HOME Sunday, 4 November 2001

A warm wind blows from the South and strips the leaves from the trees, sending them swirling through the air across the field, like confetti. So Nature repeats itself from year to year, with hardly a variation, as do the great rebels against her, the Human Race.   Once again the Peace Agreement in the North trips over its own shoelaces. How many more years must go by before they learn to tie them, or will they die that way, as indeed do some humans, never having learned the art.   What is so difficult about being reasonable? Why is it hard to accept the rights of others? Is it, perhaps, because we don't know exactly what the word "Right" means? Please go to the dictionary, where it says "in accordance with accepted moral standards or the rules of civilised society", or some such thing.   That makes it all seem subjective. I mean, who says what is acceptable? Another human being. What gives that human being the right? The consent of the majority. Ah, but what about the minority - have they no rights, then? Only whatever rights the majority allow them. But the majority can often be very wrong in a moral sense. Is there not a better way of ensuring the rights of an individual?   Someone worked out something very clever and yet very simple many thousands of years ago. In essence, it says: Do not treat anyone in a way you would not like to be treated yourself. All the big religions have it. When it suits them, all the big religions ignore it.   How does this apply to abortion, the most morally intricate of subjects? First of all, if you would not like to be discriminated against for your views, then do not discriminate against others for their views.   Personally, I am all for life, because, perhaps, life is all there is. When you are alive, maybe you can figure things out. It may be that when you are dead, you cannot, that the opportunity has been taken away from you. I do not think that life is smooth and even for anyone. In places the road is rocky. Most of us would like it to be smooth all the time, but should we level it by throwing our rocks onto some else's road?   It is better to be concerned for the rights of others, rather than merely for your own rights. An individual can see only in his own direction, but many people can see in many different directions. "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."   We have to try to see in everyone's direction.

Friday, 9 November 2001

I am reading a collection of essays by Christopher Hitchens which I found in the library. I take pleasure in reading them, because I am delighted to read anything that criticises pompous authority. The fact that I don't understand parts of them, doesn't dilute my enjoyment. I put this down to the fact that Hitchens was educated at Oxford, while I never even made it as far as the Christian Brothers Secondary. He has all those foreign words and phrases at his command, while all I have is the English language and a tiny piece of Irish.   His style is rather reminiscent of a rotwieler. You would not want Hitchens to sink his critical teeth into you. He worries and savages a subject to such a degree that, at the end, the subject is so mauled that you have difficulty identifying what it was.   I became a trifle uneasy when I realised that, in one essay, he was desperatly searching for something to write about and his fury increased when he had to settle for a morsel, like a hungry rotweiler. Believe it, or not, what incensed him was the word, "terrorist".   He says, more or less, that the word shouldn't be in the dictionary at all, simply because various people use it, as they use all words, for their own purposes. There seems to be a bit of paranoia going on here, because he blames the word, rather than the people who use it. He foams on about the different ways of defining the word, when it is plain that he is only talking about the different ways it is used.   At one point, he had me so confused, that I had to get my Collis Dictionary to find out the exact meaning of the word.   Collins says, in part:   Terror: great fear, panic or dread.   And:   Terrorism: systematic use of terror to secure some goal.   And:   Terrorist: a person who employs terror or terrorism.   Where is the difficulty? If that definition implicates the "Good Guys" with the "Bad Guys", then the only question left is, are there any "Good Guys"?   Hitchens does actually go to the dictionary (the Oxford, naturally), at one point in his essay. The definition of "terrorist" that he comes up with is: "one who entertains, professes, or tries to awaken or spread a feeling of terror or alarm; an alarmist, a scaremonger."   Yes. I think I'll stick with Collins.

Sunday, 11 November 2001

On September 11th, certain people committed a crime by crashing two airliners into the twin towers in New York, killing thousands of people. The US Government had, perhaps, good reason for suspecting that it was perpetuated by a terrorist group organised by Ozama Bin Laden.   In the international community there is a recognised protocol for dealing with crimes by members of one country in another country. The country which hosts the killer or killers is presented with proof that those wanted are responsible for the crime and that country is asked to arrest the culprits and hand them over to the state where the crime has been committed for trail.   Unfortunately, the United States choose to ignore international convention and in a dictatorial and threatening manner, demanded that the rulers in Afghanistan hand Bin Laden over to them. On the expected refusal, there were several options open to them, but the only one of them they considered for any moment, was going to war, with the prospect of adding more lives to those already lost.   The actions of the people responsible for the New York tragedy were those of thugs. The response of America was that of a bully. But we have come to expect that from America in its position of power. What was most disappointing was the revelation of the fascist face of Britain's Tony Blair, and the bootlicking exercise by most of the other European countries under the thinly veiled threats from George Bush.   In a time of crisis, the people of Earth expect cool heads and wise thinking from its leaders. Unfortunately, as in many times in the past, all they got was rhetoric, meaningless words and banal phrases, that revealed the empty, barren mind of a typical politician. If all the human race can do with intelligence is invent bigger and more barbarous ways to destroy each other, then they would be better off without it.   Oh, God, save the world from its stupidity. It cannot save itself.