Ashli Babbit, a needless death

What a shame for her

Ashli Babbit, 35, an Air Force veteran from San Diego, California was at the US Capitol yesterday as a staunch supporter of President Donald J. Trump having been fully persuaded of the unfounded claims of voter fraud determining his loss of the presidency.

Egged on by the president, she, unfortunately, found herself at the end of a bullet to the neck or the chest, as she climbed through a broken window as part of a hooligan mob invading the sanctity of the Congress, depending on the reports you read and soon she was dead and probably will not be remembered or celebrated for her needless martyrdom to a hopeless cause.

Silliness as patriotism

Some will have us believe that she was a patriot and there are many who fly the flag, stand for national anthems recite pledges of allegiance with gusto, who believe they are patriots or are more patriotic than those not so enthusiastically consumed of nationalism, jingoism, and belligerence.

The concept and meaning of patriotism has been corrupted, abused, and misappropriated to odious and nefarious ends. Many so-called patriots need to sit back down and have another in-depth civics lesson on the constitution, the rule of law, the separation of powers, the freedoms we all have in the kingdoms and republics in which we live and the responsibilities we have as citizens of our different domains.

Cut loose or perish

I am sorry that Ashli foolishly and needlessly lost her life in the pursuit of an alternative reality that had no evidential bearing of truth even in the broadest sense if there is an afterlife where an account is required of our deeds, anyone would hate to be in her shoes, it almost qualifies for a Darwin Awards citation. If you lose your life hitching your wagon to Donald J. Trump, you should be entered for that award and it is likely Herman Cain is celebrating his somewhere in the Great Beyond.

It is a salutary lesson, regardless of what you are asked to believe, take time to engage your head and do not be so closely hitched to anyone that you cannot cut loose when they are careering into a ditch.

Thought Picnic: Of Charity and Sacrifice

Welcome to the temple

Back at church today, one was caught between the enduring and the sacrifice, that being the story of Christ and the seemingly ordinary story of two men as depicted on plaques and memorial stones in the church.

There is much to be said of both the magnificence and simplicity of Manchester Cathedral (Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George in Manchester), its very accessible and welcoming nave and a message easy to the ear, the hearing and the soul.

In the traditional church calendar, today marked the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, the hymns, the readings and the sermon followed this theme.

Accommodation and ceremony

The pamphlet contained everything, this time, not much of a fidget to follow the service. At Communion the openness of fellowship is most evident because members of all Christian Churches are invited to receive Communion, yet you can also step forward to just receive a blessing. By informing a steward before the service, you can also receive a gluten-free communion wafer.

This time we did go High Church with incense at the altar, something the pamphlet informed us about, the pomp and ceremony at church can be quite engaging just as it is spiritual, I would suppose anytime I am in Manchester I would be revisiting my Anglican heritage and roots.

Enduring charity

Humphrey Booth (d. 1635) was a wealthy merchant whose charitable activities are recorded on plaque in the church, but more significantly is that what he bequeathed to Manchester that helped in restoring the church in the aftermath of the Manchester explosion of the 15^th of June 1996. I was in Manchester on that day, just 10 yards from where shards of glass fell on someone not long after I heard a loud bang and wondered until it occurred to me that it was a bomb.

Had he expended his means on ostentatious and hedonistic living, it is unlikely that 366 years after his death any of his substance would have been so remembered and recorded in posterity as I have been able to observe.

More on Humphrey Booth’s legacy – The Humphrey Booth Resource Centre.

Recognised piety

John Bradford (c. 1510 - 1555) of indeterminate birth date is memorialised with a plaque as a scholar, a reformer, a fearless preacher, a prebendary of St Paul’s Cathedral and was burnt at the stake for heresy. The heresy being as a Protestant he refused to revert to the Catholic faith that Mary Tudor (Bloody Mary) tried to restore in the land.

English church history has it that the government feared the consequences of putting John Bradford to death, more significantly, the crowds did protest his burning at the stake.

Honour of sacrifice

What caught my eye about his plaque was not that he was a son of Manchester and of great repute to be recognised as learned and significantly opposed to the direction of the royal court but that his last words were, “Oh, What am I Lord, that thou shouldest thus magnify me?”

When I look at traditional Christianity and what passes for it today, especially amongst the leadership, one can only be moved by the stories of charity and sacrifice, charity that endures for centuries and sacrifice where those who suffer by reason of their faith see their suffering in the light of their innocence still count it great honour to so treated for their profession.

