Fiddling in Rome while the world burns

One of the more commendable remarks from his royal dissidentness, Prince Charles, was the stated aim that when he becomes king he would like to be considered "Head of Faith(s)" rather than head of the anglican church. Given that many people, especially in times of insecurity, head for the most locally convenient religious subscription in pursuit of faith they have lost in either themselves or their government, such broad-ranging patronage is worthy intent - hopefully maximising integration and tolerence whilst minimising the hatred of rival doctrines. Personally speaking, I'm pretty intolerant of all religions - I have no particular hatred of any one of them but see them as a form of population control that discourages their subscribers from freedom of thought and independent theological pusuit. Most of them are mere remnants of a communication network designed for primitive times and the messages/ideaology they convey no more than a "marketable" bastardisation of their original foundations. The most common characteristic of their legions of followers is hypocrisy - short and simple.

If anything, capitalism and consumerism, with their inherent greed, have become the true new religions anyway. The media is their church. As a consequence, the new age of religious conflict is to a great extent an illusion. The real motivation of today's warriors is, as so often in the past, greed and power. In the Lebanon there remains the traditional quest for "living space" whilst worldwide the shift is towards grabbing the last of the planet's finite resources. As one half of the world worships wealth and material possessions, the other half are enslaved and abused in ways - sometimes obvious and sometimes less so. It is the groundswell amonst this latter dis-enfranchised, often displaced, majority that is the real enemy in the "civilised" West. It has little to do with any religious cause - that is simply the machinery of empowerment for elite on both sides.

The unwillingness of the selected group of global powers that met in Rome yesterday to do anything about the situation in Palestine and the Lebanon appears symptomic of their impotence. I rather think they may be all-too-virile and that their inaction is simply a desire to see the current prologue play out as they prepare the ground for a grand theatre of slaughter to come. If praying is your thing - then pray that I'm wrong!

Later.