Hindering

[poliphilo]

John Reid, the thuggish Minister for Defence (meaning Minister for War) has said that the Geneva Convention needs to be revised because it "hinders" British troops.

Yes, indeed; that's what the Geneva Convention is for, John; it's specifically designed to "hinder" the military.

I was thinking the Barbarian was at the gates. I was wrong. The Barbarian is through the gates and sitting in an office in Whitehall.

Comments

Re: Barbarians

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

People like Blair don't seem to be able to make the connection.

They seem to think there's a moral difference between the bomb planted by a "terrorist" and the bomb dropped from the air.

I find him terrifying: a dictator and war criminal who believes he's doing God's will.

Re: Barbarians

[methodius.livejournal.com]

And you can't blame Bush for that. He supported Albright's war against Yugoslavia before Bush was in power. Looks like he's keen to jump into any war going.

He wasn't conned into being a war monger by anybody, it just seems to come naturally.

Re: Barbarians

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I believe he's waged more wars than any British prime minister in recent history.

I'm afraid he sees himself as a Christian warrior, commissioned by God to set the world to rights.

Re: Barbarians

[methodius.livejournal.com]

In the Orthodox Church we have a word for that: prelest, or in Greek, plani. It means something like "spiritual delusion". Western modernity, since the Renaissance, Reformation and Enlightenment, has propagated the cult of individualism, which has led to the idea of every man his own pope -- there's no one around to offer a reality check, and see if that "commission by God" is true, and people like Tony Blair don't even see any need to check.

But in Red Square, right outside the Kremlin, is St Basil's Cathedral, with its fantastic ice-cream cone domes, which looks like an eleaborate ecclesiastical joke. It was built by Ivan Grozhny ("the Terrible") to commemorate one of his military victories, but the name it is most commonly known by commemorates St Basil, the fool for Christ who sat at his gate and denonced Ivan's injustices and oppression.

If anyone like St Basil tried to get anywhere near Tony Blair he'd probably be shot seven times in the head at close range.

And "Tony the Terrible" sounds like an appropriate epithet for his historical legacy.