One must stop and think, beyond which the search for Good Samaritan humanity that touches people continues in the church and on the streets.

Farfour free to burn - II - Poor translation?

An anonymous lengthy visit

An anonymous and hence invisible person albeit from Colorado, USA left a comment on my blog pertaining to Farfour free to burn where presumably a child had offered herself as a martyr to annihilate the Jews.

I am no Arabic scholar and I have no knowledge of the language apart from the numbers which I learnt in a thick Yoruba accent from Keu (Madrassa) students in Nigeria.

Apparently, it appears most of the conversation reported might have been lost in translation and thereby we have ended up with a story a lot worse than what was portrayed.

It however then begs the question why the Minister of Information in the Palestinian government asked for the show to be discontinued, extracted a promise to present a different format and roundly condemned the content of the parts that were broadcast.

Other respectable Palestinian broadcasters also expressed displeasure at the content.

In fact, the commentator portends that Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) an organisation based in Washington D.C. which is supposed to bridge the language gap between the West and the Middle-East had committed egregious atrocities in translation which could be deliberate with the view to excite negative review.

Being one who would always bring to the fore any comment that requires airing to bring balance to the topics I introduce, I publish here the full text of the comment left by Anonymous of Colorado – (I know where all comments come from).

If I have erred, I apologise, not meaning to cause offence to anyone, only to highlight issues of concern.

The comments

I would like to point out what can only be called an egregious mistranslation on the part of MEMRI with respect to the words of one of the children who were featured as a caller on the show this story reports on.

I call it that and not simply a mistake, because a MEMRI spokesperson appeared on CNN to confirm his organization standing by its translation "word for word" and "according to the syntax" even though it is easy for an organization that employs Arabic translators to actually see how wrong the translations that were produced at first are.

The transcript claims that "Sanabel", the little girl caller of the show, responds with "I will shoot" to the host's question "Sanabel, what will you do for the sake of the Al-Aqsa Mosque?"

As a matter of fact, and as can be seen in the video, it is the clown in the ridiculous Mickey Mouse like suit that says that and even makes the gesture of carrying a weapon.

The little girl Sanabel does however respond, but MEMRI omits her response. The little girl actually said in Arabic "bedi arsem soora", which means "I will draw a picture."

So this girl says she wants to draw a picture, and MEMRI transforms that to "I will shoot."

The second example is the most outrageous one, where MEMRI translates the little girl Sanabel's response to the question "we got that, what else?" as saying "We will annihilate the Jews." This is outrageously wrong and completely invented.

The girl can be clearly heard saying in Arabic "betokhoona el yahood", which means "the Jews shoot us."

The word "betokh-oo-na" can be broken down part by part and explained easily as follows:

betokh: the verb "shoots"

oo: the 3rd person plural subject pronoun meaning "they". It becomes "they shoot".

na: the 1st person plural object pronoun meaning "we". It becomes "they shoot us"

Having pointed that out, what the producers of this show are doing is morally outrageous. Instead of giving their children viewers the joy of watching child TV characters and enjoying that aspect of childhood, they are depriving them of that just as the Israeli occupation is depriving them from other aspects of normal childhood development. Both are equally wrong here.

Farfour free to burn

The future in unspeakable words

A children's television programme was banned yesterday by the Palestinian government when it appeared that a Mickey Mouse-like character called Farfour (butterfly) was indoctrinating kids with jihadist talk.

One child phoned in with these words, "I will shoot, we will annihilate the Jews ... I will commit martyrdom."

It is very much like having Tinky Winky the tellitubby prancing over the hill with handbag in one hand and Kalashnikov in the other shouting murderous obscenities.

It is a despicable misuse of the television medium and it should draw condemnation from any reasonable member of the human race as Hamas should and must cover their faces with shame.

The solution is a free Palestine

Now, we should not forget what gives rise to such venomous indoctrination of children in Palestine, it is the seething bitterness of the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the disillusioned and the desperate who see no progress in general terms to self-determination where a land and country called Palestine would be theirs devoid of occupiers and oppression.

The condemnation of this programme should also go in hand with a redoubling of efforts to reach a settlement between Israel and Palestine which is the nucleus and between the Arabs and the Jews which constitutes the people of the Middle-East.

You cannot have a monster and then starve it in the midst of plenty of food to keep it going, just as you cannot completely nip this kind of stuff in the bud without dealing with the causative issues.