Getting over it!

I am sorry (maybe you are not, dear reader,) that blogging has been spasmodic of late.

I have often noted that it takes more commitment than you think, or want.

No more has that been apparent than during this week when Mr O bin Laden has been so summarily despatched. There is much that could be said, perhaps even quite a lot that should be said....and an awful lot more that need not be said.

So I have struggled about what observations I can make.

First, I am saddened about any Prime Ministerial statement that "welcomes" the death of anyone. From a person, and in a country which does not have the death penalty it is difficult to make the moral connection that anyone's death should be welcomed as an appropriate outcome.

That so many people agree with here (and J Howard who echoed similar sentiment) does nothing to allay my fear that our leaders should do more than perpetuate the sort of hysteria which seems to imply that the death penalty is OK. Let alone the death penalty for crimes not tested in a legitimate court

I have little or no doubt that bin Laden was not just a creation of the CIA, but that he was a terrorist guilty of advocating and encouraging, and probably perpetrating, the most awful violence and terrorism.

But I am not a court of law and not at liberty therefore to insist that anyone should be executed as a result of my belief. Indeed, in Australia, no one is executed even if found guilty.

Second, let us not pretend that the 'event' of bin Laden's death is not just the reporting of a neutral event.

The whole notion of painting him as a rich man hiding in a Pakistani mansion and holding his wife as a human shield is designed to affect our perceptions. It is not fact, or perhaps just fact, it is selective information. Or what we usually call propaganda.