My Monday

The travelling circus today hit Berwick beach. When we got there the tide was about quarter full which gave plenty of sand space for running around. Stormy seas have brought ashore vast quantities of tree branches, twigs and seaweed roots. Normally we have to scratch about to find things to throw for retrieve but today the place looked like God’s version of IKEA. Sable found a new trick – Lord knows from where or why she dreamt this one up. Floppy things like seaweed routinely get taken into the edge of the sea and chewed to small pieces. Today was a variant. Any long or odd shape stick was taken to the sand dunes and torn into bits. Why some things to one place and others to another I don’t know. Oh well – it all counts as exercise and it is fun for both of us.

I chanced upon some documents released by the US Govt related to the Guantanmo Bay saga. They had been redacted for security reasons but still told a weird (to me) story. The first page was something like a convening order appointing someone as head of a review panel, On this page was section requiring decision as to whether subject was a terrorist/Al Queda. The only other attachment in most cases was a written report from someone whose details had been blanked out. It seemed as if this was a pro-forma sort of document as they all followed exactly the same style. There would be a small précis as to how the prisoner came to be in custody. ‘Arrested in Pakistan by Pakistan Forces’ is an example of how severely short the précis was. In all those I saw the third paragraph was ‘Member of Al Queda’.

That was it. Done and dusted. The president of the board might invite the accused to ask questions or make statements. These consisted of denials. In one instance, the guy produced a letter from his brother which he said went towards proving he was a good man. Letter was along lines of ‘wife sends her love, daughter sends her love, we believe that Allah the Merciful will find you a good man who would not do any harm’ We Westerners can all see it was worth jack shit but the presentation indicates to me that the prisoner had no idea how justice works and had not had the benefit of any legal advice. These documents will find their way into the greater Arab world and be perfect ammunition for anti-Western groups. They will grow just like little Jack’s beanstalk seeds. I cannot decide whether it is ignorance or arrogance on the part of the USA. And it is not as if they are dealing with a few people from Alan Clarke’s Bongo Bongo Land. The Muslim world was famous for its legal systems prior to perversion by such as Saddam and other dictators.

Scotland leads the World – Pt II. Turns out that quite a considerable number of Scots girls under 13 are being prescribed birth control pills. Given that the age of consent here is 13 (don’t all rush lads) this action is illegal. I can understand why there may be reluctance on the part of the doctors to blow the whistle on their requesters but whatever happened to ‘No’? Whilst any penetrative sex under 13 is reprehensible, it could be that the girls are victims of sexual abuse within their wider family circle. I cannot even relate this to anything I might have experienced when a young teenager. It would have seemed as remote as ‘One giant step for Mankind’ on the TV. Whilst there may have been curiosity, I think that few children of 12 or 13 knew what happened after one got one’s hand on her knee. As they say in chat rooms – Your Mileage May Vary.