Week 38 2013

Tendring Topics…….on Line

Thoughts on an anniversary

            I am typing these words on the twelfth Anniversary of the ‘9/11’ terrorist attack on the ‘Twin Towers’ of New York, a terrorist attack that was one of the pretexts for the invasion of Iraq and the reason for the bombing and invasion of Afghanistan. I consulted ‘Google’ to check my memories of the event (I remember that when we first switched on the tv during the afternoon of 11^th September 2001 my wife and I imagined we were watching a preview of a sci.fi. disaster movie!)

            I did learn from Google that the CIA had published the names and nationalities of nineteen terrorists who had played leading roles in the outrage.  They were all members of Al Qaeda  To my surprise I found that fifteen of them were from Saudi-Arabia, two from the United Arab Emirates, one from Egypt and one from Lebanon.  There was not a single terrorist from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Syria.   Yet those are supposed to be the ‘rogue states’ that harbour and encourage terrorists and must be brought to heel by the ‘free world’, while Saudi-Arabia and the U.A.E. are trusted allies.

 Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E are the main supporters and suppliers of arms to the rebel forces trying to topple the present Assad government in Syria.  They are now expressing their anger and dismay at the fact that the USA has at least postponed its  punitive missile attacks on the Syrian government while it pursues the possibility of that government handing over its store of chemical weapons to the ‘international community’. Prominent among those rebel forces in Syria is Al Qaeda, the organisation that undoubtedly was responsible for 9/11.  We, the Americans and the French are currently giving them moral support and helping to supply them with all their needs short of actual weaponry!

            The British and American governments are said to have ‘compelling evidence’ that the Assad government was responsible for the chemical attack that undoubtedly killed a very large number of Syrian civilians a fortnight ago.  We haven’t yet  been allowed to see that ‘compelling evidence’.  Is it, I wonder, as irrefutable as the evidence for Saddam Hussein’s possession of weapons of mass destruction that lured us into the invasion of Iraq?

 Intelligence Services are made up of fallible humans, with human strengths and human weaknesses. They receive and analyse scores of often-contradictory reports daily.  It would be surprising if they didn’t emphasise the importance of evidence that their political paymasters want to hear, and minimise or discard that which they don’t.  Evidence from Saudi Arabia is very likely to be biased against the Assad Government. Assad is the wrong sort of Muslim! So, I fear is evidence from Mossad, Israel’s secret service.   We know that Israel doesn’t like the present Syrian government, if only because of its ties of friendship with Iran.  We also know that Mossad is utterly ruthless in defence of what it considers to be Israel’s interests.  It has carried out assassinations, kidnappings and forgery (of British Passports, for example, to make it possible for assassins to get closer to their target).   I do not think that, if they considered it to be in Israel’s interest, they’d have any problem with bearing false witness.

            I hope that the current initiative for peace does succeed.  I wonder if the prayers of millions of people world-wide inspired by the Pope’s appeal to all  humanity have been heard – and answered.  I think that armed interference by foreigners like ourselves on behalf of either side can only add to the death and destruction.

            What is needed is for all foreign fighters, on both sides, to go back to their homelands.  Then, free of foreign interference, for the Syrians on both side of the conflict to lay down their arms and get on with the task of rebuilding their lives and their shattered country.   I am quite sure that they would receive generous help in doing so from well-wishing, peace-loving, folk world-wide. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers…..’

Pots and Kettles!

            I am sometimes embarrassed by the patronising ‘holier than thou’ attitude of our top politicians and those of the USA with regard to the sins of other governments. We don’t mistreat prisoners of war, bomb harmless civilians, threaten others with nuclear weapons and so on – and on.   All fine – until we are stopped in our tracks by allegations of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers, the torture and killing of terrorist suspects during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya and, going back a little, the blanket fire raids on civilian centres like Dresden in World War II.  Going back even further it comes as something of a shock to learn that it was  neither Hitler nor Stalin but we Brits. who invented Concentration Camps.  The very first of these was built by the British for the confinement of Boer Families during the South African War

         When we hear politicians on both sides of the Atlantic threatening dire consequences if this, that or the other regime manages to acquire a nuclear weapon, it is worth remembering that the only country that has ever used these dreadful weapons to kill fellow human beings (men, women and children 'in one red burial blent') was the USA when, with full British approval, they dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945!  

.      I am amazed that the Americans have the gall to lecture others on the wickedness of Chemical Weapons when there are something like half a million Vietnamese children with serious physical or mental defects as a result of the use by the USA of Agent Orange as a defoliant during the Vietnam War. About three million were affected altogether.

       The reason why some 20 million gallons of  herbicides and defoliants were poured onto the forests of Vietnam was not primarily to kill or maim little children but to get rid of the trees and bushes that provided cover for the Vietcong – but kill and maim the  innocent they certainly did.  It was, at the very best, recklessly irresponsible.  In 2010 a joint U.S.A /Vietnam Commission recommended .that the U.S. should pay $300 million in compensation for the victims and towards the repair of the ecosystem. To date the USA has paid nothing.

