When you are walking in the wrong direction, the smart thing to do would be to stop, evaluate where you are heading, and change course if necessary.
To continue walking in the wrong direction is not progress, but idiocy.
For almost half a century we have confused the two, purposefully striding down a street that leads to a destination nobody wants to reach.
Roughly 30-months ago I started this blog.
Thousands of hours and 130+ posts later, I think that it has come to its natural conclusion.
What do Jose Mourinho, ancient artefacts, and tourism have in common?
At first glance, not much, but on investigation we find that they all play a role in the continuous, if somewhat confused, campaign of propaganda by the Syrian regime leader Bashar al-Assad.
A story that emerged recently, that immediately jumped out at me as somewhat strange, was the news that Jose Mourinho – of Porto, Chelsea, Inter Milan, and Real Madrid fame – had been targeted as the next manager for the Syrian football team.
Not one to shy away from controversy, Mourinho was said to be “honoured” at the approach, but ultimately rejected the job offer.
And whilst the audacious bid to land the “special one” came as a shock, in reality, we should not be too surprised when we see this move in the wider context of Assad’s propaganda machine.
KC. Bill. Caroline. Gareth. Simon.
These are the names of just five of the citizens that Brighton and Hove have lost in the recent months.
They had been calling the streets and the shop doorways their homes, but like more than 50 other homeless people in the last three years, they have been killed by the neglect of the local council and central government.
In an interview with The Argus in January of this year, Dr Tim Worthley, who works from the Brighton Homeless Healthcare centre in Morley Street, said that a “perfect storm” of cuts and rising living costs will claim even more lives.
At present, one homeless person is dying every two weeks in Brighton and Hove. These are deaths that are entirely preventable, but are continuing to occur.
Whilst the world’s major powers collectively pat themselves on the back for brokering a ceasefire in Syria, they fail to notice that the war, though diluted in its violence, is yet to stop.
Despite the widely reported truce between Regime forces and those opposed to Bashar al-Assad, the death toll continues to rise in Syria. The oft-quoted figure of 250,000 dead has sat unchanged for at least 18-months and is in all likelihood so far from the truth that it should be ignored outright.
Since the ceasefire has come into force, the monthly casualties have dropped substantially, but soldiers, and more worryingly, civilians continue to die en masse.
