The Seventh Commandment

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You shall not commit adultery

First of all we need to be clear about what adultery is. You might think that is easy, but the commandments were written about three thousand years ago and things didn’t mean the same then.

People today tend define it as any act of sexual intercourse outside of marriage or, perhaps a bit more narrowly, any act of sexual intercourse between a married person and someone who is not their spouse.

The ancient Hebrews had a different understanding and limited it to just sexual intercourse between a man and a woman who was married or betrothed. The marital status of the man was irrelevant. A married man was not guilty of “adultery” for having sex with an unmarried woman.

This is because at that time women were little more than property — a slightly higher status than slaves but not full citizens like men. Because women were like property, having sex with a married or betrothed woman was regarded as misuse of someone else’s property. A married man having sex with an unmarried woman was not guilty of such a crime and thus was not committing adultery. If she also wasn’t a virgin, then the man wasn’t guilty of any crime. A man could have sex with slaves any time he liked.

Because adultery was about married or betrothed women, gay sex didn’t count. It was against other laws of Moses, but not the commandments.

Christians now tend to define adultery much more broadly, and as a consequence almost all extramarital sex acts are treated as violations of the Seventh Commandment. Many claim that adultery should include lustful thoughts, lustful words, polygamy, etc. This is justified by the words of Jesus: “You have heard that it was said by them of old time, You shall not commit adultery: But I say to you, That whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart.“ (Matthew 5:27-28). That makes life tough for a bloke and makes it fairly certain that nearly half the human race breaks the rules most days of their life.

Some Abrahamic religions still accept polygamy, so many Moslem men can have up to four wives. Much less need to commit adultery in that situation. Some parts of Shia Islam have the even more convenient concept of mutah or temporary marriage.  The temporary marriage contract is as follows: The woman says: ” I marry myself to you for the specified dowry (mention the amount) and for the specified time period (mention the time period)”. Then the man says: “I accept”.” That’ll be fifty bucks for your half hour luv. OK thanks.

Gordon Brown and Afghanistan

 

It is in matters where lives are daily being lost and placed at risk that we need the greatest political clarity about what we are doing and why.

 

The first thing I want to say is that the removal of the Taliban Government in 2001 was an entirely justified action. The Taliban were hosting Al Quaeda and facilitating their campaign of international terror which had culminated at that time in the murder of 3,000 people in the 9/11 attacks.

 

The criminal Taliban government with all of its disgusting oppression of women, ghastly executions and maimings had come about because of repeated international interference by world powers. There was particular responsibility by the USA and Pakistan and the previous involvement of Russia, but many nations also had a hand in it. None of this excuses or justifies the illegitimate Taliban government and its crimes.

 

Al Quaeda is a criminal organisation responsible for mass murder and terrorism. The claims of Bin Laden and his associates for religious justification are of no worth and provide no justification for their crimes. Mafia claims for the moral authority of their ‘family’ values or Somali pirates attempted justifications of ‘policing’ fishing waters in response to loss of livelihood to international fishing are in a similar league to the propaganda of Islamists. Al Quaeda is organised crime like the Mafia or piracy. It is entirely justified to bring these organised criminals to justice and to take measures to destroy their organisations. By the very nature of the threat, these actions have to be international.

 

Dealing with very dangerous crime originating in another country requires military action, but it is very different from a war. As soon as the language of a ‘war on terrorism’ was invoked by George W Bush the necessary action against Al Quaeda and its supporters was misdirected. In his speech today Gordon Brown has shown that he has not yet managed to disentangle the issues in his mind and his government will continue to fail to set clear objectives in Afghanistan which will result in the unnecessary loss of British and Afghan lives for no purpose.

 

The Karzai Government is deeply corrupt and its pretensions to democracy have been exposed as completely fraudulent. These are matters which should be of great concern to the Afghan people, but they are none of our business. It is not possible to impose functioning political systems or moral values with armies and weapons.

 

It is not our business to stop Afghan farmers growing poppies. I will not go into the stupidity of British drug laws, but heroin use in this country cannot be controlled by trying to reduce production in Afghanistan. The demand for drugs in Britain is a British issue which can only be addressed in Britain.

 

Afghanistan is a multi ethnic place divided by different language, tribal and religious affiliations. For well over a century it has not been effectively ruled by a single government from the centre and there is no likelihood that it will be in the foreseeable future. Whether this problem is resolved by allowing the country to separate into its regional groupings or to form some sort of federal or con-federal relationship is a matter for the Afghan people to work out without outside interference.

