any gripes

Nearly a year ago I purported to get into the habit of venting publicly. I even introduced tags to the blog to make the rants stand out. If you click the corresponding filter, you will find a good dozen posts, not a whole lot for more than ten months, especially as most contain nothing more than an angry thought here or there. The initial idea, in contrast, was to go over the week and highlight the nonsense that had inexorably accumulated. That my rants have been scarce is not owed to a more sensibly spinning world. Rather, I have mellowed with age and grown indifferent to the more pedestrian absurdities of life. Things are a little different tonight – not my age, but the level of inanity in the public discourse. I can't hold on to myself and have to revisit the format as originally planned.

To start from the top, President Obama's counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, expressed the naive wish that Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, the Libyan who was convicted for blowing up Pan Am flight 103 and killing 270 people in the process but freed a year ago under mysterious circumstances by Scottish authorities, should return to prison. Brennan apparently expressed this wish in front of the world press, but he might as well have written a letter to Santa Claus or talked to the Tooth Fairy. What are the chances?

The British government, concerning the same issue, used the lugubrious adjectives of "tasteless, offensive and deeply insensitive", though curiously enough not to describe the actions of said shallow-water Scottish authorities a year ago. No, they warned Libya not to overdo the anniversary celebrations for the terrorist. Maybe the guy shouldn't have gone free in the first place?

What authority do the Scots have, anyway, you might ask, to put a convicted terrorist back into business? This is where it gets very muddy. In short, al-Megrahi claimed to be dying and the authorities (there they go again) thought it would be a nice gesture to let him enjoy the autumn of his life by a pool in sunny Tripoli. I'm not sure if they do that to all of their prisoners or only to top-terrorists. But I would ask for a transfer to Edinburgh, should I ever have to go to jail.

More important than its treatment of prisoners, at least in the context of this post, is the question of what Scotland is politically. To me, it's the land north of England famous for throat-cutting whisky (good) and ear-splitting music (bad). I always thought they were a province of the UK, but some up there think higher of themselves and imagine a glorious nation. They have a parliament whose members have extracted concession of from the Union and returned ridicule. They still send deputies to Westminster, mostly to siphon off the money to survive, which they would be hard-pressed to do on their own. Up to three months ago, the UK was even run by a Scot, believe it or not, but this nonsense is over now.

The United Kingdom is dear to the heart of many English, probably because they like the idea of ruling of Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and equally vilified by many in the provinces. The Scottish are most eager to become independent, though such talk is not often heard down here in the heart of the Union.

That's why it was with so much pleasure that I listened to Any Questions tonight. The show covers all the topics broached above, includes an animated debate about the merits of Scotland as such, and fills the rest of the barely fifty minutes with heated discussion of the other news of the week: A religious community's plan for a cultural center encounters vitriolic opposition; Ummah, the Community of Believers, sits mostly idly as their brethren are swept off their land by an angrily swollen river; and the leaders of two small communities between the desert and the sea agree to meet to bring each other up to speed on why they can't live peacefully together.

You can hear it all here, and I encourage you to do so. It is refreshing.