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Murderers Don’t Execute People. Murderers MURDER People – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 09/01/2015 | 6 comments

Nous sommes tous Charlie

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo atrocity in Paris earlier this week, and amidst all of the horror and the inevitable soul-searching that follows any such tragic event, an old and unwelcome misuse of terminology has reared its ugly head again and – in its own subtle and insidious way – could be set to play its part in undermining the fight against terrorism and mass murder. The word being misused is “execution”. It’s being wheeled out all over the media to refer to the acts of the cowards guilty of these foul crimes – and the danger is that, to some, it might just lend a false air of dignity and gravitas to what is more accurately just another disgusting act of terrorism. cowardice and callous rejection of all that is civilised.

The Charlie Hebdo story is everywhere at the moment, and rightly so. It’s a high-profile atrocity, the terrorists’ answer to the maxim of peaceful people everywhere that “the pen is mightier than the sword”. It is because of this context that it’s so important we get our terminology right, and don’t risk succouring the enemy by portraying its actions in an unrealistic, even flattering, light. If we are to match the pen against the sword with any hope of ultimately winning, then we have to give an appropriate name to the criminal acts we are opposing. This is not merely a matter of semantics, it’s far, far more important. As a first principle, let’s call murder precisely that. Let’s speak of cowardly attacks, let’s talk of helpless and innocent victims. Let’s not use a legal term whose meaning has been perverted far beyond its original application.

The word “execution” in a capital punishment context, refers to application of a death warrant consequent upon judicial proceedings. It is the warrant, properly speaking, that is executed – not the miscreant at the end of the rope. Whether you’re pro or anti the death penalty wherever it might still apply, you are surely aware that it is a culmination of this lengthy legal process. It is not a random killing perpetrated by a random individual or group who have accorded themselves the right to make their own rules and enforce their own penalties, without regard for law, justice or the sanctity of life, and devil take the hindmost. When we use the word “execution” in connection with events like the chilling murders in Paris, we run the very real risk of planting incorrect impressions in uncritical minds. We are in danger of depicting the thugs and terrorists as having some kind of moral or even legal force behind their heinous actions. We must not do this. Murder is murder, and should be scorned and met with horror and outrage. Any language which seems even slightly to suggest that such an action can be mentioned in the same breath as the outcome of due process must be suppressed in the interests of preserving the truth of the matter. Murderers don’t execute people. Murderers murder people.

I was listening to the radio only a little while after the attack, and a BBC Five Live reporter was talking about some video pictures from the scene in Paris, deemed too graphic to broadcast, of “a terrorist executing a policeman.” Wrong! That policeman was not executed. He was murdered, the victim of a cowardly and tawdry act that has nothing to do with civilisation, nothing to do with the judiciary or the forces of law and justice. His family have been deprived of this man, not by a legal warrant, but by a hooded coward, a murderous thug wielding an illegal weapon. That is the fact of the matter. Use of the word “execution” can only give a false, misleading and utterly unhelpful impression.

The pen is mightier than the sword – and words (even cartoons) properly used and artfully aimed, can strike home where an arsenal of missiles might fail to reach. What more graphic proof of that than the Charlie Hebdo massacre, a visceral reaction to the wounding power of high-class satire? Given that, let us not play into the enemy’s hands by dignifying their actions with the wrong words. Let their cowardly attacks be described with scorn, derision and condemnation. Let’s not succour the thugs by appearing to admit some moral compass in their grisly world of terror and intimidation.

May the victims of this cowardly and barbaric attack rest in peace. Aujourd’hui, je suis Charlie. Demain, et dans l’avenir, nous sommes tous Charlie.

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Posted in News, Politics, Religion

Tagged Charlie Hebdo, cowards, execution, France, murder, Paris, religion, terrorism

Boston Marathon Atrocity

Posted on 15/04/2013 | 2 comments

I couldn’t take this in when I first heard. I was at a play rehearsal, and when my mate told me – may the Higher Powers forgive me – I thought he was telling me some sick joke. He said he didn’t joke about things like that and I thought, no, of course you don’t, who does? Who that’s in any way human could make something like this up? Then again, who actually perpetrates a horror like this? But it’s a fact, somebody has most likely planned and compassed the death and maiming of people who were just out to take part in a joyous event, innocent people who have done no harm, random victims of someone’s cowardly determination to inflict pain suffering and death on fellow human beings. It defies comprehension.

I say “most likely” because – as I write – there remains a shred of possibility that this wasn’t a terrorist attack. But it seems almost certain that a terrorist attack it will have been, that yet again shadowy figures have decided to take human life to make some esoteric point.

There’s no point calling these people animals. Animals don’t do this; it’s the sort of uncivilised behaviour confined to – supposedly – the most civilised species on the planet. Only “intelligent”, “cultured”, “civilised” Man does this. Only Man has the tools; only Man has the urge to slaughter his fellow beings on such a gross scale, for reasons that don’t stack up against the primal need to eat and survive. Man is a predator, like so many other animals. But Man alone kills for reasons of sport, culture, ideology. It’s a sickness not shared by other predators, and that means that a tiger or a lion or anything else that kills to eat has a nobility that we sometimes call savage, but is in reality a whole hell of a lot more noble and understandable than the base and repulsive urges that drive members or our species to visit these horrors upon each other. Go figure. Really, we owe the rest of the Animal Kingdom a massive apology for every time any of us has ever called some depraved human killer “an animal”. It’s the most ironically insulting and groundless snub we could deliver to other species who conduct themselves in a far more admirable manner than we “civilised humans” do.

Sorry, I’m rambling on because I’m shocked, disgusted and ashamed. Who knows what we will find out in the next few days as this situation develops, but it seems certain that lives have been lost, and other lives will be changed irrevocably; and no-one affected was given any choice in the matter, nor any chance to escape the fate wished upon them by anonymous cowards.

No cause is worth this. No religion is worth this. Nothing is worth the tiniest fraction of the suffering that has been caused. We need to get over ourselves as a species. We’re all here for a short span only, and nothing is more important than being alive, and making the most of every moment we’re here. For all we know, this is our only existence, at any time in the vast span of Creation; we’ve waited billions of years to be alive, and we’ll be gone after a century, give or take, and then there’ll be billions more years when we’re not here. And yet people regard this rare and precious phenomenon of life so cheaply, so casually, that they presume to deprive others of it, for some pathetic creed or notion that they wish to impose on others, and devil take the hindmost. The arrogance and ignorance of that just beats the hell out of me.

I know I’ll dream tonight about the pictures I’ve seen. I know that I feel guiltily glad it’s someone else torn and tattered, or dead – and not me or anybody I love. I don’t want it to happen to anybody, but Hell, I don’t want it to happen to me or mine. That’s my human selfishness, and I can’t deny it – but how much more selfish do you have to be to actually plot and do something like this? My mind is boggling at that.

I wish the dead peace, the injured the best recovery they can have, the bereaved what comfort and support they can get. And I wish the rescue and medical services the strength and resolve they will need. For those who did it – I wish some sense of perspective so that they can see how awful is the thing they’ve done, instead of living in some cloud-cuckoo mindset where they feel it’s in any way justified. Don’t call them animals. They’re nothing so dignified. They’re the most despicable, wretched kind of human being, and you can’t say worse than that.