to be home. But it's not long before she's settled in. Add to this the liberation that wasn't, the democracy that isn't and the glee on the New York Stock Exchange when 200 or so imaginatively armed US troops take hours to kill four Iraqis (one of them a teenager) and you'll realise that we're living in a world of fun.. I think we're referring to the deaths of a teenager with a Kalashnikov and two renowned psychopathic murderers. So unfair of those Americans not to give them a sporting chance.

14/8/2003 - At the Edinburgh Festival, where "the most important, moving event so far has been a reading and discussion from Anthony Swofford .... a marine in the "first" Gulf war, (who) explained how his feelings would not allow him to be a marine now. "

Funny how caring liberals never consider that a war counts unless the west is involved. The First Gulf War was of course fought between Iran and Iraq. Over a million died. Bush Senior's war was the Second and Bush Junior's the Third. No matter.

10/9/2003 - counting pints of Iraqi blood. For a full fisking click here.

8/11/2003 - how to be a writer. Miraculously, no depleted uranium nor hatred of Bush/Christians/reality TV appears to be required.

20/12/2003 - What new topic will she write about today, we wonder ? The legendary plastic Thanksgiving turkey trots out.

7/1/2004 - "let's not even talk about Gulf war syndrome and depleted uranium". If only.

10/1/2004 - on her countrymen, "administrators and cannon fodder for the empire, enthusiastic slave traders and killers with a centuries-long tradition of lunacy and genocide"

Ms Kennedy is certainly following one of those traditions.

11/2/2004 - "you've got to justify every drop of blood spilled by US and UK foreign policy. Don't think of mercy or justice."

18/3/2004 - "turning Iraq into an almost inconceivable hell ..." As compared to the conceivable hell of the previous Iraqi administration ?

7/4/2004 - "we didn't want to evaporate Iraqi civilians or irradiate Afghan infants, but our government made sure we still did. "