Of Mohameds and moronic measures …

I don’t know if I should be talking about this since it’s second, or even third, hand information but it’s something which seemed in step with the times and so I thought I’d mention it here. An acquaintance of mine at work told me that her aunt had gone to the US embassy here in Colombo to get her visa and that there had been this Muslim guy in the next cubicle being interviewed by a visa officer. The guy had won the greencard lottery and was there to get his visa and had been told by the officer that "We don’t let Mohameds into our country any longer!" If true, this can only be one of most stupid and paranoid remarks I’ve heard but then again, I guess it is just a sign of the times.

America, which prided itself in being the melting pot of the Western civilization, has suddenly become a closed country. And looking at the world, it is ironic that many of the countries that originated with Britain are closed to some extent or another, whether it is Britain itself, America or Australia. Maybe it’s the whole immigrants-take-away-the-jobs-of-honest-hardworking-citizens bit or maybe it is just that we live in strange and convoluted times. There are arguments for and against both sides – I was too simplistic in my maybes in the previous sentence but I’m kinda just not in the right frame of mind to make a valid and reasoned argument for either side at the moment. Who knows any longer anyway? At least not me .. I am lost in this sea of human stupidity, ignorance, prejudice and basic lack of understanding …

Life, she ain’t simple …

Life – it just threw me another curveball. Totally unexpected, totally out of the blue and as I mentioned a couple of days ago, totally in opposition to a certain course of action I was beginning to follow up on. I don’t know if it is wish fulfillment or just some sort of a mystic reaction to my actions but there it is – but the thing is that this time there is a certain rightness to it, a certain this-is-the-moment-you’ve-been-waiting-for, feel to it. So I’m going with it again. Anyway, when life throws a curveball at you what do you do? I guess my baseball analogy fails me at this point and I must jump to cricket – you must either hit out or get out :p I’ve decided to hit out since getting out is not even an option at the moment – I hope it never will be 🙂 Yes, I know, none of the above made an darn sense whatsoever. Sorry, I’m just writing for myself today. Putting down my thoughts and feelings and reactions and whatnot down so that I can read it later and both savour this moment and be able to think back a bit more objectively on the situation.

Sometimes you get stuck in this really strange spot half-way between dream and reality where your dreams are real and all you have to do is reach out and touch to have your dream but it seems almost impossible to raise your arm because your arm suddenly seems to have grown so utterly, impossibly heavy. Have you ever been in a situation like that? My thoughts are very chaotic right now, I don’t think I’m even thinking completely lucidly, I’ve just gotten up a little while ago, had a fairly strange night of dreams and am actually rambling just now, get reality settled in again and also getting ready for another day of work after a week of idleness. I am sure today will be full of its share of drama at work – I don’t even want to think about it since I’d like to just not be bothered about all these nitty gritty details of life right at this moment …. (yes, I’m rambling and just trailed off …)

Of idleness and indolence

Things have been extremely slow of late. I have not been coding, not updating my main site, The Developer’s Corner, that I’ve been regularly updating for over two years. Basically, I’ve simply been content to be idle, watch movies, speculate on stuff and play with software. This has given me the opportunity to learn a few new things and to explore a few areas that I had not explored before but I find myself asking, "what about the people who are so eagerly awaiting the next release of my software?". I have a responsibility to them too. Yes, it is free software but just because the software is free does not mean that I have no responsibility to my users. It is a dilemma.

That is just one dilemma out of many that seem to confront me suddenly and I seem to be content to think about these matters and yet come to no decision. The others? What am I going to do? Where do I go – stay in Sri Lanka or move to another country? And most of all, what is the purpose to our existence? These are just a few of the questions going through my mind suddenly. For some strange reason, it seems to me that we are at a critical point in history – a cusp if you will. I don’t want to make any decisions right now, I just want to live life day by day, as it comes, since to me it seems that future events will dictate my course. It seems a little indulgent at times and also laggardly to think somethingelse can control my life instead of simply taking charge of my own life and going on with it, no matter what. But my sense of historical forces seems so strong right at the moment (maybe I’ve been reading too much Gordon R. Dickson and his "Childe Cycle" is beginning to affect me …) that I just want to see how things play out before I make a decision. But how long can you stay inert and indecisive anyway?

