suburbanmusings

There’s no particular reason for posting this video today; I just think it’s something that everyone should watch.

The lyrics speak of sadness and longing but the melody, instrumentation, harmonies rhythm and performance are things of beauty.

In lieu of a coherent post I’d like to share two fairly random musings.

Firstly why do taxi drivers always have such terrible taste in music? Last night I endured a 30 minute taxi journey which was soundtracked by The Best of Meatloaf. Believe me that is more Meatloaf than I ever want to hear again.

Secondly as it’s that time of year when young adults drive around in pimped up Corsas blaring out God-awful music I feel the need to ask this question: Why do people who pump music out of the cars always have the worst taste in music? How come you never come across a pimped-up Corsa blaring out Beethoven's Sixth Symphony or Miles Davis or Joy Division or Arcade Fire?

Anyway I’m just off to drive to the shops with my windows wound down and Neutral Milk Hotel playing on full blast.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7516238.stm

I'm not entirely convinced about the whole 'Clash of Civillisations' theory. For one the theory requires a civillisation to clash with. Which modern civillisation executes women by burying them up their waists and pelting them with stones until the die a slow and lingering death? It's not just nuclear weapons which are unsafe in the hands of the mullahs; with their their worldview small stones can be a deadly weapon too.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7508715.stm

Convicted child-killer Samir Qantar was today kissed on both cheeks by the Lebanese President and welcomed home as a hero by thousands of Lebanese civilians.

That’s nice isn't it?

I look forward to reading Robert Fisk’s next column.

As Obama and McCain slog it out over who plans to withdraw when, while Al Qaeda exhorts wavering Jihadis to launch one last fanatical push and StWC gathers a diminishing band of trots to denounce Bush and Blair, the situation in Iraq is quietly and quickly starting to outflank everyone.

In Iraq today three Baghdadi policemen were killed by a grenade attack, an off-duty policeman in Mosul was shot dead and seven dumped bodies were discovered across the country. Since 1st July two US soldiers have been Killed in Action; easily the lowest death rate for US troops since 2003. Each death represents a terrible individual tragedy yet the statistics illustrate that the violence has abated from the murderous levels of the last four years. Like a dying tempest the terrible violence has begun to blow itself out. The shootings and the IEDs will continue, perhaps for years, but it is no longer at a level that threatens the elected Government or the civilian population has a whole.

Some time soon the US Marines will hand over security responsibilities for Anbar Province, the very birthplace of the insurgency, to the resurgent Iraqi Army. British generals have advised that their troops will mostly be out of Iraq by spring 2009. A forthcoming Pentagon report will recommend that the US Army pulls out of Iraq even faster than even Obama has dared to suggest, with perhaps 50,000 troops left in Iraq by next spring.

Al Qaeda has been virtually defeated. It is cooped up in Mosul and limited to the murder of off-duty policemen and Sunni Awakening members. It no longer has the capacity to decimate the Shias with suicide bombings or terrorise the Sunnis with beheadings. Similarly the Iraqi Army has routed the Mahdi Army in its own backyard and installed the rule of law and Government. Iraq remains a powder keg and the future could easily herald a resurgent Al Qaeda, a dominant Mahdi Army or the return of civil war; yet there are reasons to feel cheerful about Iraq’s future for the first time since 2003.

Sunni Arab states are starting to talk about installing ambassadors and writing off Iraq’s enormous debts. Nouri Maliki suddenly seems like an assured statesman and in recent weeks he has been seen walking the streets and distributing thousands of dinars to needy Iraqis. The security situation hindered American development plans for years but with a newly pacified society and the price of oil at an all-time record high there is a chance for the desperately needed reconstruction efforts to take place. Iraq’s estimated oil revenues will be an enormous $70 billion this year; $100 million has been ear-marked to rebuild Sadr City, $100 million for Basra, $100 million for Amarah and $80 million to help re-settle refugees. Of course oil wealth can often curse 2nd and 3rd world countries through the temptations of corruption, nepotism and dictatorship. Maliki himself stated that “Money is not a problem, but we must put it in honest hands to spend."

Much can go wrong and predicting the future is a mug’s game but with the help of the US Army, Western technical knowledge and the institution of democracy one can hope that Iraq’s immense oil wealth may filter through to the people who need it most. Before 1990 Iraq was the most secular of all the Arab states and it used to have the strongest and best educated middle class in the region. The US will protect Iraq’s democracy, it has invested too much to do otherwise, and the Iraqi Government is now strong enough to contain the wretched insurgency. Iraq may limp on as a corrupt, petro-state with a low-level insurgency and ethnic tensions for years to come; equally it may become a beacon of what democracy and education can achieve for the people of the region. This outcome may displease many who had hoped against it but I suspect that, if their nightmare ends, the Iraqis won’t care.

"Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and my servant shall be healed."

Mathew 8:8

The Church of England will today hold a debate on the role of female priests and the ordination of gay clergy which is supposed to decide the future of the Anglican Church. Yet the very fact that it is even having the debate is evidence that the Church does not have a future in Great Britain. In an age when the British public are so highly educated, open, tolerant and savvy, a debate about the role of women and gays exposes the Church as being hopelessly behind contemporary attitudes, lifestyles and morals.

