The deep-deep Irony of Edwin Starr

What do you need to do to become comfortable with everything? I always say I want to go and live on an island and I don't mean a sunny, South-Pacific, palm-fringed paradise. I suspect there is some element of being able to control everything if you can walk round all the land available to you. There is an analogy with being rich. Rich people always seem unhappy and want more money. People in power always seem to want more power. No-one seems satisfied with what they have. I know that is a generalisation and that many lottery winners simply retire and live quite normal lives without having to worry about anything but why do the super rich wan't to carry on working? Of course all this is rubbish compared to other things going on at the moment.

However we view the current conflict in Iraq, we like to think that our own leaders (political and military) do not lie or spin. We think they will always do the right thing. I am sure we are wrong. I am not saying there is wholesale dishonesty about events in the Gulf, but there does now seem to be a lot of reporting which 'proves' how bad the Iraqi regime is. I should really stop commenting about the war as the blanket coverage and 'rolling' (a euphemism for repeating) news reports have made me switch over the news everytime it comes on. I still read the BBC website news. At least I can choose how long that kind of broadcast lasts. Any teenage obsession with military hardware has gone. My aunt is a seasoned peace campaigner and it must have really annoyed her when my brother and I persuaded her to take us on a tour of various airbases near where she lived so that we could look at the planes. Having said that, I suppose I do still get quite excited by the roar of a jet taking off but I am now able to link this with the actual operations which these craft carry out when they reach their destinations. Everytime a fighter bomber takes off, remember that in the distance it will be dropping disgustingly efficient weapons on real people and killing them.

The recent outrage about the treatment of the 'coalition' POWs has got me bothered. There is talk about the disregard for the conventions of war as if we sanction the cruel killing of people by Daisy Cutters and snipering as being in someway 'legal' under the Geneva Convention. It is not nice to be paraded on TV but I find it more disgusting that this world has sat down and created a 'specifcation' for war. War is always a break down of civilization and while there can be just wars, it strikes me as a rather 'corporate' view of the last resort of any dispute. I seem to remember than the sequel to Catch-22 was set in modern times and propagated the mindless absurdities of the war into a corporate environment. I will find out and even if that is not the case it should be.