"Next I observed all the oppression and sadness throughout the earth - the tears of the oppressed, and no one helping them, while on the side of their oppressors were powerful allies." (The Living Bible.)
"I looked again and saw all the oppression that goes on in the world; there were the oppressed in tears, with no one to redress their wrongs - tyrants in power, and the oppressed in tears, with no one to redress their wrongs!" (James Moffatt: A New Translation of the Bible.)
Those two versions of Ecclesiastes 4:1 pretty well say it all, don't they...not only about the awful humanitarian tragedy daily unfolding in Yemen, but of course in Syria - Afghanistan - Iraq et al? No, the world has learnt very little down the years - decades - centuries - millennia, and far from humanity ever progressing onward and upward, as we're so often told, it simply repeats the old patterns so familiar to human nature. There is indeed hardly anything truly 'new under the sun'.
So once again, while celebrating wedding parties and other civilians simply go about their day-to-day lives 'minding their own business', they are periodically blown to smithereens and otherwise gunned down, picked off by drones, or simply gassed out of existence in whatever gruesome fashion happens to be currently in vogue with those who sadistically could care less about the lives of innocents and other 'pawns' in the path of their murderous (but ever-'justifiable') ambitions, plans and purposes.
And so the world looks on impotently and stands idly by whilst yet another ghastly episode of 'man's inhumanity to man' unfolds on the Saudi Peninsula, where vast multitudes in the tiny nation of Yemen die every day of cholera; and vast swathes of others are mown down as 'collateral damage' in the war.
This occurs as often as not via Western military aid to the brutal Saudi (Arabian) regime/war machine...whose 'misdeeds' are increasingly overlooked and apparently condoned - turned the proverbial blind eye to - supposedly, if we're to believe the mainstream media's only other coverage of those two nations, because the Saudi regime is undergoing radical reforms in its monarchy: i.e. it has a bright new (modernist, 'progressive') 'thing' as its leader. Hey, they're even now allowing women to drive on their roads!
And to think that New Zealand Inc - c/o its Government of the day (only 3-4 years ago or so) - had the effrontery (to all those values we apparently hold so very dear - as witnessed once again 'just the other day' in our annual Anzac Day commemorations) to fly our national flag at half mast upon the death of the last Saudi crown prince. Yes, all for a nation which regularly beheads its (dissenting) citizens and otherwise de-limbs them (for lesser offences) - are women still stoned for committing adultery (while the male participants get away scot-free presumably)? Doing so apparently all in the name of a religion which makes its God into a supremely unworthy representation of all that's noblest and best in life.
When, oh when, will our supposedly 'enlightened' modern-day world - c/o its supposed representatives in the United Nations et al - get its act together and do something about Yemen (and these various other 'intractable' conflicts? Not anytime soon, you can bet. No, I'm not holding my breath, either - nor will Yemen's suffering innocents be.
"Then I looked again at all the injustice that goes on in this world. The oppressed were weeping, and no one would help them. No one would help them, because their oppressors had power on their side." (The Good News Bible.)
No comments:
Post a Comment