Another reason for my inactivity (at least as far as moving out of Sri Lanka or staying on here is concerned) is the same old one – my parents. I’ve had this debate right here about talking about other people on this journal and so will not go into details but my parents have their own reasons for wanting me here – some of it emotional and some of it cultural. They unfortunately are very true-to-norm results of their culture unlike me and so their perceptions, feelings and actions are ruled by their culture. While I can understand their actions, I still can’t say that their beliefs and their perceptions are their own and leave – they are my parents and I am their firstborn … believe it or not, that (being firstborn) carries a certain responsibility with it when you are over here :p

One more thing that seems to be brought home to me again and again is what Terry Pratchett would call the gods-playing-dice-with-us-as-pieces syndrome :p I find that there are certain actions of mine which almost always results in a counter-action by fate, gods, happenstance … whatever you may call it. It seems almost inevitable and seems to have the kind of precision which makes me believe more and more that there is a pattern to it. (Yes, my insanity begins to show through as I expose more and more of my mind <g>) There is a collection of stories (I think by Frank Herbert .. not sure off-hand) called "Case and the Dreamer" – one of the stories in it is about this woman who loses her one true love to death and embarks on this quest to regain him by cloning him and making sure that his life follows a certain path while she remains the same age by going into suspended animation – one day, she will awaken and come back into his life but till then his life will be steered in just such a way as to make their first meeting one where they would fall in love … or something like that. That is an intriguing thought and coupled with this whole being-blocked-at-certain-points thing, I can’t but wonder maybe if my life is controlled in such a way too? OK, I will stop now before the men in white jackets come for me :p

Movies and other miscellanea

What do you do when you watch a movie and it leaves you wanting to twirl and flip around in the air like in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? :p I’d had the "Coyote Ugly" DVD for at least a couple of years but for some reason or other, never got around to watching it. I really felt in need of some good, light-hearted entertainment today after watching a couple of intense movies – first a Tamil movie and then "Carlito’s Way" – and so gave "Coyote Ugly" a try. For some reason or other, Piper Perabo reminds me so much of Jennifer Garner of "Alias" fame and while I enjoyed the movie and the soundtrack even more, I couldn’t totally get into it … OK, Piper Perabo’s appearance had no relation to my enjoyment of the movie – pardon my sentence structure :p It did however leave me thinking about a few things.

The first thing was basically related to the story line – "Coyote Ugly" is about a songwriter who goes to New York in search of her dreams. I’d just heard a couple of days back from my friend Meraash who’s also in New York currently and following his dream – to be a film maker. He worked here with me in Sri Lanka and always wanted to make movies and now he tells me that he actually might get to work on "Spiderman 2" and I was really happy for him and proud of him since he went after his dreams and made it happen. However, watching "Coyote Ugly" and the conditions under which Violet, the protagonist in the movie, lives under, I was thinking that maybe Meraash had to live the same way and that I could never do that. That also made me realize that I could never go after my dreams the way that Meraash and Violet did – that I would always hold back either because I was too afraid, too lazy or just didn’t have a goal that I wanted to reach that bad … makes me (or rather, my life) feel so pointless all of a sudden. I’m doing what I love – I love coding and I am in computers, I love movies and do watch a lot, I love writing and do write all over the place, I enjoy music and do listen to music from time to time … but where is the big dream? The big ambition? I guess the only thing that would qualify in that category was me wanting to be a successful writer. But would I drop everything, risk failure and a life of doing part-time jobs while looking for my big break? I don’t think so. So maybe I don’t have the vision or the commitment. I don’t know …

The other thing that struck me is totally unrelated but also something I’ve been thinking for a while now – do television and movie writers write women the way they perceive them to be or are these really women as they are? The reason I wonder is more so because of a couple of my favourite TV shows than because of how women are portrayed in "Coyote Ugly" though there were a few instances even in the movie which made me wonder. The two shows I’m talking about are "Gilmore Girls" and "Nikki" – I liked both the shows and the characters in them when I originally started watching them but recently (these might not coincide with the US episodes since we get them really late – just a note :p) some of the characters have been getting on my nerves because of the way they behave and since all the characters are women, I was wondering if this is just some man’s interpretation of how a woman would behave or if this was actually written by a woman and if it’s the latter, then why are so many women being portrayed as being so bitchy all of a sudden? Yes, I know, it’s just TV shows and none of these people are real but their actions still bug me … yeah, maybe I’m weird :p

