The often demented ramblings and musings of a music journal author
Look to the mote in your own eye, and keep your hands off my heartstrings!
Oh no, not here you don't! I've been watching the news for the last, I don't know how long, months certainly if not longer, waiting for some news of intervention or proper action on Syria, and what have I seen? Completely ineffective attempts at “peace plans” that are basically laughed at, but which their architects refuse to accept or admit are nothing more than a poorly-disguised
PR exercise, a desperate attempt to “be seen to be doing something”, when we all know nothing is being done. Delegate after delegate sit across from that smiling bastard murderer as he goes on slaughtering his own people. “Unverified footage” of civilians being massacred; meanwhile ineffectual United Nations representatives meet and shout and squabble like children while thousands of miles away real, actual children, and their parents, are lying dead or dying in the rubble of a crumbling dictatorship which has to fall one day soon.
But when? The UN allow big countries like China and Russia to hold them to ransom, instead of showing them up, shaming them for being either the obstacles they are or the active participants in and facilitators of the genocide going on in Damascus, Aleppo and other cities. When arms were supposedly intercepted recently which had been allegedly supplied to the Syrian government forces by Putin's regime, why were these not displayed publicly, on television, so that all could see, across the world, what hypocrites and accessories to mass murder the Russians are?
But the final straw was last night, when the news advised us we would see “one of two special reports on Syrian refugees”. Oh no: don't you even dare go there, world or national media! I have the utmost sympathy for these people, who are fleeing a war they did not start nor participate in, who have left their homes --- often destroyed --- behind them and fled to the borders of their war-torn country in hopes of escape and survival, for them and their children. But don't you dare try to make me feel that “there's something I could do” about this. You've done ****-all, and now you have the unmitigated audacity to try to make ME feel bad about this? What could I have done, and how DARE you presume to try to play on my sympathies, my basic human compassion, try to tug on my heartstrings by pointing out the plight of these people? In TWO reports? Let's not lose sight of the fact that YOU, as a body, may as well have put them there. What has the media, the international community (should probably be renamed to the international cowards) done to step in, to alleviate the human suffering, to try to negotiate and end this war, topple this despot from power?
Yeah, I'm no politican, and I know, as does everyone, that Assad's days are numbered. But while those days count down they take another few hundred people to their deaths, and the toll mounts up till we have to wonder, when he finally does go, how many people will be left alive in Syria? But I didn't create this situation. I wasn't and am not in any sort of a position to fix it. YOU all are: the media, the UN, NATO, politicians on every side. I don't care if it seems simplistic: as Bob Geldof once said to Margaret Thatcher, when pleading for assistance for the famine-struck African nations, and she saying “It's not that simple”, no, nothing is as simple as people dying.
So get the hell off your fat arses and sort it out. Stop playing politics. Make the big decisions. People are dying over there, and you can stop it if you work together and use the vaunted might of the UN to bring pressure to bear upon those who decide, for whatever reason, not to support initiatives that can bring about peace. In the words of Star Trek's Captain Jellico, Get It Done.
But until you do, until you start taking some responsibility and standing up for the ordinary people of Syria, until you stop wringing your hands and shaking your heads about what can't be done, keep your ****ing “special reports” on refugees off my screen! You can't make me feel any worse than I do anyway, and if it's meant to somehow assuage your guilt, then shame on you. Don't blame me by proxy for your shortcomings and failings: DO something about it.
And another thing...
Six dead in road crashes in 24-hour period - RT News
What the hell is it with everyone these days that they have to get everywhere so quickly? What's so important? Four major accidents on Irish roads this weekend, and we haven't even reached the bank holiday one yet! God knows how many people will die this weekend! It's all down to inexperience on the road, alcohol but mostly people driving too fast.
The worst, and most heartbreaking story, for those of you not in Ireland and aware of it, (see link above) is of a father who took his two baby daughters for a Sunday stroll in their pram, on a well-known and used stretch of road where people walk all the time, and was hit, out of the blue, by a car, both his daughters being killed and he injured. Why? The details are not released yet, but from the state of the car in the report I'm willing to bet the driver was speeding. Possibly drunk, though that's by no means certain. But in a way, that doesn't matter, because even if you're fully sober, excessive speed can be a killer. Judge Judy often points out that a car can be a weapon, and she's right. In the wrong hands it can kill. And here it did, and two completely innocent little girls who had not even the chance of beginning their lives are now dead, another road safety statistic, their parents no doubt shells of their former selves, facing a future without their babies.
And again, I ask, why?
Because some careless bastard was in a hurry? Couldn't be bothered to keep his eyes on the road and his mind on his driving? It's nowhere near excuse enough, nor will it ever be. There's no room for this sort of selfish arrogance and carelessness in our society, though sadly it's become all too prevalent, and shows few signs of abating any time soon. People's lives are being destroyed by reckless driving, and it has to stop. It's one thing to kill yourself : you want to plough into a wall at speed, that's your decision. But don't take innocent lives with you.
SLOW THE **** DOWN!