Brian Haw and our dead children

Brian Haw was an individual who's character drove him to carry-out his protest in the way he chose. If he had a different make-up he would have approached this perhaps differently or most likely not at all. To understand his depth it helps to consider his faith and that he was a living embodiment of his faith (I am an atheist btw).

In Chpt23 of Matthew, Verse 33. Jesus says:
“Snakes! Sons of vipers! How will you escape the judgement of hell?”
that was Jesus expressing anger and there are many other examples. He was reported to have continued
"You are like whitewashed tombs – beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity.”

I think I understand something of Brian Haw's anger - he was exhaustively fighting for the lives and safety of 'his' children - our children, the world's children.

The question is; when will we all get angry, what will it take. Will it only be when you have your child in your hands and you are trying to hold their shattered body together in every way you possibly can, whilst their blood seeps through your fingers and their eyes slowly roll away?

Whatever characteristics combined to make Brian Haw the unique man he undoubtedly was, the result was one of extraordinary worth.

I am ashamed by the negative commentators at the time of his death, the ignorance of which astounds me. They were more concerned with his abrasive style and the detrimental visual effect of his camp. Brian Haw stood against war and harm to the innocent victims of war, especially children. How people could have comment so detrimentally against this outstanding peace campaigner is simply beyond my comprehension. I did not even recognise so many people failed to understand the heroic quality of his long vigil.

It is 'nuts' to support war and to decry those who call for peace - that is real insanity. It is our world that is mad, Brian Haw, eccentric or not, must have been the most sane of us all.

We allow our government to blow people's nation, homes and lives apart on wars waged on behalf of their corporate masters and yet people have the audacity to worry about one unsightly little corner in our city. What is the problem - did the sight of it prickle your consciences?

We can see that the new government are just new actors performing the same old play. But you cannot measure the effect protest has had on limiting the scope of this and other military acts of aggression.

Maybe we would already be at war with Iran if government thought nobody cared when they start bombing. Maybe the violence against Libya would have be even more ruthless than it appears to be. Today the papers are concerned with civilian deaths; is that as a result of your actions?

They gulp-down the narrative and spew it all out again as much as they like but remember, history is always written by the victor. They are lost in the paradigm of propaganda. Between times I'll look between the lines. I use to think calling Americans 'imperialists' was rubbish - I did not understand. I was looking for pith-helmets and verandas surrounded by lawns. Now I see very clearly indeed and a nasty business it is too.

Haw was as successful as he was able to be. He did all he could do within his limitations and circumstance. And we cannot know what influence he actually had. More than you imagine I suspect. Why do companies put their advert on bill boards? Because it works.

 

Brian Haw was a low-tech anti-war direct marketing campaign directed at the MPs and Ministers, etc. His effort was not directed to the public it was ENTIRELY directed at Westminster. He was a living, shouting, conscience pricking advertising bill board.

It does not matter what you or I think about Jesus or his existence. It only matters in this regard about what Brian Haw thought; to understand his motivation.

He considered that all children were 'our children' not just our family, tribe, race but all the children of the world are a part of the human family. And he felt it encumbered on himself to work to try and do what he could to the best of his abilities to protect them all.

What is more important; your children or all the children of Iran, Iraq and Libya. That would be a very tough decision. That is a high moral perspective and in my regard a fine one.
See: http://bit.ly/js4d3o

I fancy his children will hold him in higher regard for making that choice.

Kelly Inquest Quitter Coroner Helps Avoid Enquiry into Dead Solders

Because the bodies of service personnel killed in action in Iraq and Afghanistan are flown to RAF Brize Norton, Oxon, it is the Oxfordshire coroner Nicholas Garner who should have been conducting the backlog of 111 inquests now due.

Nicholas Garner was the coroner who aborted his inquest into the death of Dr David Kelly. Under the 1999 section 17A amendment to the 1988 Coroners Act, provision was made that if the Lord Chancellor tells a coroner there is to be a public enquiry (into the events surrounding the death) before the coroner's inquest is likely to be completed, the coroner shall adjourn their inquest. This is only if the Lord Chancellor considers it is 'likely' the cause of death will also be investigated by the inquiry and that there is an absence of any exceptional reason to the contrary.

The Lord Chancellor was wrong to allow the presumption that Dr David Kelly's cause of death would be adequately investigated within the terms of the inquiry he had called for 'to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death' and with witness evidence not to be taken under oath. The coroner Nicholas Gardiner should have recognised the 'exceptional reason to the contrary' within the inquiry's terms and procedures allotted and hence should not have adjourned his inquest before establishing cause of death.

The same Coroners Act section 17A amendment could now be legitimately deployed to save the Oxfordshire coroner Nicholas Garner conducting these multiple individual inquests, supplanting that process with an all encompassing inquiry into 'the circumstances leading to and surrounding the deaths of these 111 servicemen'. There is not so much doubts as to how each of these men were killed but a honest answer to how they were caused to go to war would be revealing.

Who says the Pentagon did not have a plan for post-war Iraq?

Who says the Pentagon did not have a plan for post-war Iraq? Everything appears to be proceeding swimmingly to plan - the plan to allow Iraq to disintegrate into civil war so to fragment the nation into a series of weaker states that individually, on the balance of probabilities, will be easier to influence and control.

Iraq's autocratic rulers, the Bathists under Saddam Hussein, were emboldened, by the wealth of oil and autonomous power, to resist the coercions of foreign powers. Having previously succumbed, in their fruitless war with Iran, they learnt to resist the hand of their master with which they used to be fed.

The frustration of such indiscipline lead those who thought themselves to still be Iraq's masters to beat and eventually destroy their once useful hound. And to ensure that Iraq would not resurrect, phantom like, it's corpse was to be dismembered. Should one of the new smaller Iraqi states fail to tow the line (as is probable) it's power and strategic regional threat posed (to you know who) will be much diminished from that considered to exist with Saddam's Iraq and mixing it up yet again, in the hope of a preferable fresh outcome, an easier task.

As Henry Ford said "Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs"