Rivers of Life

Victoria Falls

Seas blue to clouds dark grey,
Skies clear to dull rainy day,
Gentle breeze to angry wind blowing,
Cloudy day to starry night glowing,
Tiny seeds to mighty trees growing,
Trickles of water, to raging rivers flowing,
From snow covered mountains, to the waiting sea,
The rivers of life evaporate silently.

Fallujah and all that

Having advertised the coalition forces intent to attack the insurgents in Fallujah for weeks in advance as well as the re-deployment of the British Blackwatch brigade to cut off escape routes, why am I surprised that the leaders of the insurgents left in their Mercedes cars before the attack took place? Well actually I am not surprised at all and I doubt very much anyone else is either. What a stupid way to fight a stupid war which like most wars could have been avoided if their were any integrity at all, in the world institutions that are supposed to be the guardians of international law and human rights.

Until international law is applied to all nations equally and fairly, until corrupt and evil governments are excluded from all international bodies including the U.N. and until the assets of these governments and their leaders are seized and sanctions including the right to travel are implemented, their will never be any alternative to military conflict. No country, be it the USA, China, Britain, France, Iraq or Zimbabwe can stand alone against the rest of the world. War is avoidable but only if we create a system that all but makes it impossible for corrupt governance to survive let alone thrive. The U.N. is the embodiement of all that is wrong with our world institutions. Its charter is badly flawed. It is incompetent and it is itself corrupt.

In the meantime the innocent in Fallujah are the latest victims as are the so called martyrs. Whilst the leaders escaped, their minions were left to die in the rubble. Strange how it is that the bigwigs seem reticent to join the martyrs and lay claim to their heavenly virgins. It must be a painful sacrifice for them, having to delay their entry into paradise whilst encouraging others to go before them. Their sense of duty would be most admirable, if one believed any of this nonsense at all.

These views may seem cynical but I do feel enormous sorrow for those who have died believing that the Almighty awaits in heaven with open arms to welcome those who destroy the life he has created. It sickens me to my stomach that anyone could be so gullible in the 21st century.

Come on people wake up. You are giving your lives for nothing other than to satisfy the thirst for power of ambitious and corrupt men. To live is the greatest reward of all and to love is the greatest gift. Live to see your children and your grand children. Live so that your children may live and their children after them. That is the true wish of Allah/God. Nothing else makes any sense at all.

Bush Shakes Status Quo

I agree with Ian Duncan Smith, (ex. Conservative Party leader) that Europe has to now make a rapprochement towards George Bush and not the other way around. Bush's position has strengthened. He has acted in the war against terrorism while the rest of the world dillied and dallied. They have been left behind and had it been left to the French, Germans, Russians et al, the U.N. would still be sitting on its hands and Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

Sometimes the world needs to be shaken out of its lethargy and moved on. Given the intractable problems in the Middle East over the last three or four decades, it was time. I do not condemn Bush or America for going into Iraq. I condemn the French, Germans, Russians and the rest of the world for not having the wisdom, will or the courage to back the USA and do what needed to be done. It is imperative that the international community acts as one in the face of the threat posed by renegade regimes and sends a clear message that the civilised world will no longer continue tolerating the intolerable. In this solemn and moral duty, the French, Germans, Russians and others failed abysmally.

Let's face it. Does anyone seriously believe that Saddam Hussein would suddenly transform himself into a benevolent, peace loving democrat, just because we were nice to him? Does anyone believe that Iran and North Korea are going to give up their nuclear weapons programs because the UN passes a few more resolutions or that Robert Mugabe will walk off quietly into the sunset because we impose a few porous trade sanctions against Zimbabwe? The world needed a Bush at this time and we got one.

The World has always needed leadership and sadly the UN does not and is incapable of providing it. America has sent a clear signal that unless it gets its act together it really will become a redundant irrelevance. It must be reformed to exclude brutal, corrupt governments from membership. It is totally unacceptable in a supposedly civilised world, that barbaric dictators like Saddam Hussein and Robert Mugabe, should have their governments legitimised by and through membership of world organisations, such as the U.N.