I’m fairly certain that there is no supreme being in charge of the universe, the same way I’m fairly certain that Stoke City won’t win the premiership next season. I did, however, have the dubious pleasure of attending Catholic schools for 14 years and I’m the proud holder of C grade in GCSE Religious Education. Now I’m certainly no theological expert but I can quote plenty of biblical examples that support the ordination of gays and women. Homosexuality may well be a sin, but aren’t all humans inveterate sinners? The message repeated again and again in the New Testament is that God forgives sinners whether they are thieves on the cross, Roman Centurions or tax collectors. If gays are banned from serving the church then surely all sinners, which means all men and women, should also be banned. Furthermore Jesus always made a point of helping those who were outcasts from mainstream society, such as gentiles and lepers. If a human wants to serve their God what does it matter whether they are gay or female? If God was so concerned about homosexuality why didn’t He mention it in the Ten Commandments?

When the scientific progress of The Enlightenment exposed the fact that the bible could not be taken literally, the Church conveniently shifted its position and posited that it was a work of metaphors and allegories. Yet the Church has consistently failed to follow Jesus’ underlying message of universal love and it is quite clear that many clergymen use the bible to cloak their own bigoted beliefs. Perhaps it is time that the clergy start to take lessons in morality from their own congregations, who certainly seem to be following Jesus’ teachings rather better than they do.

Queen Boudicca fought the might of the Roman Empire, King Alfred led the Anglo-Saxons against the marauding Vikings and Winston Churchill inspired Britain to stand alone against the unique evil of the Nazi Empire. David Davis, meanwhile, is making his heroic stand for British liberty by holding a by-election in the 100% safe Tory seat of Haltemprice and Howden.

There are several things that I dislike about Davis one-man-against-the-world civil liberties campaign. His decision is egregious and hypocritical; he is trying to bypass the bastion of British liberty, the House of Commons, and hold a definitive referendum on the subject in a town that would vote for a donkey if it wore a blue rosette. And what is it, exactly, that entitles the population of Haltemprice and Howden to speak with such authority on the subject of civil liberties? By the same token should we poll the residents of Hackney North for a solution to the Arab-Israeli problem? Or perhaps we could ask the voters of East Surrey how we should stop global warming?

Furthermore I would have a lot more sympathy for Davis' libertarian crusade if he was, well, more of a libertarian. The man consistently voted against the repeal of Section 28 and equal rights for gays and he has repeatedly spoken in favour of the death penalty, which is surely the ultimate intrusion of the state into a citizen's life. Davis also voted in favour of the 28 days detention law so he seems to appreciate that there is a threat to national security. He clearly accepts the logic of holding terrorism suspects for longer than seven days so why claim that '42 days' is part of the "the insidious and relentless erosion of civil liberties in Britain"?

Davis refers to the prevalence of CCTV cameras and the DNA database as evidence of this insidious and relentless erosion. But what exactly is wrong with CCTV camers? Have they not been used to solve inumerable crimes? No single body actually controls these cameras and what threat to they pose to our liberty? By the same principle one may also complain about the number of policemen, security guards or traffic wardens on the streets. The DNA database has been crucial in solving many horific and violent crimes as well numerous ‘cold cases’. Should the police be banned from holding the details of British citizens? What about finger prints and criminal records? What about the rights of sex offenders? There are countless public bodies that hold our private details; the DVLA, the NHS, the Inland Revenue, libraries; are they all part of the insidous erosion of our cherished liberties? Does that Data Protection Act not adequately cover the storing of private data? Where is the evidence that civil liberties are threatened?

Free citizens must accept the rule of law and a certain amount of Government interference in their lives. If we had complete freedom we would be free to break traffic rules, disregard the wearing of a seatbelt, take illegal drugs, incite violence and racism and ignore the multitude of laws that govern a stable democracy. This is called anarchy. We are protected from our Governments by democracy and an independent judiciary. We accept that we must follow laws that allow us to exercise our own free will while at the same time preventing potential harm or injury to others. Not a shred of evidence has been presented to suggest that the DNA database or CCTV cameras have infringed on anyone’s liberty. Quite the opposite, it has made our society safer and more secure by helping to take some extremely dangerous people off the streets.

Yesterday The Independent reported that since the Government implemented the smoking ban that 400,000 people had given up smoking and 2 billion fewer cigarettes had been smoked. It is estimated that ban will help to save 40,000 lives over the next 10 years. At the time of the ban ‘libertarians’ protested that it was a threat to their personal freedoms. Yet what about the freedom of those people who had to share their cancerous smoke? The Government has the right to protect non-smokers from smokers and it also has the right to introduce laws that curb the influence of tobacco which is an insidous and relentless killer.

In the Declaration of Independence, a libertarian manifesto if ever there was one, Thomas Jefferson wrote that man was "Endowed with certain unalienable rights" including "Life, liberty and the pursuit happiness". The pursuit of happiness is man’s eternal goal and it is hard enough to achieve without being threatened by passive smoking, rapists and murderers or, for that matter, Jihadi terrorists. The DNA database, 42 days, seatbelts in cars, they all allow us to follow those unalienable rights. These truths are self-evident.