Would you cast the first stone, If you had to walk a mile in their shoes?

© of W.Gomez
I am referring to the soldiers who are fighting a war they don’t fully understand and yet. How are we to comprehend the madness that inflicted itself, through the actions of the soldiers stationed at Basra and the death of Mr Baha Musa?

TenPercent says it with passion

The sad episode is about Corporal Donald Payne, 34, of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, charged with inhuman treatment and the manslaughter of Baha Musa on September 15, 2003; perverting the course of justice; and with inhuman treatment of eight other named Iraqis. Lance Corporal Wayne Crowcroft, 21, and Private Darren Fallon, 22, of the same regiment, are charged with inhuman treatment of Iraqis.

[T]he Ministry of Defence bowed to pressure yesterday by agreeing to hold a public inquiry into the death of an Iraqi hotel worker in British custody in Basra.

Baha Musa suffered 93 injuries at the hands of British soldiers in September 2003. The 26-year-old receptionist was subjected to 36 hours of beatings and abusive treatment, including being double-hooded with hessian sacks in stifling conditions.

After a five-year campaign by the relatives of Mr Musa, Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, announced that the death is to be investigated at a full public inquiry conducted by a High Court judge.

Only one member of the British Army has ever been convicted of a charge linked to the death of Mr Musa. Corporal Donald Payne, of The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, pleaded guilty to inhuman treatment of persons protected by the Geneva Conventions and was sentenced at a court martial in April last year to 12 months in prison. He was also dismissed from the Army.

Article by Michael Evans Defence Editor. Read the whole report here

Appeasement. Bush-Obama-McCain Clash.

The word appeasement has taken on that negative pong, unlike the positive phrase it should be and all because of the policy then to be labelled forever as the policy of Appeasement towards Hitler, by the UK, Chamberlains governement.

© of Winslie Gomez

I very much doubt that Obama has the same set of cicumstances to deal with. It would more appropriate if we have an image of Obama with a microphone in one hand and a club (metphorically speaking) in the other.

The context of the appeasement policy is important or we will believe that appeasement is the cowardly act, of giving in to a bully.

Europe feared the growing powers of Soviet russia and communism, hence Hitler seemed to be the simple, easy solution. After all, he only seeemed to be interested in Eastern Europe.

President Bush while speaking to the Knesset, the Israeli Parliament for their 60th anniversary, conveniently forgot that Henry Ford and Irenee du Pont financed Hitler during this time and even when war did break out, the Americans were not too keen to get invoved in European affairs.

Souce:WARNING. Accuracy cannot be verified.

“Some people suggest that if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away.” He (Bush) did not say who those people were. Source

Timesonline says

Barack Obama today accused President Bush of launching a “false political attack” after he appeared to compare the Democratic presidential hopeful’s foreign policy to appeasement of the Nazis.

Mr Bush triggered a row when he implied during a speech in the Israeli Parliament that Mr Obama’s willingness to talk to radical regimes was a dangerous “delusion”.

Although he did not refer to Mr Obama by name, the Illinois senator condemned the President for using Israel’s 60th birthday to attack Democratic contenders for the White House.

“Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Mr Bush said.

A succinct explanantion of appeasement can be found here

The five most important reasons, however, were:

	Some British people approved of Hitler’s policies.
	The British people hoped that a strong Germany would stop the growth of Communist Russia.
	Many people felt that events in Europe were not Britain’s business.
	Many British people wanted peace.
	Many British people agreed with Hitler that the Treaty of Versailles was unfair.

Radical Xtianity

sees all other religions as false and worshiping the Devil, Satan, Shaitan, Beelzebub, Lord of the flies etc, etc.
© of Winslie Gomez
Would you believe it! Fundamentalist US Christians are funding, for our UK Gov’t to be lo be lobbied by deeply committed Christians who are no different from Enoch Powell.

Islam and the babies they produce is the the enemy!

In this instance it’s the embryo bill

Didn’t Herod try that trick of killing all the babies, yet, it didn’t work so why won’t we learn.

