Notes for a post-LTTE drama

In February 2010, Gordon Brown was a news-maker.   David Miliband couldn't stop talking.  Especially abut Sri Lanka.  On February 27, 2010 I wrote about these gentlemen and the terrorist in cassock, Emmanuel in the Daily News.  It was titled 'Gordon, David and Emmanuel: Notes for a post-LTTE drama' Brown and Miliband have been hoofed out but their replacements are no different.  Think 'Cameron' and 'Hammond' and read this.  Same old, same old, except the names are new.  

There is a man called Gordon Brown. I have something to say to him. Here goes  Mr. Brown, your country is yet to compensate mine for crimes against humanity, genocide, plunder of resources, insults and humiliation. I know you are going through a hard time, so let me conservatively say ‘50 billion pounds’. To begin with. That would be the first instalment of a series of annual payments spread through a decade (adding to a total of 500 billion pounds, which is just a fraction of what you’ve extracted over the past two centuries).

Gordon Brown

David Miliband

This Brown, he has problems. He’s on his way out, according to opinion polls from Britain. The man is desperate. Desperate situations call for desperate responses, I know, but I really didn’t think Brown and the Labour Party were in such dire straits. And I know that Brown is a citizen of a country that really doesn’t care about the track records of those they choose to bed with. Still, I was a bit surprised to find out that things have got so bad that Brown and Miliband and the Labour Party had to go beg for political support from a bunch of terrorist-lovers.

The two had been seen crawling around a hall where a shady outfit called Global Tamil Forum was having a meeting. I am imagining the scene.

Gordon and David, all smiles, saluting terrorists and terrorism every 17 seconds. Fr. Emmanuel, a living embarrassment to the Catholic Church (or maybe not, considering that no apology has been made from that quarter about the activities of this LTTE apologist), is blessing the two:

‘May the spirit of (Sun) God bless you my sons. I know how hard you tried to save our Sun God, Velupillai Prabhakaran. I know it would not have been easy to do this since you are not showing that kind of concern to the Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.’

I must interrupt the narration, sorry: ‘Hey Gordon, 50 billion is a number you have to remember bro, ok?’

Back to Emmanuel, Father, sorry.

‘You’ve shown so much concern about Tamil people living in IDP facilities in Sri Lanka. I must applaud you for being silent on the fact that our poor Sun God, in reduced circumstances, could offer them only one glass of kunjee a day and was forced to shoot those who tried to escape. I must thank you for ignoring the fact that these IDPs enjoy better living standards than a lot of Sinhalese villagers in areas our boys had to march through, tossing grenades and waving machetes in gay abandon. I will not forget that you deliberately chose to ignore all that your government has been up to in Iraq and Afghanistan and the human consequences of acting as understudy to Uncle Sam.’

Interruption: Lordy Gordy Pudding and Pie Baby, 50 billion smackers, remember? And that’s pounds.

Over to you Father (sic):

‘I am sure people are going to ask you some questions about your culpability over Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the torture, the illegality, the lack of due process, the inhumanity etc.., about your role in turning 250,000 people into IDPs in Pakistan during the year 2009, and of course about supporting sanctions that killed half a million children in Iraq.’

David, tell Gordon, in case he forgets, that we don’t want cheques. He can pay in hard cash or gold. And by the way, all the loot stashed away in the British Museums and other places are highly returnable, ok?

Yes, Fr. Emmanuel, you were saying?

‘Dear Gordon, My Lord Prabhakaran, wherever the hell he may be right now, will no doubt be blessing you for speaking about the people he is said to have held hostage and how now enjoy the most basic of human rights, the right to live (which, unfortunately he did not have the ability to grant them), especially because you’ve chosen to remain silent about the 4.2 million Iraqis displaced and living in areas bordering Syria and Jordan in make shift camps since 2003.’

Gordon and David are swooning with joy at this point because they’ve been told that some Tamils might consider voting for the Labour Party. They break into a chant:

‘Eelam, Eelam...Eeeeeeeelam....Eeeeeeeel...Ummmm...’

Fr. Emmanuel screams from the pulpit: ‘Let us pray!’

‘Yipee, let’s do that, let’s pray, we like praying, it’s our national pastime and the secret of the wealth we have and the power we used to enjoy until some people in Boston decided to have a tea party,’ David Miliband remembers his scholar father and becomes historical.

Gordon Brown can’t exactly be historical, he chooses to be hysterical and starts rolling on the floor.

I am not sure if this is how it happened, but if there’s a subtext to the pantomime the above would not be far off the mark.

My friend Seyed writes that Gordon’s partner in these crimes of omission and commission, Robert Blake ought to listen to Michael Jackson’s song ‘Man in the Mirror’. I think the Global Tamil Forum should consider using it as the anthem of the organization. They should make it mandatory for their membership to hang the following quote above their beds, dining tables, around their necks and plaster it across their buttocks:

‘I’m starting with the man in the mirror. I’m asking him to change his ways.’

(female members can switch ‘women’ for ‘man’, ‘her’ for ‘him’ and ‘her’ for ‘his’).

And by the way, Brown and Miliband, I was serious. Fifty billion pounds. Before you get hoofed out of office by the people in your country.

malindasenevi@gmail.com