The world needed shaking up. It needed a man like President Bush to catalyse change. It will be painful as change often is but it is necessary. If he and the rest of the world stand firm, we will come out the other side of the storm to a brighter future; as long that is, that he and the rest of the World also tackle the problems of poverty and injustice that go hand in hand with terrorism.

The Bush/Kerry Nightmare

Having watched countless hours of coverage on the American Presidential campaign, including the televised debates, I have come to the conclusion that I am really none the wiser. I feel a strong sense of anticlimax, and frustration, of being let down somehow. Although I am not an American. I was, and am nevertheless, deeply interested in the political process not to mention machinations, on the other side of the Atlantic. I have an awareness that what happens in America has some impact on me and mine and the rest of the World and therefore it behoves me to inform myself. And if what America does impacts on my life, then I feel I have a right to express my views, even if I do not have a vote. What I am less sure about however, is whether this perception of America’s impact on my life and those of people round the globe is real or illusionary. Let me try to explain.

I am sure what happens in China matters but the fact is, I simply don’t know what China is up to, so I am not touched by it in the same way. Ignorance is bliss, so to speak. I have no emotions about what is going on in China because there is little or no catalyst to spark those emotions. As far as the British media is concerned nothing is happening in China that matters to us. We do know that the Chinese economy is growing at a phenomenal rate and that they are consuming an ever greater proportion of the world’s resources. This must have an impact on my life. As the price of fuel soars along with the cost of steel, aluminium, copper, diamonds and much else besides, I become poorer and the balance of economic power shifts away from the west to the east. However, I only know this because I read the financial press. If it were left to the editors of television current affairs programs and the national press, I would barely know where China is let alone what is going on there. As far as the general media is concerned, China is not a news item. I also know that China’s human rights record is less than perfect but without substantive stories and horrific images of prisoner abuse, my mind is concentrated instead on the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American and British troops which our press seems to revel in publishing.

Whilst I am looking at these pictures, I am led to overlook or forget that the Iraqis have brutally tortured their fellow citizens for decades and even centuries. Instead, my attention and subsequent vitriol is focused on the unacceptable behaviour of some American and British troops, rather than the heinous crimes of others elsewhere. In the cold light of day though, I know this is an extremely biased and unbalanced view of events and one I know to be deeply flawed. It puts me in mind of that journalistic expression that one should never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

So, whilst the world’s attention has largely been focused on Iraq and the events that led up to Gulf War II, it is unsurprising that we should get the feeling, that America has a deep and pervasive influence on our lives. Events in our own countries appear almost as by lines in our national media and this has been going on now for more than two years. With the media scrutinising and highlighting every move, car bombing, kidnapping, political and social impact of the war in Iraq, so our guilt, anger, angst and psychological temperature is driven up by the media like mercury in a thermometer.

It’s as if the rest of the world barely existed. People continue to die by the tens of thousands in Sudan, Zimbabwe, and the Congo, almost without comment. Corruption and torture continue unabated in many countries, unseen, forgotten and ignored. Corrupt and despotic regimes still sit, legitimised as equals in the United Nations and nobody dares or cares to challenge this paradoxical flaw at the heart of the body politic that is the guardian of international law. Nobody protests in Britain or America, Germany or France, China or Russia on behalf of oppressed peoples living under despotic regimes but the cameras will be quick to televise the demonstrations against Bush and Blair who at least tried to do something. For thirty years or more the entire world including Iraq’s neighbours did not lift a finger, demonstrate or burn a flag in protest at the suffering of the Iraqi people under Saddam Hussein and the silent complicity of his neighbours in that suffering. It was a case of hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. That which is left unsaid cannot harm nor influence us nor be televised.