Retention Conflict Forces Recruitment

Does any life have worth? If so, what is that life worth?

The results range from just under 100,000 dead (civilians) to well over a million.

“We don’t do body counts” might be a good enough reason to distance the reality from the hype. But whilst the general public get disgruntled, the Army, Navy, and Air Force need to continue recruiting or they will face a depletion of personnel. In the meantime according to IBC (Iraq Body Count) keeps rising.

Do these numbers matter and is it pertinent to question the differentiating between services and civilian life.

Please recall that the evil dictator the western coalition needed to topple;”Saddam Hussein and his regime killed one million people over a 35-year period”

Guardian puts it as

(100,000 Kurds in the Anfal campaign in the 1980s; 400,000 in the war against Iran; 100,000 Shias in the suppressed uprising of 1991; and an unknown number executed in his prisons and torture chambers). Averaged over his time in power, the annual rate does not exceed 29,000.

An independent UK-based research group, calling itself the Iraq Body Count (IBC), collates all fatality reports in the media where there are two or more sources as well as figures from hospitals and other official sources. At least four household surveys have been done asking Iraqis to list the family members they have lost. The results have then been extrapolated to Iraq’s total population to give a nationwide estimate.

The results range from just under 100,000 dead to well over a million according to the report by Guardian.

RETENTION on the other had seems to be a real problem for the armed services.

14,000 people had left the army in the past year, meaning it had actually shrunk by 1,500.

“With ever increasing commitments and a shrinking army, the effects of overstretch are just going to get worse.”

Nick Harvey, for the Liberal Democrats, said “the painful reality” was that there were fewer army personnel than at any time since the conflict in Iraq in 2003.

The government needs to explain how the army is to cope with the challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan with its forces so overstretched.

Reported in BBC

RECRUITMENT of course is one solution.

The army yesterday launched a £2m recruitment drive as polls showed that British soldiers were much more popular than the wars they are fighting.

The campaign drew immediate criticism, launched days before the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and at a time when the activities of the armed forces are coming under unusual scrutiny.

Brigadier Andrew Jackson, the army’s chief recruiter, said that on present figures there was likely to be a 10% shortfall in troops. Military chiefs have said they are concerned more about the difficulties in retaining trained soldiers than in attracting raw recruits.

THE CONFLICT it appears, grows in the UK

Members of the National Union of Teachers believe schools should not be “conduits” for Ministry of Defence “propaganda”.

Delegates at the NUT’s annual conference in Manchester will warn that “schools are being asked to play a partisan role in war” and should have no part in recruiting troops.

A motion to be debated at the conference calls for “the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq”.

It continues: “Teachers and schools should not be conduits for either the dissemination of MoD propaganda or the recruitment of military personnel.

“Conference therefore agrees to actively oppose military recruitment activities in schools across England and Wales.”

The union’s ruling executive does not support the call to oppose armed forces recruitment activities in schools and will put forward an amendment that would see this clause removed.

But the NUT leadership is concerned that some lesson materials prepared with MoD backing undermine the legal duty of schools to present controversial issues to children in a balanced way.

NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott wrote to Schools Secretary Ed Balls to complain about a lesson plan intended to help pupils learn the skill of “writing to argue”.

The plan focuses on the topic of “the ongoing occupation of Iraq by British armed forces”. Mr Sinnott said…..

So Says the news at Tiscali

While on the other side of the pond in USA we learn of the Berkeley’s Marine Corps Recruiting Center Controversy

and on On Youtube. Credit to bottomlineupfront. Thank you.

Does any life have worth? If so, what is that life worth?

Chickens: Insanity of the Cycle of Hatred

“What should our response be” was a questioned posed by Rev Wright on his exegesis of Psalm 137 especially verse 9 when considering 9/11.

The whole reason why Obama had to make that momentous speech of “We the People…”

Did FOX tell lies by their continuous loop of that famous statement.

ENJOY!