Take Lorelei Gilmore for instance – she dumps her fiance the day before she is to be married, gives the guy no explanation and takes off for parts unknown. Then she keeps on leading this other guy who obviously has feeling for her on – yes, the guy could simply tell her how he feels but just as obviously, she should be able to tell that he feels something for her out of the ordinary since he behaves completely differently with her than he normally does. Then there’s her daughter who does not seem to realize what she’s doing or her own mind since she’s got a boyfriend but also is dallying with this other guy, while claiming that it is "just a friendship" whereas some of her actions seem to indicate that it is not. Or take Nikki from "Nikki" who dumps her husband who can’t dance and gets another partner just to win a dance competition and then thinks she can make it all better by being all sweet and lovey dovey and her husband who actually falls for it. Ok, I’ll stop now :p I know all this is just make believe but the actions of each of these characters bothers me and it bothers me even more as to who conceived these particular actions and if they really think that this is how women normally behave and I do wonder if this is *actually* how a majority of women feel/act …

Of love and other matters of the heart

I just finished watching a Tamil (Indian language, also one of the three major languages used in Sri Lanka) movie that moved me and also made me travel back in time. It was about this guy named Hari who is loved by a girl – Sapna – and who rejects her because he doesn’t love her but is in turn rejected by the girl he loves – Raji – because she doesn’t love him in return. Sapna is bitter and wants revenge but Hari is not bitter at Raji but instead wants to continue his life but says that he will always love Raji and want to see her happy. Added to this mix is Raji’s childhood friend (I forget his name) who also loved a girl but was rejected and is now slowly wasting his life away thinking about her. Hari advices this guy and tells him that the best respect he can show his love is for him to live his life with his head held high but the guy commits suicide because he can’t face the fact that the girl he loved is getting married. (Yes, committing suicide on the failure of your love, or even because your parents oppose your love, is fairly common in this part of the world …) Hari says that he cannot respect that guy because he took the coward’s way out. And of course, this being the movies, Hari finally does win the love of Raji but that’s another story …

The movie evoked a lot of feeling in me because I was in Hari’s position at one time in my life and I do understand his stand and agree with him. I loved a girl once for around ten years but in my case she loved somebody else. I did tell her that I loved her (after ten years), or I think I did but am not too sure since I wasn’t very coherent :p Anyway, she and I continued to be friends since I felt the way that Hari did but maybe I wasn’t as strong as Hari and so needed an excuse to blame the girl anyway or maybe it really was so (I can’t be objective since I am involved in it ..) but I felt that the girl took advantage of the fact that she knew that I loved her and would do anything for her still. Be as it may be, I left the country and lost all touch with her and so don’t know how things are with her anymore, even after my return.

I’ve loved others since then but have yet to find the kind of love I seek. I often wonder if this is because I expect too much from love – I expect it to be the way it is portrayed in books and the movies (at least some of the movies – probably not the Hollywood ones <g>) where love is not a passing infatuation and an excuse to jump into bed but is rather a strong bond, a true understanding between two individuals. Almost a linking of minds you could say. A union between two individuals who understand each other totally and want to spend their lives together because they can’t imagine living life apart from each other.

Of course, that does beg the question of what would I do if I found such a person but she didn’t love me? I guess the only thing I could do would be to cherish that love and go on, maybe things will change in the future and she might love me or maybe she won’t. Either way, there is always the memory of what you had and if you stay friends, you at least have a good friend even if you might not have a lover. Of course, I just have no idea if such love exists or if I’m just chasing a pipe dream. I know that such love exists from my end but is it just limited to me? Or are there others who feel like me? Others who search for such a love? Or is the rest of the world just jaded people who know that all such things are just fine confections woven for our entertainment and I am the only naive fool around? :p I don’t know and to be honest, I don’t think I care either. What I feel and what I dream of will always be real to me and even if I don’t find the kind of love that I look for, there is at least the hope of finding such a love to keep me going …

Of terror, war and incipient madness

I’ve been rather reluctant to write in my journals these days both because of lack of time and also because I’ve been feeling the need to distance myself from the rest of humanity lest all its dishonesty, greed, war-mongering and plain lack of care for its fellow members drives me over the edge to join their ranks. Harsh? Yes, perhaps so but that’s how I feel.