Then, of course, there was the use of Napalm, a particularly unpleasant chemical weapon – a burning gel that adheres to the body or clothes of its victims causing intense agony and death.  One of the most striking news pictures of that dreadful war was of the little nine year old girl who had torn off her burning clothing and was running naked with other refugees from a Vietnamese village concealed by smoke and consumed by flame..   A South Vietnam Air Force plane had committed  that particular war crime – but their US allies had supplied the Napalm, and had used it themselves often enough in Vietnam..

That naked and terrified little girl, although badly burnt, survived and currently lives in Canada.   Here is a message that she sends to all humankind.  If only we all heeded it!

‘Forgiveness made me free from hatred. I still have many scars on my body and severe pain most days but my heart is cleansed. Napalm is very powerful, but faith, forgiveness, and love are much more powerful. We would not have war at all if everyone could learn how to live with true love, hope, and forgiveness. If that little girl in the picture can do it, ask yourself: Can you?’ 

Well, can you?

Clacton Quakers

The interior, Clacton Quaker Meeting House

     Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a Quaker (a member of the Religious Society of Friends).  My wife Heather and I joined the Quakers in Ipswich in 1948 and became members of Clacton-on-Sea  Quaker Meeting in 1955 when we moved to this area.   We celebrated and gave thanks for our silver, ruby, golden and diamond wedding anniversaries in the Clacton Quaker Meeting House, and the Meeting House was full when we gave thanks for Heather's life at a Memorial Meeting for Worship there on 30th July 2006.

Our golden wedding celebration 1996

       I still try to get to our Sunday morning Quaker Meeting for Worship every week.

       We Clacton Quakers now have our own web site.  If you'd like to know more about the faith that inspires me to write 'Tendring Topics....on line' each week, click onto www.quaker.org.uk (that's the official national Quaker website) but if you'd like to know more about the Quaker Meeting of which I have been a member for over half a century click onto www.clactonquakers.org. 

Week 9 2113

Tendring Topics......on line

‘Arms and the Man’

            That is the title of one of George Bernard Shaw’s more light-hearted plays, but ‘the arms’ that I have in mind are the weapons of death that, even as I write, are killing men, women and children in Syria and elsewhere and during the past century have killed millions of men, women and children world-wide.  ‘The man’ is our Prime Minister, David Cameron.

            He has recently been in India, furthering trade with that rapidly growing potential consumer of the products of British industry.  It was his second visit there in the past three years, his earlier one having been in July 2010.  Since then he has paid similar visits to Egypt and Kuwait, Saudi Arabia (on two occasions), Indonesia, Japan, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Brazil, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

            Furthering British trade relations is obviously a very worthy activity though some may wonder if affairs at home in Britain are really running so smoothly that our Prime Minister can afford frequent absences on trade missions.  What is concerning is the fact that much of the commercial activity that he is so eager to promote is that of the arms trade – a trade that many of us regard as being as undesirable as the slave trade and that, like the slave trade, is destined to become  one of the darker aspects of our nation’s history.  This interest of the Prime Minister was noted particularly during the ‘Arab spring’ when he toured the Middle East in the company of arms salesmen who regarded the turmoil in the region as a unique sales opportunity.  How those salesmen must have rejoiced earlier at the bloody break-up of the former Jugoslavia.  Quite apart from the deadly weapons required at the time, its outcome was the creation of five potential customers instead of just one!

            Howard Wheeldon, Director of Policy for ADS, a ‘defence’ trade organisation is reported as saying, ‘The PM has done a fantastic job.   He has picked up the value of defence to the national economy.  Other PMs haven’t necessarily’.  No doubt; but the promotion of arms sales surely can’t have a very high priority on the Prime Minister’s ‘job description’.

            In fact, the British arms trade does very well by global standards.  The USA is the world’s biggest arms exporter with 35 percent of the market share.  The UK comes next with a 15 percent share, narrowly in front of both Russia and France. It is not a statistic in which I take any pride.

            It may be argued that every country has a right to self-defence.  Trouble arises only when weapons fall into the wrong hands.  Much the same argument has been put forward in the USA about gun control.  ‘The only way to foil the activities of  bad guys with guns is to make sure that the good guys are well armed’.

 Internationally, how do we tell the ‘good guys’ from the bad?  And how do we ensure that they remain ‘good? I am sure that when the French sold Exocet Missiles to the Argentineans they hadn’t intended them to be used against the British in the Falklands.  When the USA and the UK covertly armed the Mojihadin in Afghanistan to support them in their guerrilla war against the USSR they hadn’t intended to put weapons into the hands of those who, a few decades later, would be using them to kill British and American troops.  It would surprise me if British made weapons are not being used by both sides in the current bloody conflict in Syria.

