Useless idiots

It has been often noted that one of the consolations of religion is the pleasure it affords in the contemplation of the eternal torments of the non-believer. As an atheist, I do not have that to fall back on. Instead I have Greece. From here I can post items about glorious weather and the beauties of nature, hoping to annoy everyone I know back in the urban drizzle of England. Except that from Saturday onwards, as England basked in glorious sunshine, a cold wind has brought torrential rain and has covered the mountains in snow. This has not put me in a good mood.

My irritation increased when I saw the prominence given to this group in the Guardian. I don't know where they come from these 'useful idiots', the dupes who crawl in obeisance to every grotesque tyranny, who take their 'fact-finding' tours with sanctimonious seriousness and make solemn pronouncements that they 'have seen the future and it works', whilst blocking their ears to the screams emanating from the people. They have no need to take pleasure in the torments of the afterlife when they can perceive those inflicted on the living as both exaggerated and understandable.

However grotesque and murderous a regime, however obvious its attempt to create an hereditary kleptocracy, it will always find its apologists and they will invariably dignify their language by describing themselves as campaigners for 'peace'. The peace they advocate is one where a regime can systematically rob, torture and murder its own people unmolested and out of sight. They make the categorical error that Solzhenitsyn described brilliantly in his essay Peace and Violence,

The 'peace-war' opposition embodies a logical fault. The whole of the thesis is opposed to only a part of the anti-thesis. War is a mass phenomenon - concentrated, clamorous and clear-cut, but it is by no means the only expression of unceasing world-wide violence. The logically balanced and genuine moral opposites are peace-violence.

And the worst is often "systematic state violence" against its own people. And so,

Peace will then be served not by those who count upon the good nature of the men of violence, but by those who are incorruptible, unbending and tireless in their insistence on the rights of the persecuted, the oppressed and the murdered.

These people are no peace activists and they are not just apologists, they are warriors. They are part the battle of language, partisans fighting for the Gaddafi regime with the weapon of words, something that Syrian protesters have pointed out is a key element of any struggle.

The more killings and brutality there is in the street, the more the lies and misleading information. It’s like they are interconnected in a way. Kill, then lie to justify the killing, then lie again to set the stage for more killing.

Mind you, despite being undermined by the farcical blindness of their own propaganda, the cautious hesitancy and the bureaucratic legalism of the UN mission might just do this group's job for them.

Ah well, at least the sun shone briefly this morning until the clouds gathered once more, threatening rain.