Returning to the Presidential elections neither candidate demonstrated to me that they had a better vision for the world. Neither spoke of fundamental shifts from the stale and sterile politics of the last 200 years. Instead they spun stories, distorted figures, and spent millions of dollars creating false illusions about the lack of qualities and leadership abilities of each other. This was a bitter, destructive, sterile campaign that had little to do with making a better world and everything to do with maintaining the status quo. This was a dirty, grubby incestuous struggle for power played by the rich and the powerful above the heads of the poor, the abused and the disenfranchised. This was an election about power and who holds it. It had little to do with power of the people, by the people for the people. This was an election singularly lacking in any concrete vision as to how to take the world forward to a better place. This was an election about nightmares rather than dreams. More is the pity.

The Neo-Conservative Conspiracy

The Neo-Conservative conspiracy is built on the premise that it is essential to create a common enemy to ensure social adhesion and subjugation to the authority of the state. This is the lie on which American democracy and to some extent ours, is now founded. The notion that the Soviet Union was the embodiment of evil and the United States the defender of good was dreamed up by a small band of self chosen elite who saw the growth of individualism in the early 60s as a threat to the concept of an ordered society and to the authority of the state.

Like any dictator worth his or her salt, this self selected elite made up of people like Strauss, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others alledgedly created an illusion, a lie, to achieve their goal, notably that the U.S. was under threat from the USSR; something the CIA itself had no evidence to support and constantly refuted. It was not until Casey, who had been influenced by the Neo-Conservatives, took over as the CIA Chief that this doctrine apparently became perceived wisdom. The illusion that the USSR was a threat became the perceived truth and formed the central plank of American foreign policy to the end of what appears to have been a Neo-Conservative initiated Cold War.

This is the synopsis of a new thoroughly researched television documentary series launched tonight on BBC2, called "The Power Of Nightmares" which includes interviews with some of the major players supposedly responsible for initiating the Neo-Conservative agenda. I doubt it will ever be seen in America but Americans need to see it, if only to make up their own minds.

Nevertheless, the program lends support to the idea that we have long been played like puppets on strings and that democracy is gradually being whittled away by those who hold and jealously guard power. The remainder of the series will make for fascinating watching and should be compulsory viewing for anyone concerned about the future of our democracy and freedoms.

We need a sharp wake up call. We are all as brainwashed as any North Korean. Like the North Koreans, we are constantly being fed illusions. The only difference is the manner and nature of the methods used but the objective is the same, mind control. The major difference is that Western methods of brainwashing use more modern and sophisticated tools. In North Korea it is more simple. The people are starved of all information other than that which the state chooses to give. In the West we are inundated with information from politicians, the media and the marketing men, much of it spun to obtain the desired reaction from the masses. The nature of the spin differs only in degree depending on whether it is initiated by the left or right. Irrespective the messages being transmitted are for the most part a distortion of the truth. The USSR is evil. America is the beacon of goodness.

If you believe the Hollywood version of history, America won two world wars on its own and according to the marketing men junk food and fizzy drinks are desirable and harmless. I could go on and on but the fact is that very little of the information we are fed is the whole truth. We are fed illusions spun to be perceived as the truth, by those who hold the reigns of power and who will do almost anything to maintain their status quo. Self evidently, this has very little to do with democracy and everything to do with the exercise and maintenance of power, by a self elected elite. What chance does an ordinary citizen with little or no wealth have of breaking into this club. It is clear to anyone who has observes the world that money is the key to power. Those without substantial wealth have little or no hope of ever becoming President of The United States or Prime Minister of Britain.

Communists are not bad people because they are communist, anymore than Americans are good because they are democrats but this is the illusion we have been fed. America did not win World War II alone as Hollywood would have us believe. In fact America has never won a war on its own, not even the War of Independence where the French were their allies. America lost the Vietnam War and was unable to subdue a renegade war lord in Somalia. Fifty percent of the troops that landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day were British. Had Britain not held out , albeit with the logistical support of the U.S., there would never have been a D-Day landing because there would have been nowhere from which to launch the invasion. The truth is that it took the combined efforts of many nations to overcome Nazi Germany.