A couple of weeks ago, we had a huge explosion here one evening. Our whole house shook and some of the neighbours had the glass on their windows break due to the force of the explosion. Everybody came out of their houses (it was evening) and began speculating about what it must be. It turned out later that a fireworks factory close by had caught fire and that the explosion was a result of that. But at the time I thought, the people in Iraq must be feeling a hundred times more than what we felt due to one single explosion. Yes, this is going to be about the war since it seems to be dominating everything else and I wanted to remind myself of a few things lest I too forget as time goes on like most others of the human race.

I had decided not to write anymore about the war when war started since there seemed to be no way to achieve peace and so it looked as if we just had to wait till things came to their inevitable conclusions. However, I since then feel the need to document some of the events/feelings from the current moment since I have a feeling that certain events are going to play out over and over again – just as they did when the US wanted to go to war in Afghanistan. I’ve been thinking about things and it seems to me that the US is running scared – they lived a peaceful life as the top dog of the pack and suddenly they wake up to the fact that no matter how powerful you might be as a nation, there are individuals crazy enough to attack you. So the US (and here I mean the government rather than the people of the US as a whole) decides that it’s time to show the world that you don’t mess with the US and go unscathed. So they come up with all this hoopla about how they are going to get Osama and attack Afghanistan. Months later and many civilian deaths later, Bin Laden still roams free and everybody has forgotten what originally happened and what the US originally claimed.

Now the pattern repeats again in Iraq. The US claims that they want to get Saddam out of Iraq and go in. Again saying that civilian deaths will be avoided and how they have smart bombs etc. but the results are the same. Many civilian deaths later, the latest stand from the US government seems to be that it doesn’t matter if they get Saddam or not, as long as he’s out of power, they’ve achieved their objectives. Not quite what they said when they started this whole war. And what of these elusive weapons of mass destruction? Now they say that Saddam might actually have spirited them out of the country and so they might not find any – thus actually saying that the fact they don’t exist is proof that they do exist. Ah the tangled mess we create in politics!

I sit here wondering who America will attack next in its fear and the need to show that it is still top dog. Maybe North Korea? Iran? Syria? I don’t know but if the pattern continues, I can only hope that the world wakes up to the fact that they might have to unite against a tyrant such as Germany led by Hitler during the second World War. Yes, I’m saying a tyrant and I’m comparing the US to Nazi Germany. Most Americans probably are going to be outraged, say that America is nothing like Germany under Hitler. But *if* America continues its aggressive behaviour, that’s exactly what America will be and I sincerely hope I am wrong because I don’t want another global conflict to take place – there’s been way too much blood shed already.

Sometimes I wish that I can take Bush, Blair and all these other pro-war leaders and their families and put them in a house which is under heavy shelling and then see how they like war and all this "collateral damage" that they are so casual about. I really am beginning to despise rich and privileged leaders who are totally sheltered from the effects of war and who’ve never had to face war in their own lives, so casually ordering a war that affects the lives of thousands and hundreds of thousands. Maybe its time that we went back to the era when the leaders had to be at the forefront of the battle instead of hiding in some bunker thousands of miles away. Maybe *that* will prevent the slaughter of more innocents but I doubt even that …

Of edits, creativity and bosses …

Things were extremely hectic last week and while I thought of writing something here several times, I just didn’t seem to find the time to do so. So what was I so busy with? It was the edit for the shoot that I’d gone on the week before – the one about the Sinhalese family living in a Muslim village. Though I’d planned to do the story in a particular way – by exposing the inconsistencies in the stories of both sides and showing (or at least trying to …) that in a conflict like this, people lose their perspectives – the actualities of editing and time constraints forced me to do it as a straight story. Basically, the story that we’re supposed to broadcast is only five minutes long and I just couldn’t fit all that into five minutes and had to be content with just a retelling of the incidents that led up to the problem.

