Letters to my sons.

Yesterday was a good day in the transfer market for the Toon. Michael Owen signed on a four year contract, Jenas moved to Spurs for £7 and Nobby returned from Aston Villa. As part of the Nobby deal James Milner went the other way on loan.

A few weeks ago I was very down beat about Newcastles chances this season and the first few games of the season proved my worst fears correct. But with these signings I am now hopefull of a strong finish. Some defenders in January would be nice as well.

I still have my doubts about Greame Souness but a trophy would put that to bed.

Howay the lads!

Dear Son,

it is always a good idea to check certain facts before spouting off. It’s always a good idea to check your spelling as well. Something I must learn to do.

In my letter “Who’s to blame?” I mentioned the bombing of Japan at the end of the Second World War and how it was justified.

In the current climate we are being told that extremist Muslim Imans are to blame for the London bombings as well as terror attacks around the world. Is the Christian faith so much better at promoting peace?

The plane that dropped the first nuclear bomb, Enola Gay, was blessed by a Catholic Priest. Did the Preist know what the plane was going to be used for? He knew that it was instrument of war and was going to be used to kill people.

The actual bomb it’s self was blessed by a Protestant chaplain who asked God:

to be with those who brave the heights of Thy heaven and who carry the battle to our enemies.

After the bomb was dropped President Truman broadcast his justification of his terrorist act. He claimed that the bombing would shorten the war and thus save American lives. It was believed by many that the Japanese would never surrender and would fight for every inch of land. This, of course, was rubbish. The American Military had already broken the Japanese codes and were reading all the Japanese military and diplomatic messages. They knew that Japan was ready to surrender but dropped the bombs anyway.

Truman however first and foremost justified killing 90,000 people as an attack:

against those who have starved and beaten American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare.

So we have a terrorist act, blessed by Clerics and the justification : revenge. No so much different from the killing of people in London on 7th July 2005.

Dear Son,

according to Omar Bakri Mohammed the British people are responsible for the tube bombings on 7th July 2005. He argues that because the British public re-elected Tony Blair after the Iraq war, then they deserve what they get.

This argument has many holes in it. Firstly a majority of the population didn’t vote for The Labour Party. Secondly the greater British public didn’t assemble the explosives and detonators and then take them onto public transport and trigger the devices. It was the suicide and thier supporters that slaughtered innocent people for no logical resaon.

Omar Bakri Mohammed, by his own admission would be happy then, for his wife and children to be killed in a bombing? It would be hypocritical of him not to be happy with this thought.

Of course Omar Bakri Mohammed is not the first and nor will he be the last person to balme the inhabitants of a country for the actions of their leaders. In early August some of us will remember the biggest acts of terrorism every carried out – the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The USA had cracked the Japanese military codes long before the end of the war and knew that Japan was ready to surrender. The act of terrorism that killed over 200,000 people, each one an individual, will be justified. The usual lies will be trotted out: it shortened the war, it save many US lives as the Japanese would have fought to the last man etc etc.

During the second world war “the allies” bombed German civillians. We are told these were in revenge for the Nazis bombing the UK and that we shouldn’t worry too much because it was the German people who put Hitler into power and they deserved to be punished.

In free and fair elections Hitler never recieved a majority of the vote. He only came to power because he formed an alliance and because right wing elements thought they could control him once he became Chancellor.

Of course son you won’t be reading much of the above in the mainstream press. They can spell a lot better than me for a start and they are only interested in exposing one single lying extremist – not the many who make up governments and inform public thinking all over the world.

Dear Son,

there is an episode of the Simpsons where Bart breaks his leg on the first day of the summer holidays. He complains to Homer that his summer is now ruined, Homer replies that when your a grown up every summer is ruined because you have to work. Which is so true.

The other problem with the summer is that there isn’t any football. There are transfer dealings which can be quite interesting and some pre-season friendlies but the not the same thing as a full bloodied game.

During July Saturday afternoons are long affairs. Nothing on the telly worth watching and nothing else worth doing – well there is loads of stuff that needs doing but not enough motivation to get it done. Roll on the 14th August and the start of the season away at Arsnel. Uncle Pat has departed for Jeuventus, I was hoping after our last chat he would wear the black and white stripes of another club.

Dear Son,

today in Iraq a suicide bomber drove his car close to an American soldier and blew his car up. The American soldier had been handing sweets and water to Iraqi children so unsurprisingly some children were killed as well.

