Straight To The Point

Two interesting articles, highlighting the not-so-fun side of war:-

Photo's

Story of what happens when you're no longer any use to the Army.

Proving that there are aspects of any religon that are just as distasteful as any other, an Orthadox Jewish man was caught with a bomb at the annual Gay Pride parade in Jersusalem. Others shouted at the marchers, yelling "Filth! Get out of Jerusalem!."

So Manhunt 2 has been banned in the U.K. God knows I hate censorship! It's like religeon - why do some people think that they have the right to determine what other adults can and cannot see? What makes them so special?

Okay, some parents are elated because they blame the game for the death of their son - but the killer in that case was 17 years old. By all means ban the game from children, but why prevent the rest of us from our entertainment? And anyway, Police said robbery was the motive behind the attack on Stefan in Stokes Wood Park on 26 February 2004 - and not the video game blamed by Stefan's parents [see linked article]. Hell hath no ignorance like the parent of a murdered child looking for a reason.

Another interesting counterpoint to this has also happened recently - the CCTV image of Jamie Bulger being led away (to his death) was also used in a computer game, and that has been withdrawn. This I personally agree with - there are some good arguments for CCTV, but how can it be right that a persons image can be used in a game without their consent?

Newsflash: Allah (just like all other religous Gods) doesn't exist! He's a figment of someone's imagination, and that person has managed to propogate their fantasy to millions of other people, who believed everything without anyone of them requiring any kind of proof whatsoever, and needed something to believe in to justify the way their life has turned out.

So don't go on whinging about blasphemy. How can anyone call for the killing of a real life person (who - yes! - actually exists!) just because that person insulted something that doesn't exist? Should I be afraid of claiming that the tooth fairy is an ugly wench for fear of a fatwa by hordes of 10 year olds?

The statement is due soon on the findings of two inquiries regarding the capture of 15 Royal Navy personnel by the Iranian authorities. However, one thing is certain: it proves the futility of trying to extract accurate information from people by threatening them - just like what happens in Guantanamo (and probably other secret prisons)

The sailors read out pre-prepared statements on Iranian TV, condeming the British Government and the presence of forces in the Middle East. I don't doubt that they didn't believe what they were saying for a second, but it proves that after being held for a few weeks, they were prepared to say anything. And I would do the same. But if properly trained military personnel are prepared to say anything to secure their freedom, how can we expect anyone else to do differently?

Maybe, just maybe, that's the reason why there have been hundreds of arrests under the Prevention of Terrorism act, but hardly any convictions? You don't suppose that suspects are telling the authorities what they want to hear??

Okay, I admit it, the headline is designed to enrage - I can hear "We don't need your pity!" echoing down the blogosphere now.

However, I was thinking about this last night. What's worse than you having to do extra work because someone else made a mistake? When it happens to me, I just spend all my time thinking about how it's the person who made the mistake that should be correcting it.

Multiply this feeling by about a thousand, and you probably have the feeling that I would have if I was a soldier in Iraq. Someone high up decided to abandon the Iraqi army and Ba'athist party, and now thousands us soldiers and civilians are paying the price with their lives, through no fault of their own. And lets not forget that the war was caused by incorrect intelligenc. The soldiers are having all this trouble in Iraq fighting an enemy that was (is?) armed by their own country, under the false pretence that it is solving the problem of terrorism - as if.

And it will happen again. Take China, a non-democratic country with as much morality as Saddam Hussian with bird flu. At the moment, America loves it, and American companies help it go about it's daily business of restricting free speech and locking up disidents. However, give it a few decades and the poor soldiers will have to go in and risk their lives for the whim of their leaders, all because it suits the current leaders to play along.

Still, it's the soldiers choice, even if I can't understand why they'd want to do it.

One argument levelled by soldiers at people who criticise the war in Iraq is that "we don't know what it's really like, just what we read in the 'liberal' media". When someone does level it, it only proves that they are grasping at straws in their defence of the so called "war on terror". It's normally followed by details on how they saw a hospital being built or suchlike, as if one hospital makes everything okay again. Still, it can only help: given that 2% of the population of the country has been killed, there's bound to be a few injured lying around.

However, the real problem with this is: "how can a soldier in Iraq know what's going on in the rest of the country?" Are they all seeing and all knowing? Or are they too relying on news passed on by other organisations, like the military for example? A military that is famous for passing on disinformation and propeganda?

The Office of Government Commerce has appealed against an order by the Information Tribunal that it must publish official documents that assess the justification for the government's identity card scheme.

Says it all really.

(From the BBC)

"US President George W Bush has urged countries to agree on long-term goals for greenhouse gas emissions."

Er, most of the world has already agreed on this, with the exception of the US. It was called the Kyoto protocol.

Bush's plan here is obvious (and the same as his plan for Iraq) - timewaste and stall as much as possible in order to pass the responsibility on to whoever is the next President.