Even with all of that, I was happy with the final result but then my bosses decided to come in and rape it in their infinite wisdom :p One of my bosses is the managing director and the other is the editor-in-chief. Now the editor-in-chief (EC) has many years of experience and I can’t claim to be anywhere close to her as far as being a television producer/director goes but I do believe that each person has their own vision for a story and that you should be wise enough to let things be unless there is something so dramatically wrong that it cannot be broadcast at all. But not so with my boss the EC – she believes that all the shots should be the way that *she* thinks they should be and so she sits down after I’d done the edit and changed all the shots. Now I’d heard complaints from other people along this line saying that there was no need for creativity (and no room for it either) since the EC always changes your shots but this was the first time it happened to me.

Then the managing director (MD) comes in and he wants to change the wording of the narration since he thinks that Muslims are being portrayed badly. I had a big argument about what he wanted to do since he basically wanted to point fingers and say specific things about the Sinhalese and the Muslims in this incident. I didn’t think that was right, the incident was over and I didn’t want to stir up more trouble … plus, I was sure that the MD was being influenced by the fact that he himself is a Muslim – which is something a lot of Muslim’s in Sri Lanka (or for that matter anywhere else in the world …) can’t seem to get away from. They can’t seem to realize that first and foremost thing to being a Muslim is to realize that you are part of the human race – instead, they cling to this false identity of being a part of a subset of the race called "the Muslims" and seem to think that others don’t matter as much. To me, this automatically makes all these people non-Muslims.

Be that as may be, we argued back and forth and I finally agreed to change the narration slightly but still without going into specifics. I later understood what set the MD off but I still think that he really is not looking at this correctly. In my closing narration, I said something along the lines of "this kind of situation is going to continue to happen when a majority and a minority are involved. It can only be resolved when the majority realizes that they have certain responsibilities and the minority realizes that they have to make certain compromises in order to live in harmony". Now I was simply thinking in terms of majorities and minorities and in this specific case, the majority were actually the Muslims but my boss kept on saying that I was saying that the Muslims have to compromise and I kept on arguing that wasn’t what I said. I later realized that to him, the Muslims would always be the minority because he thinks in such terms, so to him what I said simply meant that the Muslims must compromise irrespective of the situation :p Ah well, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to change his opinion but I told him that I’d put in some wording to show that what I said applied in general rather than specifically and he seemed to be mollified but I don’t think he’d still be happy if he saw how I changed the narration :p

Of humanity and such …

I’m still reading Gordon R. Dickson’s "Childe" cycle. The fifth book in the series "The Final Encyclopedia" has been the biggest yet. At a whopping 700 pages and a font size tinier than normal, it probably equals all the other four books that went before it since all of them were around 200+ pages :p However, this books does take the time to explore the character and to talk about humanity and its future at length perhaps because it was written at a different time – a time at which novels weren’t bound by page limitations which set them at around 200-300 pages .. Or maybe it was just because Gordon R. Dickson was a known writer by then. Whatever the case maybe, while some might find this book to be extremely long winded at times, I found it to be thought provoking.

The book postulates that humanity is a giant multi-celled organism made up of all the individual people that make up humanity. That humanity as an organism has a consciousness of its own and that this mega-creatures actions are defined by the combination of actions of all individuals. I am not sure that I do subscribe to this idea or to some of the others Dickson has in the book about the evolution of the race. But then again, I probably am not the kind of person who sees things philosophically – at least, not at that high a level of philosophies. I’d rather deal with things at a personal level or at least at a tangible level.

Something did come out of the book that made me think of something though – evolve my own philosophy if you want to call it that :p However, it was not the book itself but an analysis written about the book and it’s characters which made me come up with my idea. The analysis pointed out that the main character – Hal Mayne, who incidentally is male – acquires traits like compassion, intuition and empathy which are traditionally the domain of females and that Hal’s companions, who happen to be female, take up traditionally male roles … or something to that effect. This made me think about Dickson’s idea of "splinter cultures" differently. In Dickson’s story, the "splinter cultures" are basically people who embody one specific facet of full-spectrum man from Earth – the philosopher, the man of faith or the warrior. These people have left Earth to travel to different worlds where they built a life for themselves with like minded others.

