Hideous

Hideous docu-drama on SBS last night, The Road to Guantanamo. Essentially about British guys who may have got caught up in the whole shemozzle. They may have course have been guilty though the film makes a good case for them not being so.

But, in a way that is irrelevant.  Even if they were guilty as sin, and even if we acknowledge that only half of the abuse suggested on the film was true it was still too much.

The deliberate confining and restraining of people so that their minds would be strained, and their bodies broken; their dignity assaulted, and their basic human rights assailed...all this gives the lie to any idea that the captors were civilised.

While it is easy to suggest that (if they were guilty) these people may have been threatening lives, as soon as we commit atrocities in the name of 'justice' then the forces of evil have won.

If the civilised throw away their basic sense of decency and goodness, then they themselves have become the enemy...or should I say we ourselves have become the enemy.

Pause for thought

The Australian opened its commentary about the Mumbai bombings with the chilling thought "nuclear armed India blamed nuclear armed Pakistan for its part...."
Chilling pause for thought!

Goodness gracious me!

I am interested (as always) in the reporting of the Mumbai terrorist attack. In the scheme of things it seems to me quite serious, one wondered how long it would take the hideous 'terrorists' to realise that there are an awful lot of soft targets around the world. And India must be one of them.
I guess the net effect of this will be that rich Westerners will stop travelling to India. Which is what happened in Bali, n'est-ce pas?
Who this causes suffering to is obvious.Not Osama, probably not the West...since we may just ahve mild disappointment at not going to India...but hundreds of low paid Indians will just not get the benefits of tourism, or trade or what ever. What a ridiculous waste.

An end to terror

In the last week or so the African National Congress, and in particular Nelson Mandela were removed from the US's Terror Watch List (see here).
No doubt Dr Mandela was pleased with this birthday present, but it raises the question of what such lists are all about. They are of course propaganda, and don't serve much useful purpose at all.
The US list has (apparently) nearly 1,000,000 people on it.
One only has to see some of the names on the list, (here)which includes US senators, serving military officers, and any number of people who have opposed President Bush on issues great and small. See the American Civil Liberties Union counter here
The Anglican Church's GAFCON conference (reaction to gay issues and women's ordination) which recenty met (against that Bishop's wishes) in the city of Jerusalem...also had a (much smaller) hit list.
Security were instructed to not allow certain people entry under any circumstances (see here), that list, too, is propagandist and political!

Terror nullius

No this is not about Mr Hicks (well not completely) it is as usual about the mountain of stuff that always seesm to o'erwhelm me close to big festivals.
Any way set my mind to thinking about this recurring terror. Yes, that is sometimes what it feels like. I remember one Holy Saturday afternoon where I just felt that it was not going to be possible to get everything ready to begin the Easter Celebration that evening, and indeed I felt in a state of collapse.
Since then I have realised that such terror is largely imaginary, and there is now a sense of when you get to sitting in the darkness on Maundy Thursday evening that it's all down hill from here.
That is one way of dealing with terror...and also realising that what we often name as "terror" is nothing of the sort. Panic, maybe. Faithlessness, perhaps. But mainly one just needs to get a life!
Did set me thinking about terror though.
There is the terror of people driving. I will have to drive the road there and back four times if I want to spend time with my family as well as be a priest. Others will be doing the same thing.
On that stretech there are black and red markers. Too many. Blacks mark the fatalities, and reds the injuries. They increase from month to month. One fear I have is that in a decade or so there will be no stretch of that oft-travelled rad where you cannot see one of these reminders.
Terror, too, because of the fragility of children. One girl a couple of years older than my youngest murdered in the last months, two kids the same age victims of men driving up and trying to grab them. What a terror this must be for them, and for their families.
The terror too of the wretched Tsunami. We don't suffer here, (even though we imagine we might...I live 300 metres above sea level) but the most delicate economies, like the Solomons have no fall back position.
Amidst all this, there is always (for me) a real terror about Good Friday. I often listen to Liszt's Stabat Mater and Passion Meditations. The music is terrifying...you can hear the nails.
For some elsewhere that terror is still a reality.

And there is a real sense of dawn on Easter Day when the terror of death broken open is a reality.This is I think a real terror, but a positive one. It scares us to death to think that things might not be as we think they are.