So, the world now has proof that the most violent religion is Islam, if global protest headlines speak louder than words, and cult followers don’t have a sense of humour/irony, willing to kill others and die because a few actors were conned into making fun of a religious leader and his god in a video?
Meanwhile, our covert operatives, assigned to no country, used the noise and chaos to slip into place, as always, ready to assassinate at the first word from the Committee, keeping this 3D chess game moving forward into new areas of the protestors’ territory. If a protestor or a person who incited a protestor dies off-camera in a horrible traffic smashup or accidental fall/food poisoning at home, who’s going to pay attention?
Yes, you’re right again, of course. “Assassinate” is such a strong word. Should I have said remove the chess pieces from the playing board, instead?
However, when using the globe as our playing field, we do what we must to accomplish a goal greater than a species or nation ever outlives, changing the anthropomorphic state of sets of states of energy as the need arises.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration will forever be tied to the use of cowardly strategic murderous drone strikes, instead of putting himself and his drone option last, when he should say our military personnel, both those directly employed by our government and those indirectly employed as contractors/mercenaries, are, in person, used to carry out secret death sentences or actively engage in the legal right to proactively defend themselves during war.
In place of a HOPE poster, there will inevitably be found on the side streets of the Internet a picture of Obama looking like BIG BROTHER in “1984” with his finger pointed at you, saying, “Remote-controlled killing is love. A dead citizen is a happy citizen. Coercion is freedom.” All in the name of feeding this storyline, which appears to question the old storyline that stated the latest enemy is Islam, but only in the strictest radical sense, whatever that means in selling headlines more succinctly, a tradition of every country that divides killing into bins: socially-unacceptable murder or organisationally-acceptable restructuring.
Then, on an opposite street will be Romney, smiling, saying, “I do not kill unarmed Muslims without open due process. I love all people, regardless of religious affiliation, bad comic timing or alleged criminal guilt. Only my God can judge you, whose teachings I follow to the letter of the writings I read most often with more conviction than my opponent.”
Would it make more sense if public trials were held for defendants in absentia, who are given time to appear, even via the Internet, to face their accusers before being convicted of murder and sentenced to death by any means necessary, as long as it was not cruel and inhumane, including instant death by drone strike?
Are drones becoming too politically risky, creating the wrong kind of unintended consequences, scaring people and reinforcing rather than changing their subcultural beliefs?
This weekend, I stood in the midst of a group of 102000+ people gathered to celebrate their right to peaceably assemble and watch the three-ring circus we call a modern college football game, none of us expecting to be hit by a drone strike but willing to be filmed with no monetary compensation by dirigible-, crane-, guidewire-, hand- and helicopter-mounted cameras.
At the beginning of the game, on a public/state-sponsored university campus, a man spoke over the public address system to say a prayer before the players started tossing themselves at each other. This week, the speaker happened to lead us in a rendition of Christian text called the Lord’s Prayer.
We also watched the uniform number of Johnny Majors, a college classmate of my parents, retired from active use by the university football team, which brought a tear to my eye knowing one of my parents could not be there in person to join the festivities.
During the break between the two halves of the game, called the halftime show, for some strange reason, the university “Pride of the Southland” marching band included a Scottish pipes and drum ensemble which played both “Scotland the Brave” and “Amazing Grace,” as well as the inevitable “Rocky Top.”
And today, as we left Knoxville, we saw dozens of old muscle/classic cars/trucks leaving east Tennessee, as well as a few stragglers from a large motorcycle gathering heading north from a Trail of Tears ride.
Can I extract trends from these last few data points, wondering where, anywhere and everywhere on this planet, people were reinforcing their beliefs due to recent news headlines?
Me, I’m happy to see people do what they want, as long as they don’t physically harm others.
Then again, I enjoyed the football game, even if my alltime favourite college football team, the University of Tennessee Volunteers, was unable to post the higher score by the time the game ended, when many a player could easily show evidence of physical harm.
So, I’ve got a basic belief of mine to reconsider: freedom to be in the act of “first, do no [physical] harm.”
If nothing else in my beliefs this weekend, there is a sense of poetic justice, where, on the same weekend my team lost its game against a formidable opponent, a team now coached by a man who claimed to love the Vols but left us high-and-dry — Lane Kiffin — also lost. I can’t remember and maybe you can help me…which players with questionable ethics attended the same school? Was it O.J. Simpson and Reggie Bush?
I know our new coach, Derek Dooley, instills a real winning attitude of moral and ethical beliefs in his players as they reach successful goals in their career paths, in and out of the physically-harmful sport of American football.
While straying into sports, I keep having fun with this comical tirade on behalf of a political election campaign, seriously yet cynically satirical (or is that cynically yet satirically serious?), when I need to go on down the trail this storyline was going to take after the last blog entry but I’ve let myself get caught up in eddies and swirls of news headlines again, haven’t I, either way?
Old age, I guess.
Well, I’ve got to help my wife clear space in our space (“our space” is a house, in this case) to make room before we move her mother’s furniture from her sister in-law’s house, the furniture having worn out its welcome, as all guests are prone to do, including family.
Tomorrow, I’ll thank folks for their help this weekend, including Cassie at Bel Air Grill and Silvia at the Airport Hilton, my cousin Cindy and her husband Ron, and more…
Thank goodness I do not live in the ultra-regulated city-state of Singapore, because it considers illegal the flash mob performance of a haka that was as fun to watch as a spontaneous Scottish Highlands bagpipe concert.
treetrunkdings 