The rotters' club

I am surprised that Tony O’Reilly hasn’t been asked to intervene in the crisis sparked by Robert Mugabe’s murderous clamp-down on anyone suspected of flirting with democracy. The flabby boss-man of Independent Newspapers is a long-time chum of the demented Zimbabwe dictator.

In 1982, O’Reilly travelled to Zimbabwe for a business meeting with Mugabe, which he later described as “friendly” and “constructive.” He might have added “lucrative.” The deal struck involved the acquisition by Heinz – O’Reilly was CEO at the time – of a State-sponsored company Olivine, which used local farm produce to make edible oils, margarine and soap. Heinz invested $13 million in the project, and was soon recouping its outlay every year.
In 1988, O’Reilly hosted a press conference for Mugabe at a hotel near Wall Street in New York. Publicists hired and paid for by Heinz ensured an impressive attendance of US business reporters. A jocular O’Reilly presented Mugabe with a giant tin of Heinz baked beans, quipping that he didn’t recommend Mugabe devour its entire contents at one sitting, considering the “anti-social side effects when consumed in too large quantities.” Ho.
The first question following the public love-in between the two Jesuit-educated pals came from a Newsweek reporter who inquired: “If you are liberalising the economy, why not have free elections and a truly open political system?” Mugabe had just abolished the office of prime minister and appointed himself “Executive President” – the post he still, at the time of writing, continues to cling on to. Mugabe’s responded: “We don’t waste our money and time on these types of elections. We know what the people want and need.”
O’Reilly appears not to have been put out or put off by this brutal rejoinder. In 1992, Mugabe joined him for a weekend at O’Reilly’s castle in County Kildare, where the two celebrated high mass in the medieval private chapel built around a crusader’s tomb, and took communion together. The late John Junor coined the appropriate response to this repulsive occasion: “Pass the sick-bag, Alice.”
Could not the burly billionaire now implore his chum to cut down a bit on the genocide?
And speaking of genocide...
Do children still shout “Geronimo!?”
When I was running around Rossville Street in hot pursuit of cattle rustlers, we’d scream “Geronimo!” to signal assault on whichever rival band of no-goods we happened to be chasing at the time. This, we understood, had been the war-whoop of the Apaches as they descended on wagon trains whose women-folk had only John Wayne to protect. Such was the ignorance, racism and sexism of the times.
But that’s all in the past now. Or not.
Geronimo was one of the most heroic leaders of Native Americans in their epic struggle to defend the land they’d lived on and nurtured for a hundred generations against invaders seething with hatred and greed. He declared war after his wife and three children were murdered by Mexican soldiers in the summer of 1858, at Kaskiyeh, near the town of Sonora. “I lost all,” he said. “I was never again to be contented.”
Geronimo retreated to Arizona and mobilised a band of Apaches, which returned to inflict terrible revenge on the soldiers who had conducted the massacre. Pursued across the South West by both Mexican and US troops, he fought a guerrilla war for almost 30 years until captured with his 35 surviving braves at Skeleton Canyon, Arizona, in 1886. He was kept as prize exhibit for gawping “dignitaries” in a prison camp in Oklahoma until his death in 1909. He was buried without ceremony. Nine years later, his remains were dug up and stolen by white bigots who still couldn’t forgive a Red man who had remained defiant and free for so long against such enormous odds.
One of the grave-robbers was Prescott Bush, great-grandfather of George W.
Geronimo’s bones were taken as a trophy to New Haven in Connecticut and installed in a “Tomb” at Yale University which became the meeting-place of an elite student order, ‘Skull and Bones’. George Bush Senior, Junior, and Florida Governor Jeb are the latest of the sick dynasty to have been members of the order.
Two years ago, Harlyn Geronimo, the great man’s great-grandson, launched a campaign for the return of his bones to their ancestral homeland for burial according to the rites of the Apache tribe. He has written repeatedly to the White House, but never had the courtesy of a reply. Not unexpected from an uncultured oaf.
A petition to Congress has won the support of a dozen Senators and members of the House of Representatives. You can add your voice at: www.petitiononline.com/Geronimo/petition.html
Let’s now shout “Geronimo!” in reverence and respect.

I was surprised to hear that there were swathes of empty seats at the Police gig at Stormont on June 20. Maybe the £70 ticket price proved too much. Although I heard no complaints at the similar price-tag for the thrilling-beyond-words Lou Reed Berlin gig in the Waterfront the following week.
What compounded my surprise at the sparse Police attendance was that Stormont now sees a sell-out almost every day of the week.
Peter Robinson was at the Police gig, although I don’t imagine he paid in. This was a week after he and Martin McGuinness had welcomed the aforementioned Bush to the same premises. First Minister Robinson doesn’t believe in the theory of evolution. I wonder if he’s changed his mind after spending an afternoon in the company of the Missing Link?

Tickets for Glasgowbury, July 26 are now available for the scarcely-credible modest sum of £25 (£30 with camping) at www.glasgowbury.com. Worth it for the Jane Bradfords, And So I Watch You From Afar and Fighting With Wire on their own. And they are not on their own.