Remote Control War

There is a website where you can control a webcam mounted on the roof of the clubhouse at St Andrew's. I have just been watching an almost live feed of the US tanks outside a Presidential palace in Baghdad and I kept wanting to use the mouse to move things around as if they were just entities inside one big computer game. To the US, it seems like this is just what they are. Keep all these casualty figures as just numbers and it doesn't matter. After all the whole thing is just one 'live' arms fair for a lot of people. Think of the boards of the big arms companies wetting themselves evry time they see one of the own 'little' bombs going off. I dreamt of a computer controlled mortar last night, which you could position and aim using a computer mouse. The worry was that when it had been fired there was no control of the projectile; it just went where it went and if that meant a room full of civilians then there was nothing you could do. And now every box of Persil discovered in Iraq comes under scrutiny as a possible chemical weapon. The real chemical weapons in this world are those pumped out by the industrial nations into the sea, into the atmosphere, into every possible corner of the world. More people will die of respiratory diseases then will ever die through deliberately releases. Short-termism is everywhere. I am a product of this world and my reasonably comfortable lifestyle is in part, a result of its excesses. However, I know that we can maintain this lifestyle through intelligent use of resources without damaging the planet. It just takes a little thought but not the massive turnaround which the 'men' will insist is required for this happen. The Emperor's New clothes. The President is naked.

My daughter was listening to Classic FM as she went to sleep last night and she suddenly started calling to us in distress. I went up expecting her to have heard something on the news which she didn't like. She said that the music was beautiful and would I listen out to see what it was called. As I waited, I felt very lucky to be able to sit in the dark listening to beautiful music. It was Sister Monique by Couperin. There are some people in this world who think that Clasical Music ends with The Ride of the Valkyries and we all know what propaganda that is. Think of all those helicopters powered by that one pice of music.