The problem with being away from the blog for any length of time is knowing where to start again. Maybe I should have decided this whole blog would have a specific theme - say, the behaviour of a particularly exotic wasp species during the months of April and May in Leap Years. Then I’d know what to say next (most likely something like “no news today, waiting for 1.1.08″). What I don’t know is how to catch up on ten days or more of Random Access Memories.
Sky News is such an inspiration to me. Or not. But this whole Iran-captures-soldiers thing. They’re using a photo that looks like it was taken with a mobile phone as their evidence that the ship was in Iraqi waters when they were captured. This apparently means it was okay. Now, personally, if I was an Iraqi citizen I’d be questioning that (don’t quote UN resolutions at me, it would make a difference).
Anyway, “Iran” have captured these people, and obviously for the 15 people in question this is catastrophic. Somehow at times like this we manage to forget about the 15 people, and the 15 families. We forget even easier about the families of the people who took them, as if we have decided they are somehow less human. Is a baby girl less human because her father kidnaps someone else’s? This isn’t my main problem with the story though - my issue is the convenience of it. Let’s say, for instance, Georgie Boy wanted a new war to play with (sorry, shocking frivolity, surely he would never think of millions of lives as something he could “play with” and manipulate for his own gratification. never.) and he wanted his old chum Tony to come play with him. But Tony’s mummy (is that Gordon Brown?) told him no. Hmmmb. Imagine if Georgie Boy needed some way of convincing Tony (and his mummy) of the imminent danger and obvious threat posed by nasty little Iran? Imagine a scenario whereby a US administration constructed a situation specifically aimed at validating entry into a war. Surely that couldn’t happen. Not now. Not ever, eh?
I’m not saying this is an entirely (or even vaguely?) likely possibility. But there’s a definite eau-de-rat about the whole thing.
In other news, the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade was marked in a variety of ways last week - most famously perhaps by Toyin Agbetu but also by a group of protestors who marched from Hull, home of William Wilberforce, in chains… which I kinda like as a hook. Link pending, I’ll get back to it…
