A recently submitted article I wrote was used (with my permission) by the local newspaper here for an opinion column called Talking Point that the paper ran. The article was about Saudi Arabia and discusses issues surrounding the executions of 47 victims the state called criminals, all by beheading barring four who apparently were shot. The article, still available on https://www.kiwiwatch.org.nz/whats-it-with-saudi-arabia/ seems to have been well received by local people I have met in the street as well as by the number of phone calls I received. Everyone was in agreement with what I wrote. I just wish I had been more forthright in what I did say!
Later in discussion over coffee one day with a group of friends someone informed me that you could actually google video examples of these executions because they are online. It had not occurred to me to do so because I just had never thought of doing that because I figured most executions are ‘private’ but in Saudi Arabia these executions are public events in the town square and so yes there are examples of this barbaric practice on line for all to see.
I have to say here that I don’t recommend anyone do this because unless you have a stomach for the brutality you will find this upsetting. I was. Indeed I found the viewing of this practice of beheading dreadful. I was deeply disturbed and remain so. I won’t look again I can assure you because there was something so wrong about what I viewed. But, this is common practice in Saudi Arabia and also in other parts of the Muslim world.
I am left wondering what it is in human nature that condones not only this practice but quite simply the killing of another human being. What is it that causes us to kill another soul? Over the past 14 years just how many million people have been killed in wars that all of our countries in the west are supporting? Is this justifiable in any way more than the butchery committed by the Saudi Royal Family preserving their status as top dogs of the desert?
When I went to Sunday School I was taught the 10 Commandments and among them was this: “Thou shalt not Kill” (Exodus 20/13). It’s an instruction, even an idiot can understand this one. Yet, our governments are focussed on doing just this, if not to its own citizens then to citizens of another country in wars. Indeed our governments spend $billions every year on weaponry and perfecting the practice of killing human beings. Interesting that it is the Israeli government implicated especially with the US government proxy to the Jewish lobby right behind who are to the fore in the middle east. Even odder it was on Mount Sinai that God apparently delivered the 10 commandments to the Israelites.
Now killing can be done remotely by someone sitting in an air-conditioned room thousands of miles from the target and according to the drone fliers that are now talking about this evil practice they see via infra-red TV the outcomes of their killing strike including the warm blood running out of blown up victims whether they were the target or an innocent bystander or child as apparently 90% of them are. Just like me feeling wasted having watched the Saudi styled savagery it appears that there are now several deeply disturbed drone operators requiring discharge from operations and therapy. Some have already committed suicide themselves as the ‘way out’ of the mental torture and guilt that they suffer from.
Of course this is happening on a daily basis now. There are 22 suicides per day (!) in returning US forces who have gone to war in the middle east. It’s more if you add the suicides of British servicemen. It’s the only way these people can find peace after what their governments have asked them to do. Killing, burning, maiming, torturing, blowing up homes leaves all but the sickest individual desperate and seeking to find justification and peace.
Ken O’keefe an ex US Marine who has fought in the front-line is blunt about those who call on their citizens to go and murder others in another country. When talking about our leaders, Obama, Bush, Cameron, Blair and the rest, he has one label for them…psychopaths, drunk with power. Listening to Ken O’keefe is recommended, he doesn’t mince his words. https://www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/israel-former-us-marine-810/
Little wonder then that our children are being schooled in the acceptance of killing because this is what our governments are going to continue to do unless we stop them. Hollywood, an organ of the global power seekers has created a nightmare for all young parents trying to bring up their children with decency as a value. The video games our kids want to watch are all about killing and glamorous war. Indeed, their education is to kill, if not an alien then a human invader. Maybe on your i-pad it is fun adding up all the points you score by killing the enemy often portrayed as Arab but the mental conditioning is happening. The corruption of pure minds takes place from a very early age. Likewise our television programs are all violence with guns and killing as the predominant theme virtually all the product of Hollywood and Hollywood style studios. Shame on our programmers broadcasting this crap into our lounges every night.
Nothing justifies killing another person, even the most ghastly of crimes doesn’t justify a death sentence, although society should be prepared to pay the cost of incarcerating someone who has murdered or raped for life if the sentence is life.
What we have allowed as citizens is the seizure of power by unscrupulous people who want to dominate and control. They want complete power and subservience of all and regrettably they are ‘my generation’, baby-boomers mostly where reverence of the dollar justifies anything.
In the madness they create chaos, friction, hatred and then war. They fund dissidents to carry out atrocities, to overthrow governments and replace them with servitude stooges to carry out their desire for power and control over nations. Out of this we have allowed our governments to bestow on us all ISIS a wicked and evil group that will not go a way, cannot be bombed into submission or reasoned with in negotiation; who likewise have no problem with killing.
Who came first? There was no Al-Qaeda, no Taliban, no al-Nusra Front, no ISIS when Hussein, Gadaffi, Mubarac and Assad were in power. Now we nightly witness an ideological clash that I sense has no ending and the power brokers become more powerful by the day as their corporations build more bombs and guns. It’s sick!
I lamented in the previous article about the New Zealand government flying the New Zealand flag at half-mast to commemorate the death of the Saudi king early in 2015. I’m more angry now that ‘my’ flag was flown in this way to honour the murderous bastard we should have condemned but that was probably small fry lament compared to the killing atrocities that occur each day in the name of fighting terrorism or bringing democracy to countries that have never had it in the past.
Let us all question more our governments every move, the slope is slippery.
Malcolm Eves
18/01/16