            I look forward to the day when the success of the arms trade is a distant memory and we are better known for our tractors, our dams, our bridges and our medical and surgical expertise than for our tanks and guns, our bombers, our jet fighters and our death-dealing missiles.

An elderly ‘Essex boy’!

          It might have been thought that someone who had had to serve only nine weeks of a nine months sentence for serious fraud, and had heard that there was to be no further investigation into his expensive activities as former Leader of Essex County Council, would have thanked his lucky stars for his good fortune and have kept a very low profile, at least for a year or two.

           

But that was not Lord Hanningfield’s way.  He sued Essex Police for wrongful arrest and trespass and has been awarded £3,500 in damages. Only a month or two ago we had learned that, as the fraud for which he had been convicted had been much greater than had originally been realized, he would have to pay back a further £37.000 under the Proceeds of Crime Act, or return to gaol for a further term.  We were told at the time that as he was by no means a wealthy man this might compel him  to sell his bungalow and ‘take up the tenancy of a Council House’. (Did he really imagine he'd qualify for one?)   Under the circumstances he might have been expected to add that £3,500 to his meagre savings, but not so.  He is ‘still working to raise that £37,000’ and is donating the £3,500 to a cancer charity!

            Lord Hanningfield (who was plain Paul White, an Essex pig farmer, before Tony Blair arranged for him to be ennobled on Margaret Thatcher’s recommendation) says that one chapter of his life is now over and he wants to get on serving the people of Essex.  ‘I’ll mainly be working in the House of Lords and I’m already taking up some issues’.

            How strange that the government and members of the House of Commons should be so strongly opposed to convicted criminals being permitted to vote in elections for those who make our laws – but are apparently quite happy for a convicted criminal, who has not yet ‘paid his debt to Society’ (he still owes us £37,000 or a further spell in gaol!) and as far as I know has uttered not a single word of apology or contrition, to play a part in the House of Lords in making those laws!

            We used to hear a great deal about ‘Essex girls’ and their characteristics.  Lord Hanningfield is surely an elderly ‘Essex boy’ to match any of them!

           

              The Assassins

          It is said that at the beginning of the Battle of Waterloo it was reported to the Duke of Wellington that the commander of one of the British cannon had Napoleon himself squarely in his sights.   Should he give the order to fire?  ‘Certainly not’, replied Wellington, ‘We are soldiers – not assassins’.  Yet had he given the order to fire it is at least possible that thousands of British and French lives would have been spared.

            That, I suppose, is always the justification advanced for assassination.  A particular individual is the enemy of the State/the Party/Democracy/the Faith/ the Revolution, or whatever else is considered most important at that time and in that place.  The violent erasure of just one life, it may be claimed, would save thousands of others.  In the nineteenth century a Russian nobleman said of his country that its system of government was ‘despotism tempered by assassination’.

            The present Russian government may well have been responsible for the assassination in London in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko, a former member of the KGB and of its successor, who had defected to MI6, becoming a double agent working for British Intelligence. It wouldn’t be particularly surprising if he were regarded as a threat to his former employers (much as Burgess and Maclean, who defected to Russia, were regarded in Britain) and orders given for his elimination.  It was an assassination that has soured Anglo-Russian relations to this day.

            British-Israeli relations were similarly soured by the assassination of Mahmoud al Mabhooh, a Hamas activist, in Dubai in 2010 by agents of Mossad, the Israeli Secret Service.  The assassins used forged British passports to get near to their victim, again provoking British official condemnation.  Such assassinations, we may think, are the sort of conduct that we expect from Russians and folk from the Middle East – but are far below the standard of the United Kingdom and our allies.

            But are they? Whoever murdered Alexander Litvinenko and those who murdered Mahmoud al Mabhooh at least put their own lives at risk and in danger when they carried out their criminal actions.   We can hardly say the same about those in the USA who control drones (unmanned aircraft) to fly over enemy – or sometimes nominally allied – countries, seeking out individuals considered to be a threat to the USA as targets for the launch of their death-dealing missiles.  ‘Smart’ as these drones and their deadly cargo undoubtedly are, they are not quite smart enough to distinguish between individual friends and foes. From 2006 to 2009 between 750 and 1,000 people were assassinated by drones in Pakistan, of whom it is reckoned that 66 to 68 percent were Taliban activists and between 31 and 33 percent innocent civilians.

            I understand that the UK also uses drones but that, at present, their use is restricted to military targets in Afghanistan.  We do, of course, support the activities of our American allies.   There was a time, not so very long ago, when American courts refused to extradite suspected, and in some cases tried and sentenced, IRA murderers to the UK.  There’s no doubt what the American reaction would have been had we then sent drones to pick out and ‘neutralise’ those enemies of our country and its people - especially if a few innocent American civilian deaths occurred as ‘collateral damage!'    Do not do unto others what you would hate them - or anyone else - to do unto you!