Search This Blog

3/25/2009

Daily Mail Denies Right to Self Defence

David Cameron has not expressed support for the following declaration.
He is therefore unfit to be an MP.

8. 'The obligation of the British Nation to regard the sending of foreign warships into British waters, claiming to control the borders and prevent the import of arms to Britain, as a declaration of war, a new occupation, sinful aggression, and a clear violation of the sovereignty of the nation. This must be rejected and fought by all means and ways.'


Gaza is a sovereign state run by an elected government. It has a right to defend itself from attacks by a ruthless neighbour with no scruples about committing war crimes.
Whatever religious nuttery is promoted by this Istanbul Declaration, the assertion of the right to self-defence is something the Daily Mail, and everyone now calling for Daud Abdullah's head on a plate, would surely support - except in the case of one of Israel's victims, apparently.
Let's not forget what the Israeli navy can get up to given a free hand. Days before the onslaught against Lebanon, they were busy shelling Beirut beach parties, in heroic defence of their homeland.

3/02/2009

Watching Jade Goody

Watching the ebb and flow of the Jade Goody story is like watching a society turning itself inside-out to try and find out why it hurts. As if watching the way she dies will teach us how to live. As if, in an age when information is power, everything must be scrutinised to make us feel we are alive, because power is life.
So in Goody, but also in the televised family histories of celebrities, and even in our growing need to discover more and more information about our own heritage, and in the entire cyberworld of facebook and Blogger and Twitter, we are involved in a world in which the more details we control and create, the more hits we have on our website, or the more we know about a specific person, the more a part of something we feel, rather than alone.
Jade Goody has provided a perfect story product for our time, massive content for the cyber-world, and as part of that g-g-generation, knew instinctively what to do with it. Where do morals come into it, really?
Maybe now Channel 4 will think about doing a Big Brother from a hospice.
It may happen.