To me it seems as if we have splinter cultures here on Earth itself – that of men and women. I’ve always maintained that men and women are just two halves that make up a whole but if you look at it another way, they are each missing a half to make them complete. This half as far as men goes is the ability to empathize, to be able to see something from another’s point of view, to have compassion. I can only speak for men since that’s the point of view I’m familiar with, I can’t say this is what women lack since I’d be going based on hearsay, stereotypes and other input which might not be objective – plus, any ladies reading this might get totally ticked off at me :p But I digress …

To me it seems that humanity can be improved upon if the two halves of humanity were able to acquire some of the positive traits of each other. This would lead to a more compassionate, more caring race that could perhaps at last leave behind all the bickering, all the schisms, all the other ills of humanity and work towards a world united as one race. That is my dream …

Of doves and hawks …

I first intended to make this entry a few days ago after having accidentally browsed over to the blog of somebody unknown to me. This person was so rabidly in favour of a war with Iraq and seemed to be going after anti-war protestors with such gusto, and the commentors on her site seemed to be of her own ilk and I just felt that I had to speak out about the phenomena. I mean about all these people sitting safely at home and throwing around labels like republican, democrat, liberal, right-wing, left-wing but in the end talking about killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people to justify their political leanings. OK, maybe I’m a bit harsh there but all this political haranguing is not going to help any of us if it comes to a war. But before I get into that, I would probably have linked to this person’s site originally if I’d written this entry when I intended to write it but since then I’ve been to her site again and she says that she’s tired of the hate mail and people linking to her without understanding what she’s about. Personally, I feel that if you write about what you care and you do so without malice, you shouldn’t worry about what other people think – it should be your opinion about yourself that matters to you first and foremost. Plus, she has such slogans as "First Iraq, Then France" on her site and so I don’t see how she can claim to be a non-biased objective person and that she needs to be understood before people vilify her :p Whatever the case maybe, I decided that if she didn’t like to be linked to, then it wasn’t right for me to link to her – whatever my objections to her comments (and even more than hers, those of her commenters …) may be. But I will comment on some of the comments on her site and please bear with me for saying something but not providing any links to verify that what I said is true …

There were several things which set me off at this blog that I’m talking about – the first and foremost was the above mentioned "First Iraq, then France" slogan. These people claim to be objective, open-minded individuals who don’t really want other people to die but see no other alternative except for war. If they were as open minded as they claim to be, I don’t think they’d want to grind anybody who opposes their point of view under their heels – which is what the comment about France amounts to … at least to me. Some might argue that it is funny and that might be why it was on this blog but I’d say that it is still insensitive and I don’t see much difference these people’s attitudes and that of the Nazis, for instance. I don’t hate people who have an opposed view – I just hope that I can show them my point of view and that maybe they will understand where I’m coming from. Whereas they (or at least according to the slogan) seem to think that anybody opposed to their point of view needs to be considered an enemy. Where does that come from? Can you really call yourself objective after such invective?

Then there were several people who commented on this blogger’s post vilifying anti-war protestors. One guy said that he doesn’t hate anybody – Muslims, Iraqis whatever – but that they (meaning the US) needed to bomb Iraq because all the Iraqis hated him and his little daughter and wanted to slit their throats! My friend Robin says that you should respond to such utterly insane comments by being even more over the top like saying "Yeah, and we will disembowel you and use your head as a football" or something like that … But I don’t know … I feel that on one hand you are stooping to their level and on another, you lose the chance to reach that person in case there is even a slim chance of still reaching them through all this misinformation/hatred they seem to have surrounded themselves with. I told this particular guy that most Iraqi’s probably couldn’t care less about him or his little daughter because they were just trying to get through their day to day lives, just like him or me or any of us. He says that he’s spoken to several Iraqi’s in person (or maybe online I forget which now …) but I don’t see how he could make a blanket statement like "they all want to kill my little daughter" if he really knew any Iraqi’s.

