A better regime?
January 26th, 2010Angry with myself because I wrote a blog last night about Chemical Ali, mixing him up with another Iraqui, who was a much better man. So that blog was a serious mistake. So it has been deleted. But in any case it did not do justice to my anger at Ali’s execution. And my remembered anger at the execution displayed on the world’s television sets of Sadaam Hussein. The justification for regime change, and the deaths of the innocent and the guilty in the Iraq war, is that the US and its allies are introducing better government to Iraq. But these executions turn the taking of a human life into mass entertainment, just as it was in the aftermath of the French revolution, in Dickensian Britain, and in those parts of the world today where human beings are put to death, not only for criminality, but for political dissent or for transgressing societal rules of sexual behaviour.
It is pandering to the emotions of the mob. It is turning back the progress human beings have made towards established humane societies, where the weak, the old and young are protected from those humans who want to bully them or worse. And the huge irony is that this Iraq regime change was orchestrated by just two world leaders, both passionate believers in Jesus Christ, to whom they pray regularly seeking guidance in making the big decisions.
No wonder they allowed themselves to be deluded about the evidence for those weapons of mass destruction, because they persist in believing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, who created the earth, though there is strong scientific evidence that the world evolved, more or less as Charles Darwin thought.
Worse than that Bush and Blair ignore the very strong historical evidence that Jesus Christ the man did exist and that the teachings of the New Testament does represent his teaching, though much of it was written down some years after he had died. He was above all a man of peace, who believed in compassion for sinners, and advocated giving them a chance to repent their sins.
He might have locked up Chemical Ali in a cell for the rest of his life with only a Bible to read, but he would have made sure that he had enough to eat and drink.
This same Jesus Christ would also, if he were indeed alive today, be urging that the international bankers should not be allowed to use their wealth to satisfy their infinite greed, grabbing far more than fair share of the world’s goods. There is no evidence that he rose again on the third day. But in a metaphorical sense, he stayed alive in the memories of his followers, and through them, he is ‘alive’ for those who read his teachings more than 2,000 words afterwards.
He urged them to look for God within themselves. And he did warn them that when they looked inside, they might find the Devil, who was telling them it is OK to be greedy.
OK to charge £10 million for people to hear the wonderful voice you have been lucky enough to be born with.
February 2nd, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Perhaps our writer should look into the facts closer to home, regarding punishment and criminality.
Chemical Ali as he was nicknamed deliberately exterminated hundreds and I am sure without even a thought regarding his bestial actions.
He contrived, as did Hitler to rid this earth of a number of people in a mass extermination.
Should we have given Hitler a nice warm cell, Tv games, literature and amusements? – if we have been able to detain him.
There again, there were all Hitler’s contempraries, many of whom were executed by hanging.
Is the writer saying that the Allies should have locked them up and given them room and board as well?
Today a teenager was jailed for seventeen years for the murder of another, and the attempted murder of his friend.
As Britain and it’s laws progress, we shall soon have five years for murder, and probably ten years for not paying the Council Tax or Income Tax.
Arab and Asian states are harsh in their sentences, and they have every right to be as it is their society, but I doubt if the crime rate is anything like that of random killings in Britain, America and the west, so many being carried out so that the killer can vent his or her anger, with no real excuse or cause.
Further, the writers reference to Christianity. Well which section? Church of England, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and others, are all guilty of “sexing” up their own beliefs in order to “Press the word.” It is hardly surprising that with all this confusion and politicing in religious quarters, that Country leaders as described are seen to be such hypocrits.
Then again there is the Koran, which we are told is supposed to be interpreted as a fervently peaceful religion, and is now used for terrorism and governmental dictatorialism.
Whether anyone believes in the bible as it is written, or if Jesus Christ existed, is a matter of personal belief and choice, but if you read the testaments, so many are too similar not to either accept as a report of events which possible happened.
There again they might have been a “good story”.
But then their were scribes, a bit like the early version of the “Hack”, which have extended themselves to the grand title of “Journalists”, that misguided body of people who are unable to tell the exact truth of any item into which they delve.
The Journalist or “Hack”, the latter being a far better description, inflicts his own views so cleverly, (or so he or she thinks), that the truth is distorted and in some cases verges on propaganda.
Example.
Iraq Inquiry. Sky news is anti Brown. The jounalist comments show this fervently every time they are asked for “their take” on the proceedings.
BBC, slightly better in their summaries and accuracy, but it is always there in the background, the news tainted with personal opinions and not accurate reporting.
For many years now I have always checked the foreign news against the British version, since Margaret Thatcher actually, and it is the only way to get anywhere near the truth of the news these days, by having to check the overseas “hacks and compare their versions with the British.
Of course you have newspaper owners pressing anti Brown, so the Hacks have to taint the news to keep their jobs.
The truth is that this Country has lost it’s way because everyone has their own agenda, and the use of the English language is now so abused, even by Parliament and Whitehall, that whatever is said in English now, does not necessarily mean what was originally meant when the statement formulated, concurrs with with it’s definition when read.
Let us not forget that with this in mind, how will the United Nations ever be able to agree on anything when everybody considers their own meaning to be sacresact and acts on it.
Remembering of course that all Nations Home Language is not English
The truth does not Count for anything any more!.
February 2nd, 2010 at 10:16 pm
Agree with much of what you say, but not your conclusion.
The truth does count. And most of the hundreds of journalists I know strive to tell it.
They are ‘hacks’ in that they work for powerful owners, from the BBC to Murdoch. Hacks are not opinion makers. They do their job as defined. Report the news as it happens on the stories they are assigned to by the owners.
So if you read, as you do overseas reports as well as UK, you can see the complexities, which the owners are not interesrted in, because it does not sell newspapers or television programmes.
You can have your say, by writing to the newspapers as well as to me.