#34 If IS is ‘staggeringly brutal’, why?

September 28, 2014

On Friday 26 September British MPs voted by 524 votes to 43 to back UK government plans to bomb Islamic State (IS) on account of its ‘staggering brutality’.

A week earlier the wife of the British taxi driver held hostage by Islamic State had appealed to his captors to find it in their hearts to release him. Alan Henning remains on IS’s death row, facing the possibility of execution following the televised beheading oftwo Americans and one British citizen.

A few days after her appeal, Islamic State sent Barbara Henning a recording of her husband pleading for his life. Since she had only recently entered a heartfelt plea for mercy on his behalf, the IS response seems peculiarly heartless.

But if there is a staggering absence where you’d expect their hearts to grow, what is it that has led to such heartlessness among IS militants?

The staggering brutality of the West, is their answer; inflicted on (Sunni) Muslims everywhere to such an extent that their own form of staggering brutality is the only course of action left open to them.

But the West has been brutal to non-Western peoples for far more than a hundred years, promoting or suppressing them in its own interests, and not counting the cost (to them) – all this without often prompting such brutality in return.

On this account, the particular character of Islamic State remains unaccounted for.

Neither does the region’s natural environment offer a credible explanation. The desert sun was equally relentless seven thousand years ago as it shone down on ‘the cradleof civilisation’ in the territory now occupied by Islamic State. Likewise, the brutal heat ofthe midday sun may account for crucifixion as an ancient method of execution, but it does not explain why IS has only now set about resurrecting it.

Neither imperial history nor the forces of nature can explain the ‘staggering brutality’ of IS. read more

#33 Dear Doctor

September 18, 2014

Never, never, never in doubt, Dr Paisley? Hard to believe, given what happened next.

Power sharing (never!), the tricolour over Belfast City Hall (never!), First Minister ofNorthern Ireland with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as your Deputy (never!).

In the unsettling calm of the wee small hours, Ulster’s Big Man must have found belief increasingly elusive.

On such a night, he may have heard his faith falling by the wayside; the sound of a silk sash slashed (as worn by his father serving a century ago in Edward Carson’s Ulster Volunteer Force).

How else to explain the Protestant centurion no longer stentorian; the Sabbatarian, Presbyterian Moderator who became remarkably moderate?

For this was the conservative’s conservative, priding himself – no, that would be sinful – who made a point of never (never!) reading any book written after the year of his birth (1926).

But in recent years fighting talk directed at ungodly harlots, unnatural abominations, and the anti-Christ himself (Pope John Paul II), was reduced to a Corleone whisper – minus the menace.

How else to account for the unanimous paean to Ian in the days after his death aged 88 on Friday 12 September? Lost to the world and found to be a national treasure. Perhaps on a par with Joan Rivers: equally outspoken and ultimately harmless.

Paisley’s the name, of a life that became
Unexpectedly, appropriately decorative.

#32 Scottish Projections

September 9, 2014

‘Over four million individually addressed pieces of communication started going out last week.’

Responding to the surprise opinion poll (6 September) showing majority support for Scottish independence, Labour MP Douglas Alexander declared that Better Together had already increased its work rate. But the attempt to sound pro-active only revealedthe limitations of the ‘no’ campaign.

‘Individually addressed pieces of communication’ is an especially telling phrase. It tells tales of typefaces personalised to look like handwriting; it speaks of an address to 18-30s which eschews formal logic because digital natives are obviously too restless to follow it.

Hence ‘pieces of communication’ – format not specified; content equally imprecise.

Thus the full gamut of sub-Facebook friending in all its complex variations.

Variations, that is, on the same banal message – don’t take risks.

Enter First Minister Alex Salmond, jolly and jowly, pug-faced and a reputation for pugilism (political). At least he understands that faux is our deadliest foe. He knows what’s real in Scotland is unreal to the Westminster Village, and vice versa. But his yes to ‘independence’ is no more than a ‘no’ to unbearable lite-ness.

Suddenly former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown lands on stage like Salmond’s heavyweight brother. Marginalised because of previous prevarication (losing a UK general election because he didn’t call it in time), now doubly determined to be decisive, Brown is just enough of an outsider to play both Unionist part and Rejectionist role.

Safety first, notional nation, the idea of ‘home rule’: three projections in search of a people; no substance in any of them.

#31 Humanity Hotel

September 2, 2014

‘So their son can get the care…he needs’.

The TV reporter’s final line echoed the advice of Hampshire’s assistant chief constable – that Ashya King’s parents should return their five year old son to Southampton General Hospital, where he had been receiving treatment for cancer and for the severe after-effects of a successful operation to remove a brain tumour.

The way the reporter signed off – his intonation, the grain of his voice – invited ‘Amen’ at the end; as if godlike status is due to the ineffable combination of Police and theNHS.

Brett and Neghemeh King believe in a different god: they are Jehovah’s Witnesses who removed son Ashya from Southampton hospital and took him to their holiday home in Spain. They hoped to sell this property and use the funds to pay for proton beam treatment in Prague – cancer treatment currently unavailable in the UK, which Southampton doctors declared would be useless in Ashya’s case.

But the abduction of Ashya became a top priority – for police officers as well as journalists. His parents were arrested in Spain on Saturday evening and sent to prison. Ashya is now alone in a Spanish hospital.

Far from sacred, the behaviour of UK ‘healthcare professionals’ invites profanity. In a different case, the mother of a boy who was eventually granted NHS funds for proton beam treatment in Oklahoma, USA, reported ‘a bit of a carrot-dangling situation’ in which she was informed that her son might get the grant but funding would be refused if a younger patient came along. In Ashya’s case, Brett King says he was warned about an emergency protection order – his son being taken into care – if he continued to question his treatment; this despite disagreement among Southampton doctors over ‘the Milan protocol’ of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. read more

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Monthly Archives: September 2014

#34 If IS is ‘staggeringly brutal’, why?

#33 Dear Doctor

#32 Scottish Projections

#31 Humanity Hotel