I is for If I could speak my mind to these people I would say…

First all to politicians, who persist in ordering  air forces to bomb the hell out of innocent people,  thinking it will make for a better world,  or to rid the world of terrorism…no  you just continue the cycle of hatred, you create more terrorists, we are going nowhere with this. You can’t blow up an ideology,  you would be better off trying to re-educate those who follow it, and give them less reason to follow it. You bomb them, they bomb innocent people back ( as seen with Brussels).

To all Religious extremists,  listen what if the God you believe in is in reality nothing like the one you have blind faith in? How do we know the God the Christians believe in, the God the Muslims believe in…etc etc is totally different to the God they imagine?  What if there is no God?  If there is a God, would this being really humans to go around killing one another in its name?  Do you really think killing innocent people, including women and children  is a way to get to heaven? It is a way of creating Hell on earth, but no way does it endorse any Godly superior being.  If you put on a suicide belt and blow yourself up, you have stopped thinking , you have lost your sense of reasoning, you have been duped into killing people, you are dead in your head long before you blow yourself up, creating carnage around.

To Donald Trump, for God’s sake man,  give this pursuit of power up, before  you make an even bigger fool of yourself and drag the world into oblivion.  Mocking a disabled reporter,  threatening to punch a protester,  running a scam university, filing for corporate bankruptcy four times, in 1991, 1992, 2004 and 2009, hardly makes for a credible presidential candidate…does it? Where is this all going?

To Kim Jong–un,  what are you trying to prove ? Threatening blast the US off the face of the earth while your people starve. Do  you want to go down in history as the mad dictator who brought about  oblivion.  I didn’t bring a son into this world for some oversized crazed dictator to destroy it…hopefully!

Who would you like to speak your mind to???

Francis H Powell is a writer. His recently published book is Flight of Destiny, a book of 22 short stories.

http://theflightofdestiny.yolasite.com/

This article is part of a blogging challenge,

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/p/sign-ups-for-2016-to-z-blogging.html

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Guns and other killing machines!

It all started off with bashing people over the head with a rock, followed by using a club, throwing spears, bows and arrows, crossbows, pistols, canons, explosives, right up to a 50 megaton nuclear bomb. Over the course of history Man has tried to find more and more effective methods to kill one another.
I was struck by a quote by Jesse Hughes, the front man of Eagles of Death Metal who said “I know people will disagree with me but it just seems that God created men and women and that night guns made it equal, and I hate it that it is that way. I think the only way that my mind has been changed is that maybe until nobody has guns everybody has to have them”.

I am sure this man has been traumatized by what happened in Paris, who wouldn’t be. If you are a musician, starting a concert, there is no way in a million years you can imagine maniacs arriving firing guns randomly causing a massacre. You have to admire the group for the way three months after this shocking event, they went back to Paris to finish the concert that was so dramatically shortened. However Jesse Hughes’ thinking can perhaps be brought into question. It is true that the concert goers were at the mercy of the psychopathic killers who burst in with powerful weaponry and had no means of defending themselves.

However imagine if you went to concerts knowing that most of the concert goers were armed with rifles, pistols or whatever…That standing next to you there could be an extremist, a trigger happy crazy guy hungry, for violence, a totally unhinged person, all of whom have freely been given the right to buy firearms in order to “protect themselves”. Put guns into the hands of everybody and people will be dying in far larger numbers and on a regular basis. Having said this it is obvious that measures should be implemented that ensure that what happened at the Bataclan is never repeated.

Everybody walking around in bullet proof vests would be a preferable solution rather than permit everybody walking around with guns. Sadly we have to face the fact that in Europe any major city can be attacked at any moment. We are reliant on the security services to intercept, decode, messages and derail any threats. What can be done in large concert spaces? Train security guards to use guns…have a police marksmen at any major event. There will need to be a system in place to protect people at important events.

