(Edinburgh, Scotland)
On 21st December 1988 a bomb exploded on a Pan-Am flight over Scotland. Two hundred and seventy people were killed, including eleven people in the Scottish town of Lockerbie. In May 2000 the trial of the only two accused started in a specially convened Scottish court in Holland, in front of Scottish judges and under Scottish law.
One of the accused was found not guilty of murder and sent home. The other was found guilty and sent to Barlinnie. This month, terminally ill with prostate cancer, he was released on compassionate grounds and sent home according to Scottish laws which allow any terminally ill prisoner to be released.
Devolution might be a convenient excuse to pass on controversial decisions that London hasn’t the guts to make, but it’s no excuse to start bullying yet another small country. Time for London to mind its own business.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
To die in vain
(Kabul, Afghanistan)
The polling stations have just closed across Afghanistan, on an election day inevitably marked by violence in a country once beautiful, but now a victim of Western rape.
The other night I was flicking and stopped on a Panorama report about women’s rights and the Taleban, surprised that an English television programme should suddenly be sympathetic to Afghans, let alone Afghan women. The journalist talked about today’s elections and Karzai’s militant social politics. Women who had attempted to burn themselves to death were interviewed, their hairless heads still wrapped in cloth. They had tried to reach freedom, but now bandages replaced the hijab.
Then the journalist muttered something like “British soldiers died in vain”.
Aha.
The programme wasn’t about Afghanistan or the atrocious situation that has arisen as a result of Western meddling and murdering, it was the usual nationalistic cry of “me, me, me”. It wasn’t about middle-aged Afghan women and their rights, it was about young lads from a rich country and how they had been “murdered”. It wasn’t about young girls and the possibility of a better life through education, rather it was about how badly the English have educated their own kids so that they think it is fine to go off round the world killing innocent people.
There was a photo on a sideboard of a young lad in military fatigues, striking a playground pose and brandishing a gun with the bayonet fixed. The bayonet, rather than the young lad’s face, was the focus of the photograph as if to say “Let’s go and disembowel some towelheads”.
Is it a shame that this boy died? Of course it is. Is it a shame that many other British soldiers have died? Indeed. But if one life is equal to any other life it is a far greater shame that between 11,000 and 31,000 Afghan civilians have died at the hands of fixed bayonets that should not have been there in the first place.
Yes, that lad died in vain, because in a rich Western country full of opportunities that places like Afghanistan do not have he went looking for trouble. And all soldiers die in vain because war is unnecessary. Panorama should be making programmes that could show the English that they have no right to put a gun to young Afghan girls’ heads. Then maybe their own little boys will stop dying.
The polling stations have just closed across Afghanistan, on an election day inevitably marked by violence in a country once beautiful, but now a victim of Western rape.
The other night I was flicking and stopped on a Panorama report about women’s rights and the Taleban, surprised that an English television programme should suddenly be sympathetic to Afghans, let alone Afghan women. The journalist talked about today’s elections and Karzai’s militant social politics. Women who had attempted to burn themselves to death were interviewed, their hairless heads still wrapped in cloth. They had tried to reach freedom, but now bandages replaced the hijab.
Then the journalist muttered something like “British soldiers died in vain”.
Aha.
The programme wasn’t about Afghanistan or the atrocious situation that has arisen as a result of Western meddling and murdering, it was the usual nationalistic cry of “me, me, me”. It wasn’t about middle-aged Afghan women and their rights, it was about young lads from a rich country and how they had been “murdered”. It wasn’t about young girls and the possibility of a better life through education, rather it was about how badly the English have educated their own kids so that they think it is fine to go off round the world killing innocent people.
There was a photo on a sideboard of a young lad in military fatigues, striking a playground pose and brandishing a gun with the bayonet fixed. The bayonet, rather than the young lad’s face, was the focus of the photograph as if to say “Let’s go and disembowel some towelheads”.
Is it a shame that this boy died? Of course it is. Is it a shame that many other British soldiers have died? Indeed. But if one life is equal to any other life it is a far greater shame that between 11,000 and 31,000 Afghan civilians have died at the hands of fixed bayonets that should not have been there in the first place.
Yes, that lad died in vain, because in a rich Western country full of opportunities that places like Afghanistan do not have he went looking for trouble. And all soldiers die in vain because war is unnecessary. Panorama should be making programmes that could show the English that they have no right to put a gun to young Afghan girls’ heads. Then maybe their own little boys will stop dying.
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