America has never dominated the world nor ever could. We need look no further than Germany, Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq to know that it is simply a pipe dream. It's no more possible for America than it is for Bin Laden, China or India. World domination is an illusion built up by the Neo-Conservatives. America won the Cold War, ergo we are the world's only remaining super power. It may have super power but it is no match for the rest of the world. It is not even capable of imposing its will on the Middle East let alone Europe, China and India. No, America is not a self contained planet on Earth. It is just an island amongst others and it needs the rest of the world as much as the rest of the world needs it. We are all interdependent. We all need each other. That is the real truth.

Likewise, the media no longer simply reports the news. It opines on the news and even makes the news. They dictate what we will see, what we will read and what we should think. The media no longer give us thoughtful drama or unbiased documentaries. They give us opinions. They feed the masses a constant drip of so called reality TV, that is so far removed from reality, it is pure fantasy. Newspapers bow at the altar of celebrity which they themselves have created and fill their pages with endless kiss and tell tales of drivelling tattle to occupy our dumbed down, empty little heads. More people know the name of the winner of Big Brother than the name of the Opposition party leaders. Why? What does that say about them, us and our society in general? Who is behind this drive towards intellectual bankruptcy and why? The truth is that the media is in the hands of the rich and the powerful. It is there to serve its own agenda and to make money by concentrating on the banal, the sensational, the wicked. It chooses to appeal to the baser instincts of humanity rather than serve as a tool of enlightenment. In truth we cannot trust the media and we all know it, but do they or are they the victims now of their own deceptions?

And no, junk food and fizzy drinks are not desirable or healthy. They are bad for us. They make us fat, raise our cholesterol levels and give us heart attacks. Nevertheless, somebody, lots of people actually, have made massive fortunes by selling a susceptible public an illusion of something quite different. If this is not mass brainwashing, what is? And let us not even begin to talk about the tobacco or drug industries or we will be here for ever. Suffice it to say we have been sold hogwash and more worryingly we fell for it, hook line and sinker. So how hard can it be to manipulate minds? Its easy or at least that's what the mind benders believe.

However, like all castles built on sand, lies and damn lies eventually succumb to the tide of truth. The truth cannot hide forever from the logic of reason. That is why the Neo-Conservative conspiracy is doomed to the same fate as the communist conspiracy and every other conspiracy built on deception. When will all the would be comptrollers, realise that social adhesion, respect for authority and the building of a common destiny never has and never can be built on lies, deceit and illusions. When will they realise that real good can only prevail if truth and integrity prevail and nothing worth a pittance will ever come from a philosophy, of spin, half truths and outright deceit. Or could it be that the comptrollers are not really interested in real good but only what they perceive is "good" for them?

They are deceiving themselves however. Fundamental truths are indestructible. They are written into the code of life itself and are there for all who have eyes, to see. Those of us who do see through the mirages, understand whilst we are all different, we are nevertheless all part of a single humanity. We know it is only possible to bring nations and cultures together by building bridges, not destroying them. We know that the respect of people for their governments can only be obtained by governments who behave and act with integrity and honesty. Political hypocrisy and double standards will never engender anything but a loss of respect for its practioners. Far from creating orderly societies, such policies can only fuel anger, frustration and a loss of faith in authority, thus engendering the collapse of social adhesion rather than its consolidation. A truth built on a lie will always be a lie. It is a contradiction in terms that will not stand the light of day or the test of time.

Can You imagine?

Can you imagine,
The screams of a mother on a train,
Separated from her child calling her name,
Herded away and never seen again,
Her child, still screaming out her name?

Can you imagine,
Your husband shot dead,
A pool of blood by the bed,
Your brother before you slain,
A child, still screaming in pain?

Can you imagine,
The cries of a daughter’s rape,
Pleading for mercy with no escape,
Fighting for her honour in vain,
Childhood lost in lust and pain?

How can we possibly understand,
Those of us who live in this land,
Where justice reigns and men are free,
Where hunger never touches thee?
No fear have we of the dictator’s hand,
For he lives far away from England.