 

The immediate problem is obvious. Invading powers have destroyed the military, policing and infrastructure of the country. With immediate withdrawal of the western powers, Karzai’s corrupt state apparatus would probably fall quickly to insurgents. So what is the solution?

 

The coalition forces should immediately stop all non-military activity such as school and road building or the administration of elections. The Karzai government must be told to establish its legitimacy by creating an administration that has public support. That can only be done by negotiating with the people who hold power and influence throughout the country. Some of the people they will have to talk to will be armed and may have been fighting to remove foreign influence from the country. This is not the same as wishing to attack the USA or Britain or having delusions about setting up a worldwide Islamist caliphate.

 

The coalition military should be taken of the streets and withdrawn to defensible bases pending withdrawal. Training of Afghan police and army should be rapidly phased out. If the Afghan government want training for their state forces (and they most certainly need it) such training should be provided by commercial contractors. There are plenty of private companies in the United States, Britain, Russia and elsewhere which are mainly made up of ex military personnel and they would compete for this business.

 

The pursuit of criminals like Bin Laden, Mullah Omar and their associates must continue as must the destruction of terrorist training camps and elimination of the criminal infrastructure. This does not require mass troops on the ground. It can and should be done by increased intelligence work, special forces operations and precision attacks by missiles and pilotless drones on firmly identified terrorist targets.

 

Brown has dithered on most things as Prime Minister and Britain has been too eager to follow bad leads from America. Now is the time for clarity and decisiveness. Recognise that it is a mistake to try to export democracy or western attitudes to Afghanistan and pull out the ground troops rapidly. Re-state our determination to prevent terrorist murder on British streets by eliminating criminal organisations whether they are based in this country or elsewhere.

Decriminalise the Sex Industry

Illegality of most aspects of prostitution results in the brutalisation and exploitation of women as well as people trafficking. No society has ever been able to prevent prostitution and there is no point in trying. Legalisation will enable disease control

Sixteen year olds should be able to vote in elections

We have made long, slow progress towards universal franchise. At each stage there has been resistance. It was said that those who did not own land did not have the responsibility to be able to vote sensibly in elections. Then it was women who could not be trusted to take part in the democratic process. The last stage was that sufficient maturity to cast a vote was conisdered to be eighteen rather than twenty one.

Well, sixteen year olds are considered mature enough to no longer be forced to attend school. They can legally have sex, buy cigarettes and go off to work to pay taxes. As far as I am concerned, that is enough responsibility and assumption of maturity for it to be accompanied by an entitlement to vote for the people who are making these rules. I don’t think this should be a rigid limit for all time. As we have seen, the franchise has been continually extended as democracy has itself matured. We have different layers of government and it seems reasonable that young people should be introduced to the democratic process by having entitlement to vote for town or parish councils at fourteen years of age, for example, and for district and county council elections at fifteen.

 A few countries have extended the franchise to sixteen year olds. It is time for the UK to follow.

Best

 

The Best there ever was

they said.

Good liver.

Bon viveur.

Great talent

on the football pitch.

 

Great lover,

great drinker,

great flirt.

Miss World,

mistakes,

misplaced love.

Missed.

 

United in glory.

Defeated in his cups.

Delivered to death.

It’s for the Best.

 

 

 

Died 13:00 hours GMT 25 November 2005

Sorry to those who have no idea what this is about. It is George Best. Genius footballer died of alcoholic lever disease.

Gilbert Deya Miracle Babies Fraud

 

Deya leads a Christian evangelical group called Gilbert Deya Ministries. Just another crank cult preying on the spiritually needy and bleeding them of their money and devotion except for the ‘miracle babies’.

 

In a cruel twist on all the other religious frauds running their own ego pumping organisations, Deya claims to be able to make infertile women pregnant through prayer. Deya is a Kenyan and all the women who are helped into pregnancy by him have to travel to Kenya where they are presented with their baby.

 

The problem, of course, is that the babies are not theirs. They are shown by DNA analysis to have no connection with the alleged mothers and Deya’s organisation is really stealing Kenyan babies in a cynical crime to convince his followers of his miraculous powers.

 

This is one of the worse examples of how far cult leaders will go to mislead and exploit their followers. The continued claims of miracles by mainstream religions (such as those in the Catholic church who are continuing to make saints on the basis of supposed miracles) allows the continuation of an environment in which the ludicrous, cruel and criminal actions of people like Deya can continue to attract gullible supporters.