In this, the last of our series in association with Amnesty International to mark the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, Ross O'Carroll-Kellyoffers a new short story and his own additional article, Article 31
FOR AS LONG as I've known her, Sorcha's always been heavily into, like, world affairs and shit. As in, that Amnesty newsletter would drop through the letterbox and no sooner did she have it read than she was off, chaining herself to the railings of some embassy or other.
Or storving herself.
Those forty-eight hour Christmas fasts in support of Aung San Suu Kyi had the double effect of highlighting the plight of her favourite prisoner of conscience and allowing her to squeeze into some, I don't know, Marchesa creation for the Berkeley Court New Year ball.
But the only time I was ever, like, actually worried about her was the time they bombed, I don't know, Iran or Iraq or whichever one it was.
Sorcha had been banging on about Saddam Hussein for years - what he'd done to this shower, what he'd done to that shower. At school, she had, like, hundreds of postcords - bodies all over the shop - and she used to send them to, like, TDs and all sorts, demanding that the world do something about this dude.
I could never work out, roysh, why, when they finally did decide to off him, Sorcha suddenly switched sides. But I do remember her telling me one day that she was going on that big morch in town, as in Stop the War, blahdy blahdy blah.
When I mentioned the postcords, she gave me this total filthy and went, "They're not doing it for humanitarian reasons, Ross.
They're going to kill, like, hundreds of thousands of innocent people and it's all about oil!" I remember, like, watching the morch on TV - I was actually flicking between it and whatever Grand Prix was on - and actually seeing Sorcha, pretty near the front, standing next to this obvious tosspot.
Goatee, stupid glasses - like that focking John Lennon used to wear.
Never saw him before in my life, roysh, but over the next couple of years I'd hear quite a bit about him. His name was Quicky Fingers. Or maybe Quick E-Fingers - I never visited his ridiculous blog. But Sorcha did, regularly, and she fell under his - I suppose you'd have to say - spell.
Honestly, for the next, like, two years, she barely said a sentence that didn't stort with the words, "Quicky Fingers says . . .". It was, "Quicky Fingers says America only became interested in East Timor when it was in, like, their strategic interest to be." Or it was, "Quicky Fingers says that, far from working together, Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda actually hate each other." She actually changed as well? As in her personality? She was suddenly, like, picking rows with me, especially after she'd been on the Wolfe to him or maybe met him for, like, coffee. She'd tell me I was, like, unaware of what was happening in the world and she'd say it like it was an actual bad thing.
See, my attitude has always been, what's the point in, like, learning loads of shit when it's all there on the internet if you ever need it.
I'm pretty sure Quicky was trying to get his famous Fingers into her Alan Whickers as well. Anyway, let's just say it was a big build-up of things, but I wanted to deck the goy for a long, long time. The dude had it coming - and in a major way.
The problem was, you can't just walk up to someone and deck them. You have to have, like, a reason? Anyway, I got it one Saturday morning. I was in the sack, watching one of Sorcha's Davina McCall exercise DVDs when my phone rings and it's, like, Aoife - as in her friend? She's in, like, tears. Says she's really worried about Sorcha. Turns out Quicky and a couple of his mates were bringing her to Shannon - Limerick, which was dangerous enough by itself - to do damage to some American navy plane or other. According to Aoife, Quicky had given her a wire-cutters and a hammer.
They were in the Amnesty Freedom café when I walked in, drinking their fair trade whatevers. There was, like, six or seven of them, including Sorcha, sitting in a circle around Quicky, who was obviously loving the attention.
He's like, "See, that's what the military industrial complex want you to believe. What America really wants is, like, one giant global superstate, which'll be controlled by corporations. Look at the way they already control the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organisation. Why do you think they've been involved in, like, 133 wars and military interventions over the past hundred years? Seriously, man - there's a full list of them on my blog.
"It's, like, don't tell me that Saddam Hussein's a monster - er, you supported him? Like you did Pinochet, Suharto, Duvalier and anyone else you care to mention. Again, there's a full list on the blog.
"And they say it's about human rights, democracy and civil liberties! Er, right. Customers who bought this item also bought Saddam Hussein Is Building A Nuclear Bomb To Drop On Israel and America Didn't Blow Up The Twin Towers Themselves?" They're all so in awe of him, roysh, that it's a good five minutes before Sorcha even notices I've arrived and even then, it's like she's embarrassed to see me? She introduces me to the whole crew. Firestarter. Fantam 8. They all have, like, e-mail aliases instead of actual names.
Quicky looks at me, then at the logo on my t-shirt - had the old pink Apple Crumble on - smiles and shakes his head, as in, like, pityingly? I'm there, "Have you got a problem, dude?" but he holds his hands up, still grinning, as if to say, I could say something but I'm not going to.
Someone in the group had given Sorcha a book. Manufacturing Consent. I pick it up, flick through it. I focking hate small writing.
Fantam 8 says what he'd love to do one day is just, like, take off somewhere where there's, like, no distractions, for two weeks, and read everything that Noam Chomsky has, like, ever written. And one of the girls - the original bucket of ormpits - says Chomsky is, like, oh my God, so cool and so right about, like, everything.
This obviously stirs something in Quicky because he's off again. "I mean, yeah, America just makes me want to puke.
Like, really puke. How dare they tell us that they want to bring freedom and dignity to the people of the world. Check out my blog - this is the country that refused to adopt the Kyoto Protocol, despite being by far the world's biggest polluter? "Check out what I also have to say about the melting point of the steel contained in the Twin Towers.
"These people care about people's rights? Er, customers who bought this item also bought America And Their Nato Cronies Bombed Yugoslavia Because They Actually Cared About The Suffering Of The Muslims There and George W Bush Didn't Steal The Presidency From Al Gore?" I actually can't listen to any more of this shit, even though I haven't a bog what he's on about. I'm looking at Sorcha, roysh, nodding away and I'm thinking, this isn't her. These aren't her kind of people.
"Did you give my wife a hammer and a wire-cutters?" I suddenly go.
Sorcha looks at me, her mouth open. Quicky doesn't look at me. He looks at the others, sort of, like, rolling his eyes and shaking his head.
I'm there, "Hey - I'm talking to you." Quicky looks at my t-shirt again and goes, "Look, Jock Boy, you've obviously got some kind of American thing going on here . . ." I'm like, "Yeah? Well, put this on your blog. I want you outside. As in, outside the Freedom Café? As in, now?" Sorcha puts her hands up to her boat race and goes, "Ross, no! You know how much I hate violence."
Quicky stands up and goes, "After you."
ARTICLE 31 (The Ross O'Carroll-Kelly article)
Everyone has the right to do the wrong thing for the right reasons and the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Everyone has duties to the community. Sometimes the biggest crime against humanity is to stand by and do nothing at all.
• This is the last in our human rights series. The series was created by Seán Love for Amnesty International