Incidentally, this guy claimed to be a marine and said that what us "civilians" don’t understand about bombing is that the army does not go in and indiscriminately bomb everything – that it was all about precision work. I asked him whether this was the same precision work which resulted in "malfunctioning" missiles killing civilians in Afghanistan but of course, there was no answer to that. But one thing that seemed to come out of these comments was that a lot of people seemed to think that the anti-war protests are actually either anti-Bush, or anti-Semitic (this one really floors me … but more on this later) or anti-American. And a lot of these people seem to have the belief that anybody who is anti-war thinks that Saddam is an angelic choir-boy! What rubbish! Of course, we … OK, I can’t speak for everybody but at least I, know that Saddam is not free of blame but then again, who is? Can the US government claim to be free of guilt – of having bloody hands in having dabbled in the matters of so many other countries just because they wanted to control things? of having trained Osama Bin Laden and then had him turned against them? of having provided Saddam weapons when he was fighting against Iran? I don’t think so! But most of the above mentioned "hawks" seem to either dismiss all of this as "it’s America’s duty to make the world safe and spread democracy" (has anybody asked who asked America to do all of this except for the US government and it’s rhetoric?) or as blatant anti-American propaganda. What I oppose in this war (or in any war for that matter) is the unnecessary killing (mostly of civilians and bystanders – that often quoted "collateral damage") of people for political/economical/ideological reasons.

Then there was the whole anti-Semitic thing. I don’t even know where that came from … though I can guess. While it could be that some people again imagined things where nothing was (or thought that pro-Iraqi/Arab *has to* be anti-Semitic), it is also possible that some of the Muslim anti-ware demonstrators carried anti-Semitic messages and that started the whole Jewish community going. People, this is not about Islam or Judaism! If it comes to that, Christians, Muslims and Jews all believe in the same God – or at least should! Don’t believe me? Most people don’t, they even argue loudly about this and say that this can never be but think … Jews, Christians and Muslims all believe in Moses as a prophet and unless Moses was a polytheist (which would shake the foundations of all three religions), his God has to be God of all three religions – yes, the specifics might be different but the basics are the same. So why do Muslims, Christians and Jews fight each other in the name of their religion and God? Think people, think! I’ve been hearing this rubbish from Muslims for a long time about how the Qur’an says that Christians and Jews are our enemies (utter rubbish!) and now I hear that some Jews are saying that according to the Torah, all Arabs must be killed! I can only say, that if all these people followed the spirit of their religion instead of scrabbling through the words, they might find peace both within themselves and out in the world …

The war for peace …

I’ve been watching the anti-war protests all over the world and I am happy to see that so many people all over the world do see the futility of another war but I find myself asking "will this be enough to tip the scales?" Somebody mentioned a statistic that I keep on coming back to – he said that if this war goes through, 30% of the children in Iraq will die. Is that something that we can actually live with? Not just those who actively supported the war or benefitted by it or participated in it, but those of us who stood by in the sidelines and did nothing?

Is there anybody who’s reading this who would step forward if I was to say that if somebody would step forward so that they and their families could be killed, the rest of the world … no that’s not right .. that’s too lofty and anyway does not provide a correct picture of the situation … that a country on the other side of the world can live without fear of attack? Is there any such person? If somebody like that exists, I might (and I said *might*) consider changing my opinions on this war but I don’t think anybody would like *their* families to be killed. So why are we doing nothing when somebody else’s family is being butchered in the name of something over which they have no control?

When the "war on terror" started and Afghanistan was to be attacked, I said "collateral damage" was not acceptable but a lot of people said "it’s unfortunate that these people have to die but those responsible for 9/11 have to be punished!". Well, time has passed, we’ve had collateral damage on both sides – the US has lost soldiers, young men who really had no idea of the battle they were fighting and the Afghanis have lost people, people who knew nothing about Bin Laden or 9/11 and probably had not even heard of the World Trade Center but has any justice been done? Not as far as I can see. Bin Laden still roams free and so many innocents have been killed on both sides just to make a point. All I see is injustice piled up on top of another injustice.

I watched the delegate from France make a strong appeal for not going to war at the UN and then later heard a commentator on CNN say that if the bullets started flying, you’d probably see France fighting shoulder to shoulder with US troops because France does not want to be left out when the oil fields are divvied up – cynicism, bitterness, reality, politics? I really have no idea – I wonder more and more if I understand humanity at all. All I know is that each and every individual, each and every family, each and every group and region and nation and continent, has the right to live without fear, the right to live peacefully. Nothing and I mean nothing is more important than that. But please don’t bring up that hoary old chestnut about how the US has the same right and this was is all about the people of the US might live without fear – open your eyes, stop listening to the politicians, start thinking for yourselves. People everywhere are people just like you and me – it’s the politicians who are a breed apart …