Meanwhile the world in general seems to be a far less safer place, not that it has ever been a really safe place in my life time. We have rogue state North Korea, trying to show off to the world that it can do whatever the hell it likes. Testing an H bomb (theoretically) recently, firing a rocket, the only country that could make this errant country step into line is China, but they seem loathed to do so. Strong words might be uttered against their actions, but the threat remains constant, that their deluded “leader” Kim Jong-un, might go too far and try to pull off some crazy stunt that would tip the world into an Armageddon state.

Kim Jong-un is just one menace, but what is going on in Syria, also does not bode well for the continuation of the human race. We have arrived at a particularly dangerous moment in history. The possible illegal ground invasion of Syria by Turkey and Saudi Arabia could ignite a conflict engulfing the great powers that could spin out of control.

Added to this we have ISIS, or whatever name these morons  are labeled with, an organization, with evil on a par with the Nazis, an organization with warped ideology and a propensity to kill and destroy. They hate the West and wish to re-impose a world more akin to Middle Ages, with barbarity that has ceased to exist in the West.

The method of attack has gone far beyond throwing a rock at an adversary’s head, countries/politicians, the military have to consider the fact that they will send the human race over the abyss. Our only hope is that we end this perpetual cycle of hatred.

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Follow the leader

Follow the leader

They control people’s lives. They are unavoidable, they impinge on the population’s lives. The weak look up to them. The rebellious despise them. Some dote on their words, while others deplore them. Some are bewitched by them, others see through them. They rule with an iron fist. There is not enough solidarity or the will to rise up and other throw them. Their myth lives on long after their deaths. People are fearful of them. They have a well-oiled propaganda machine and supported an all seeing, all powerful Police force. They are leaders…

Look at a picture of Margaret Hilda Thatcher, that Buffon hairstyle, pearls, ladylike handbags and gloves, and you might imagine a soft woman, the perfect invite to a genteel tea party. The reality being she is one of the most demonized people in modern times. When she died, some would have her canonized, others joined the refrain of “ding dong the witch is dead” as if a cloud had been lifted, that had shrouded the country.

There was a King of England called Canute whose pride led him to believe his command could hold back the incoming tide. He may have failed to influence the rules of nature, but his power and authority is unquestionable, his dominion included all of Denmark, all of Norway, all England, as well as Scotland. His words to the sea were “You are part of my dominion, and the ground that I am seated upon is mine, nor has anyone disobeyed my orders with impunity. Therefore, I order you not to rise onto my land, nor to wet the clothes or body of your Lord”. All powerful leaders will at some point become delusional. Margaret Thatcher famously said she slept four hours a night, of course she had a strong work ethic, perhaps she thought the country would grind to a halt if she was not constantly working.

In literature, George Orwell’s Big Brother is a graphic description of tyranny, an all seeing despot, seemingly unbeatable, an absolute power, all citizens have to comply and even those with grave doubts about the system, will have their spirit pounded down, any defiance quashed.

With my book of short stories, I have a number of tyrants, in “Gomford”, the tyrant is a priest called Reverend Salmon. An ugly businessman “Gomford” arrives in a small remote village with a beautiful young woman, who he has allegedly married. The men of the village have never encountered such beauty and one by one each seduces the young woman, only to fall into a deep depression, due to their sexual failings as well guilt for cheating on their wives. The spirit of the village plummets, which is where The Reverend Salmon steps in. When the young woman undermines his authority, when he tries to exorcise the village, he concocts a plan and leads a group of village vigilantes, to perform the long outdated and outlawed practice of “dunking”. The Reverend takes the unusual step of having the victim dunked “naked” for his own sadistic pleasure. The villagers are gormless and compliant to every one of his dictates. Without him they are like a rudderless boat. Like many leaders he is capable of getting away everything and nobody will challenge him (apart from the young woman he feels obliged to crush). He knows what he needs to do preserve this village, which does welcome outsiders, that is in effect still living in the dark ages. The Reverend in the end of the story proves to be a flawed character, with a hefty skeleton in his past.

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