Pensions, Savings and Investment

Sent: 12/10/2004 16:42


It was Chancellor Brown who raided the pension funds helping the treasury to £5 billion per year of savers money! This along with other Brownite polices undermined the confidence of savers and investors alike and destroyed the credibility of pension funds. As a result British companies have been forced to double contributions to occupational pension schemes to £37 billion per year since Labour came to power.

The CBI DG, Mr. Digby Jones complains that employers have been wrongly cast as the villains of the pensions piece. He says much of the blame for the crisis lies with the decision to abolish the dividend tax credit in 1997 costing pension funds £5 billion a year, a move he describes as "a grave error".

This coupled with regulations obliging pension fund holders to sell shares to maintain a pre-determined cash reserve to investment ratio has impacted negatively on the stock market. This has led to a ludicrous catch 22 scenario where on a falling market pension fund holders are required to sell more shares to maintain the ratio between cash reserves and investments which drives the market down further; requiring fund managers to sell yet more shares which drives the market down still further, ad infinitum. This is a classic case of bureaucrats meddling in affairs of which they have little or no acumen or experience. There must be a better way of maintaining the financial integrity of pension funds than this!

It is not surprising therefore that the FTSE 100 has lagged well behind other international stock market indices since Labour came into power, largely because pension fund holders have been divesting themselves of equities. This is catastrophic for pensions, savings and investment, a disaster already well into the making.

Worse still, instead of admitting this gravest of mistakes, Mr. Brown prefers to blame us for his monumental error of judgment. Instead of righting the wrong he wants us to make up for his shortsightedness by making us work longer and forcing us to save what we do not have, thus only adding insult to injury.

Mr. Brown does not tell us, however, how much he thinks we will have to save over a lifetime to ensure a comfortable retirement. With interest rates at 3-5%, every £100,000 saved will yield a paltry income of £3000 - £5000 per year, barely enough to run a motor car let alone pay for lighting, heating, phone bills, clothing, insurance and many other essentials. Unless we have saved half a million pounds, we can forget about holidays in the sun. Perhaps Mr. Brown can explain how a middle- manager with a student loan and a mortgage can save £500,000 for retirement over his or her working life when interest on savings is so low, equities are depressed and house prices are falling? Even more to the point how do the millions on minimum wages save for their old age when they cannot even afford to rent their own accommodation let alone take on a mortgage, even with low interest rates? No Mr. Brown, the sums do not add up. This is cloud cuckoo land.

This must surely offer political hay for opposition parties and yet they have failed abysmally to expose in any meaningful way, this monumental error of judgment by Mr. Brown, one that so gravely puts at risk the futures of millions of hard working British citizens? Unless somebody comes up with policies to reverse the damage done by Mr. Brown to our savings and our stock market, we are headed for the mother of all busts. Mr. Brown's famous boast that thanks to him we have left behind the bad old days of boom and bust will look very shallow and hollow then.

However, the Chancellor's poison could and should be the Conservative's meat. They are already in the last chance saloon. If they fail to win this election and Mr. Blair delivers the long promised reforms and improvements in public services (by no means certain) as well as a stablised Iraq in his third term, it will be the end of the Conservative Party. They have to win the next election or risk facing extinction. Unlike many commentators, I believe the good news for them is that it is extremely winnable but only if they tackle the issues that matter to ordinary people with far more dynamism and imagination than they have hitherto shown.

Pensions, savings and investment is one of many areas where they could make a real impact on voters minds, provided they do their home work and convey their message in an unequivocal manner and in a way that is easily comprehensible to the general public. They must go after this government and expose the weaknesses in its policies with the same tenacity as a bulldog in pursuit of a juicy bone. If there was ever an opportunity to show the long term damage of Labour's policies, the destruction of savings and investment is as juicy a bone as any Conservative bulldog could possibly want. More to the point, we want our savings and investment opportunities back. We want our future back.

