Career Opportunities. posted by Richard Seymour

The Absurder is ordinarily given to flattering its readers into thinking they are middle-class by including lots of rather banal commentary about lifestyle, celebrities, wine, food, famous cheeses, fashion and left-field film. Perhaps the bulk of them are middle-class, but I think it's more likely that their readers just like to be addressed as if they were. Today, however, they have a rather salacious job offer - a very high profile security job:

"Are you fit and adventurous? Want to earn $500 a day? Here's the ideal job," it enthuses, before entering the caveat, "There is only one drawback - it's in Iraq." No sale. Not for me, anyway. I never got into violence, despite the best efforts of my friends and relatives.

If, however, you consider yourself among what the Absurder describes as one of the "new Klondikers", then you might be interested to know that "'The recent instability is good for anybody who is actually here. It is reducing the competition, because people are taking the Wall Street walk.'" Further, "the money can be fantastic", and "life - on both sides - is cheap". Those of you who caught my post about Iraq's mercenaries will not be astonished, but it's nice to see the liberal papers finally catching up.

Still, it's equally important to remind ourselves why this bastion of Sunday liberalism deserves pity, derision and scorn. Last weeks's editorial, accompanying Blair's article, (mailed directly from the vital Carribean), included the usual liberal self-torturing. Amid the epithets and sobriquets dispensed therein (the Iraqi resistance are "bandits", just as Jomo Kenyatta's comrades were once "savages"), editor Roger Alton reached new depths of Absurdity with this thought on the violence in Iraq:

"Optimists will say that last week's violence was to be expected. Dealing with the insurgents and al-Sadr had to be done and was never going to be easy. Pessimists see Iraq as on the brink of general insurrection, with growing bonds between Sunni and Shia radicals threatening to make the country ungovernable within months. As ever, the truth lies somewhere in between."

Between fact and fiction? Dear Roger, if the "optimists" truly believe that last week's violence was "to be expected", then they deserve to have their heads on spikes for having supported such a venture. Be upstanding, sir.


Alton: Spiked.