Syria, two years on

Some anniversaries are sad events. Two years ago the conflict in Syria broke out. Since then one group of fractions have been fighting to take control of the government and the government has resisted these attempts. The conflict has bled to loss of life and to over one million people leaving the country, most of them settling as refugees in the Lebanon (which has plenty of problems of its own) in Jordan and in Turkey. Seventy thousand people have lost their lives.

Democracy at home does not prevent a nation from being tyrannical abroad.

I see that North Korea has tested a small nuclear bomb underground. We can measure the device quite accurately and it is of some concern that a small nation that can barely feed its people wishes to divert its scarce and precious resources into developing nuclear weapons.

Many countries that cannot feed all their people have nuclear weapons. It seems to be a feature of humanity that we fail to understand what is important and what is not important. perhaps the North Koreans are distrustful of the Western democracies; perhaps they have good cause for such distrust. The experience of the people of Iraq does not inspire people of other nations to have much confidence in the Western democracies. Democracy at home does not prevent a nation from being tyrannical abroad.

We must remember that.

The War on Terror – Right is Might

The war of terror, that war on an concept, has rapidly expanded into a war on many people and many nations in many places since the Twin Towers were bombed so many years ago. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and now Mali have all proven to be places where the war has been fought and many lives have been lost, especially the lives of civilians.  After the experience of wars on terrorists in Vietnam the United States has recovered from its experience and now gung-ho goes to fight against those who perceives do not share its values almost at the drop of the hat and drags other nations into these wars.

If no war on terror against Iraq had been fought would the world be a less dangerous place than it is today? I doubt it, because whether you are right or wrong most people will fight to defend an attack on their homeland and most people will resent the attacker, however pure the motives for the attack may be, if in the course of the attack your wife of father or children are killed.

A war on terror is a vicious circle, one war begets another war, one death begets many others.

If someone has done wrong, even a great a grievous wrong, the proper response of a civilised nation is to use the process of law to catch, try and punish the wrong doer in accordance with the law. Perhaps the United States’ historical cowboy inheritance causes it to think that it is right to shoot first and after questions later or that might is right. They have got that the wrong way round as Abraham Lincoln pointed out: might is not right; right is might.

Selective Grief

I watched the television news which told of twenty schoolchildren killed without reason that we can comprehend in Connecticut. As is expected in these cases the leader of the United States spoke a few words. He spoke them, for he is a good orator, and as he spoke I hoped that Mr Obama’s words would bring a small measure of comfort to the bereaved. Then I saw it, a gesture by which Mr Obama undid any comfort his words may have brought.

Storms and the Concentration Camp of Gaza

Storms and high winds still rage across Britain. They have caught the attention of the news media with the occasional death and a great deal of damage. This is a natural event, although the seeds of it may be sown by the hands of humans. Four thousand miles away a storm has ravaged the concentration camp that we call Gaza, where people are imprisoned without liberty, where their food and medicine is caught in trade embargoes. The seeds of destruction in Gaza and in Israel are without question sown by the hands of humans. As in Britain, there is a short respite from the storm but it will start again. It seems a never ending cycle of storm. When one storm ends nothing is blown away; the darkness and destruction are simply deferred temporarily until they return to batter the concentration camp with more deaths and destruction.

Syrian Puzzles

The UK government is giving £5 million to an unidentified group of rebels who are fighting the Syrian Government. The money is only to be spent on communications equipment, not on arms that kill people. nevertheless if you give money for communication equipment you make more money available for bullets, grenades and bombs, so the distinction is somewhat specious.

Time to disband the Nuclear Club

Apparently the biggest threat in the world is the fact that Iran might be acquiring nuclear weapons. It is a fact of life that those with something which gives them power can think of dozens of reasons as to why others should not be allowed to get that thing which gives power. There are also, it seems, dozens of reasons as to why those with the thing that gives power should not divest themselves of the thing which gives power.

Tremseh, Aybak and Pakistan

I read the news today. In Syria at Tremseh some two hundred people were killed. It is not clear how many were killed and whether they were killed by government forces or rebel forces. It seems that perhaps two hundred young men were killed. It is possible that they were rebel fighters killed by government forces. Hilary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, condemned the deaths saying that people had been deliberately murdered. But we do not know who did it. The slaughter is called a massacre.

War and human rights

There are some dreadful things happening in Syria, but the impression I get from the United Kingdom’s news media is that all the bad things are being done by one side and the other side is as pure as the driven snow.

Problems in the Pipeline

Energy is so critical to every nation and in troubled times energy not only becomes more critical, but it also becomes more expensive and harder to get.