Jehova’s Map

In Jehova’s map each road is signed
You should study it well,
Otherwise t'is the Devil's Den you'll find,
On the roads to Hell.
There are many roads to many places,
In Jehova's map you'll find,
Many familiar faces,
Upon Satan's roads unlined.

Avoid the road to Purgatory,
Via Avarice and Greed,
Through to Bigotry
A road you should heed.
Beyond lies Lust,
Through the Valley of Sin,
Home of the unjust,
Don't go in.

Better you take the highway,
That leads through the Valley Of Peace,
Than the low way,
To the gambling dens of Fleece.
Follow the signs to Happiness,
And the City of Love,
Not the road to Emptiness,
Choose the road above.

I have travelled to Satan’s cave,
But found no meaning there,
No feeling I should save,
That I would want to share,
To touch my heart and mind,
Or answer heartfelt prayer.
Be not fooled by the Devil’s kind.
Stay away from Satan’s lair.

Avoid the motorways to Hate,
And the Fields of Destruction.
Take the road to Pearly Gate,
Where Hope is under construction.
Remember if you happen to stray,
By Satan’s roads you are not bound.
You can always turn and walk away,
And Evil walk around.

Pass the junction to Temptation,
For no sake but your own.
Choose carefully your destination,
On Jehova’s map all shown.
Make the wrong connection,
And you’ll miss the Pearly Gates,
That lead to Resurrection,
And who knows what other fates.

Postscript:

There are many destinies mapped out in the universal plan. We travel on many paths to our eventual destiny. The first path we travel is that which our parents are already on when we are born and on which we remain until such time as we are mentally and physically able to make independent choices. The many paths of destiny that have been laid out for us, crisscross each other like cross roads on a gigantic map. Each time we reach one of these crossroads, we have choices to make which influence the eventual outcome of our journey. At each crossroads, the path we are travelling is affected by the positive or negative flow of those we traverse which has a correspondingly negative or positive impact on our own destiny. At any such point we are vulnerable to the traffic flow. Sometimes our journey may tragically be shortened there and then by events out of our control. If we make the right choices and the dice rolls for us , we may continue our journey either in the same direction or choose another. This is what people call fate but it is in all probability part of the great plan, the learning curve towards enlightenment. Thus our control over our own destiny is at the very least tenuous.

Logically our individual destinies cannot be anything but inextricably linked to the collective journey upon which humankind is embarked Politicians in Israel and Palestine and all over the world where nations and cultures are in conflict, would do well to remember that the destiny of nations as well as individuals are therefore totally interdependent. No man or nation is an island. Individual well being is never assured if collective well being is suppressed denied or even simply ignored. This realisation is the only hope we have of building a world where we do not live in constant fear and threat from each other. We must build bridges not destroy them.

Time for Iraq to stand up and be counted

Has the time come for the Iraqi people to stand up and be counted? They cannot go on blaming the coalition for the massacre of their own citizens by other Iraqi and Arab groups. The coalition has freed them from the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein. In so doing it has presented the Iraqi people with a once in lifetime opportunity to put their suffering behind them and to have a say in the way their country is governed. They now have a chance to prosper in peace, if they want it and they will never have a better one; thanks to the sacrifice, not of their fellow Arab nations but that of the western coalition.

Iraqis must now ask themselves, why should American, British, Polish, Italian, Japanese and others continue to risk their lives for people who do nothing to help themselves and show nothing but hostility, to those who fight to bring them freedom and democracy? It is time the Iraqis and the Arab nations as a whole, took a hard look at themselves and the responsibility they bear, for having stood aside while Saddam Hussein murdered and tortured his own people. Had their fellow neighbors, shown any sense of duty or care for their Iraqi brothers when Saddam Hussein was in power, the Americans would have had no cause or excuse to launch either Gulf War I or II and they would not now, be in Baghdad or anywhere else in Iraq.

