War is the uttermost failure of the human of the human spirit in this day and age, is it not? What happens to people in power? Do they just fall prey to someone or something else?

* * *

(Scene shifts to a 1950's radio show, in which an embryonic Prime Minister fronts quizmaster Jack Davey. The glittering prize is 60 boxes of soap powder. Touchingly, the show is called, "Give It a Go".)

QUIZMASTER: "Little Johnny, what is the difference between gas chambers and oxides of depleted uranium?"

ANSWER: "Depleted uranium takes longer to work, causes untold suffering.... but saves a bundle on bricklayers!"

QUIZMASTER: "Correct! Now, for the soap powder, what is the difference between a Chancellor who wages pre-emptive war in the 20th century and a Prime Minister who does the same in the 21st century?"

ANSWER: "Er, interest rates? Boat people? A New Pearl Harbour?"

QUIZMASTER: "Wrong I'm afraid. Would you care to try for a supplementary question on the Nuremberg Trials?"

* * *

OK... so I exaggerated. But here's the original from 1955 (Realplayer):

http://www.australianpolitics.com/sounds/2002/06/02-06-09_howard-and-jack-davey-1955.ram

...and I find myself asking, does anything change, really?

Commomsense for Tony Blair's troubled World. Part taken from Dr Geoffrey Chia, cardialogist who believes that more wisdom and understanding is needed in modern global thought.

1. Like a trained medico curing a sick patient, we must work together using the best known means available.

2. The best known means available must be multidisciplinary, using topmost experts from many fields.

3. The topmost principle to bind such persons together surely must contain wisdom, meaning the persons we need must not only be learned and trustworthy but also compassionate

4. According to Dr Chia, owing to today’s overload of information, especially concerning international relations, we now have to be so careful about ascertaining the real truth of situations, especially political ones such as Iraq and Iran. Dr Chia would surely add a rider stating - with no interference from not only presidents or prime ministers, but also from persons with other strong interests, especially in oil companies, which implicates very strongly Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice.

5. It is here that the wise person needs to gather all vital historical information, then move out into a desert, so to speak, not taking sides and taking the overhead view.

6. However, this taking of the Socratic view, as some might call it, even as regards the whole Middle East since WW1, might leave the Arabs and Iranians justifiably and democratically in front of Western nations.

7. Still taking the overhead view, we might say that besides Western penetration into the Middle East, soon followed by the thirst for fossil fuels, there is not only the problem of Israel being allowed to settle in what had become Arab or Islamic territory for over a thousand years, but also allowing Israel to break UN rules and go militarily nuclear - in so doing very seriously altering the balance of power in the Middle-East. Hence the anger in Iran