Grombles

In a recent interview, loudmouth Trump made headlines again by calling for the USA to "kill their families" in reference to Islamic terrorists. Whilst we're all naturally incensed by senseless horrors on our streets, this is clearly evil thinking. Such vile threats would have been worthy of the likes of Pol Pot and Hitler, not a candidate to become the 'leader of the land of the free'. But it's not just evil, it also demonstrates appallingly bad judgement if he believes that killing jihadist loved ones will stop them committing acts of revenge or prevent more enraged people from joining their ranks. But whether we agree with Trump or not, the dreadful reality is that killing their families is precisely what we are doing by bombing their towns and homes. And the problem is that it makes terror attacks more likely, not less. By destroying whatever stability used to exist in the middle east, we've created dozens of desperate crazed jihadist groups all eager...

We all know that Islamic revolutionaries are dangerous people. Clearly there's plenty of evidence to support this. [As an aside, I rather enjoyed "What do you call an Islamic revolution in Texas? A Yihad!"]. But now we're completely confused in the West as to which particular sect of Islam we're meant to fear most. Well we all hate Isis. We can all agree on that. But they're Sunnis. And Sunnis are funded by Saudis, with whom we are chums (but only while they sell us oil and buy our weapons or London property). And we mistrust the Shia who are funded by Iran and who attacked Iraq before we 'rescued it from Saddam' and where we're now relying on the Iraqi army, ironically now unofficially supported by Iran, to prevent Baghdad from falling into the hands of Isis. Meanwhile Syria, governed(ish) by an Alawite president, is fighting both Sunnis and Shias but probably favouring Iran for help rather than the West's chum, Saudi - who are helping Syrian ...

We (the UK and US) are about to start killing Syrians just like we killed Libyans, Iraqis and Afghans in the name of freedom and democracy... Only to end up with a bigger mess of warring tribes than we started with. We need to confront the reason they are killing each other, not perpetuate the hatred. Why do our press and politicians instantly jump to the conclusion that the only people who were likely to have used chemical weapons were the Syrian army? I believe it's because we still harbour the idea that if 'the people' rise up against their leaders, then we're witnessing democracy in action - and democracy equals freedom of choice... which we support. BUT when 'the people' are religious fundamentalists determined to enforce their brand of delusional beliefs and customs on their neighbourhood, should we really be supporting them? What's the difference between uprisings of these people in our own countries (London 7/7, 9/11, Boston Marathon etc), and u...

Who in their right mind could possibly have believed that democracy stood a chance of working in a country whose population elects religious leaders to improve their economic fortunes and protect the interests of minorities? Two years ago, some 52% of Egypt's electorate voted for the Muslim Brotherhood... There's a clue in the name. What in the world possessed the educated world, let alone poor, brainwashed, uneducated Egyptians, to expect that a bunch of beardies muttering incantations while banging their heads on little carpets stood the slightest chance of creating jobs let alone hospitals, education, roads, communication infra-structures, fair justice, and robust transparent finance systems. All these jibbering deluded fools care about are drumming the words written in ancient books into the malleable and frightened minds of children and their parents who have no intellectual weapons to use in defence. Words that teach nothing about IT, food production, medicine, media,...

Yesterday I attended the annual conference of the National Secular Society in London. Richard Dawkins was the keynote speaker. Clearly, if you'll forgive my rather inappropriate choice of words, he was preaching to the converted (or unconverted if you get my drift). So his language was rather more vitriolic and 'to the point' than you might have previously witnessed on TV or in a public forum. He was amongst friends - although I didn't particularly like the way people queued to worship at the alter of Dawkins. A touch of ring-kissing seemed ever so slightly ironic. Anyhow, after every speaker the moderator, an executive from the NSS board, asked for questions. Previously he had attempted to elicit questions from different parts of the auditorium. "We've not had questions from people at the back right".. etc. Odd, I thought, to feel the need to exclude questioners because they had accidentally sat somewhere near another questioner. However, after Dawkins...

I've just watched the second part of a BBC documentary about last year's so called Summer Riots in British cities where tens of thousands of youths attacked police, destroyed cars and buildings, and stole anything they could lay their hands on. This part of the documentary looked at the riots from the police point of view. It was very scary. The police had to stand there and simply take it. Wave after wave of hooded kids threw bricks, bottles, scaffolding poles - anything they could find that might cause injury - and the police could do nothing. Absolutely nothing, except, outnumbered, try and charge at the crowds in an attempt at dispersing them - but usually failing, and time after time having to fall back so they weren't exposed and picked off individually. I felt my fists clench tighter and tighter as I watched the breakdown of law and order escalate. I wanted those young coppers to use more force. Eventually I started to feel that I wanted them to use maximum force t...