We are where we are because neither the Arab nations nor the West have acted from a foundation based on civilised principle, i.e. doing what is right rather than what is expedient, over the last thirty years. The compromise of good practice and sound principles in international affairs has jeapordised the outcome of events. We must wake up and understand that one can never attain the right solution by applying the wrong equation, to any problem. The right outcome can never nor will ever be achieved by compromising on what we know to be right. Wrong can never be right. This is the lesson the international community must take on board in the execution of national and international politics.

It is time to admit that the United nations can never be an effective arbiter of civilisation or international law whilst it is founded on the ill conceived often corrupted principles that pervade its entire structure. A United Nations that harbours despotic and corrupt member governments within its walls can and never will be anything but partially corrupt. Such a body will never be able to act effectively to protect the innocent from state barbarity. We need not look further than the genocide in Rwanda, the chaos in Zimbabwe, the slaughter in Sudan and the persecution of the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein for over thirty years, to know this to be true.

In the absence of an effective international body responsible for the application of civilised rules of international behavior, countries will inevitably fall back on unilateral action to resolve problems and the world will continue to flounder from catastrophe to catastrophe. Until we understand that the serving of the common interest is the key to self interest, we will go nowhere worth going to.

Now is the time for the Iraqi people to show the world a better way. Their destiny lies not in the hands of the UN or the USA but in their own hands, if they did but realise it. It is what they now do that will determine what course the UN and USA will follow, not the other way around. Say yes to freedom. Say yes to democracy. Say yes to justice and above all say no to terror and the USA will become their client and not their master, their friend and not their enemy.

Refuse and we must bid them goodbye and leave them to their fate, which may be far worse than the suffering inflicted on them by Saddam Hussein. It is up to the Iraqi people. They must understand that we cannot nor will not go on dying for nothing.

Mr. Putin at the crossroads of destiny

So Mr. Putin has decided to use the recent despicable events at Beslan to reinforce his hold on power by appointing regional governors himself, thus denying the people the opportunity to vote for their own representatives; thereby tightening his influence and grip on power. This is the oldest trick in the book, used by despots the world over since the beginning of time. Russia is fast returning to the dark ages of autocratic rule, her fragile democracy dissipating like water from a steaming kettle.

This is not the solution to Russia's problems, nor will it make Russia safer from acts of terrorism. One does not make Russia or any other country better, safer or stronger by diluting democracy. The stifling of democracy can only inhibit the production of ideas and the elements of competition essential to efficiency and innovation. Autocracy asphyxiate initiative. It turns people into automatons and inhibits expression and invention. These fundamental elements of freedom are what have made the United States and Western Europe so successful and so vibrant.

The centralization of power cannot protect Russia from terrorism but better public awareness, good intelligence, shared intelligence and well trained efficient security services can help reduce the risks.

Likewise, centralization cannot eliminate corruption. If anything it may increase it or at least provide greater opportunity for those higher up the ladder of power, once ensconced, to indulge themselves and in so doing spread the corruption outwards as well as downwards to a much greater degree even, than is the case now. The corrupt always depend upon the corruptible.

The only way to reduce corruption is to make those at all levels of power more accountable to the people they represent and this can only be done where democracy and a free press prevails. In young democracies there are always those willing and able to take advantage of a situation to manipulate the people to their own ends but the people learn quickly who they can trust and who is and is not corrupt. It is they, not the state who will root out the corrupt and make the leadership accountable. As a well known British politician once said, "you can fool all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time". What is needed is a strengthening of the foundations of democracy. Weakening these foundations will only weaken Russia in the longer term.

I say this to Mr. Putin. You stand at the crossroads of your own as well as Russia's destiny. You have the opportunity and the choice to serve your country well or badly. You can go down in history as either one of the greatest leaders Russia has ever known or you can be remembered as just another self serving despot, in a long line of self serving despots. That choice and that responsibility lies in your own hands Mr. Putin and I hope, we all hope, you choose wisely.

Is it better to build bridges or destroy them? Is compassion, understanding and collaboration better than vengeance, ignorance and confrontation? Which of these building blocks will build the better world? The answer is surely obvious.