This act, terrible as it was at face value, needed some more spin attaching to it. According to Channel4 news, eye witnesses report that the bomber made certain that he killed as many children as possible. The BBC hasn’t reported this “fact” but it may true or it may be false. I can understand why the spin would have to be added. Think for a moment what this means if he didn’t intend kill the children. It means that they were “collatoral damage”, an accident and killing them is okay because he never meant it. Well no, it doesn’t mean that because killing civillians is never right who ever you are.

It looks like the bombers in London were suicidce bombers as well. They appear to have been young men prepared to die for something they believed in. If they had been troops in an army their deaths would be mourned in poetry and we would be extolled to remember them with the going down of the sun. They will either be painted as evil or as easily led, which is also how the opponents of the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, like to paint him.

I have existsed in a Naked Lunch world for at least 10 years now. William Burrows defined a Naked Lunch moment as when time stands still in a restaurant and you can see people holding forks at their open mouths. David Bedeale described a Naked Lunch moment in terms of watching ballet: the moment that you realise that you are watching men and women prancing around a stage, dressed in white, to music.

We live in world were it is wrong to steal, unless you have the twin mights of millitary power and the ability to write the official history after the event has happened. On the day that Australia celebrated 200 years since it’s “discovery”, an aboriginy stood on the beach at Dover and claimed the UK for his people. This act all the more absurd as aborginies had no concept of land ownership when the English arrived. Leon Trotsky signed away the countries of Estonian, Latvia and Lithuania over to a brutal and repressive Imperial Germany without first asking the people in those countries what they wanted or heeding his own rhetoric regarding capitalism. Yet we have paper sellers up and down the country extolling his political ideas and passing them off as “freedom”. The man they worship created a terrorist system, later inherited by Stalin, that murdered over 20 million people. But without a hint of irony or respect for the truth they hold banners proclaiming that George W Bush is the worlds biggest terrorist. At this present time in history he is, but in the last 100 years he is not. Modern day Nazis have Holocaust Denial, John Major had genocide-denial in Rwanda and we have a politcal party called “Respect” that doesn’t.

I can’t even take solice in the summer transfer activity with the Toon. We have lost 3 defenders, 2 midfielders and 2 strikers. So far we have one midfielder coming in, Scott Parker and Dyer has signed an extension to his contract. Compounding the loss of three defenders, Titus Bramble has an injury that could see him miss the 1st three months of the season. Things are not looking good.

Dear Son,

not long after you were born I wrapped you in a Newcastle United top with the name Caudle on the back. This son, I’m sorry to say, may be a curse. When Alan Shearer announced his retirement I thought this was an omen. He would retire around the same time that you would be born – but he decided to carry on for another year. That’s when the wheels fell off – at the Railway Bridge perhaps – last season. We were dumped out of the UEFA cup, then the FA Cup and then two Newcastle players had a fight with each other.

My hope for you is that you’ll become a professional footballer earning many millions of pounds. We can hang out it night clubs together and I’ll keep you safe from the Jordan types, casting my eye over the gold digging peroxide on display and making the wrong choice – so you don’t have to.

Just like politics son, when it comes to watching the Toon on the telly, I’ll be shouting at the telly.

Dear Son,

on 7th July 2005 the Olympic Comittee decided to bring the Olympics to London and right on our doorstep. In 2012 we’ll be watching some of the top sports people in the world. On the way home on the train the whole of London seemed to be buzzing, the place had an excited air about it.

Next morning the buzz was still there, everyone seemed so relaxed and happy. As I walked through the square outside Stratford station TV and radio crews were interviewing local people including the Mayor of Newham and the ex-MP for West Ham, Tony Banks.

As I approached the entrance to the station an alarm went off and the staff started to clear all the platforms. I thought this was just someone smoking where they shouldn’t be so I waited near the entrance. Then it started to rain so I found some shelter with the few hundred other people waiting for the station to re-open.

Your mother rang me and told me that the whole tube system had been closed because a power surge had caused an explosion at Liverpool Street. I decided to get a bus at that point and got the 25 which was heading for Oxford Street. On the bus I checked the BBC website and they said there had been 5 explosions – all due to a power surge. It was 9.30am when I got on the bus and progress was slow, there were loads of cars on the roads. As we passed the Royal London, I thought about your birth as that’s where you were born. The Air Ambulance was out and alot of sirens were going off. The bus driver finally kicked us out at Aldergate East as the road was closed by the police. Ambulances were going towards Algate three at a time, in full cry, and being replaced with three coming the other way – again in full cry.

I walked upto the police cordon and told the officer that I wanted to get to Moorgate, he told me that Moorgate was closed. (At that time it was thought that a bomb had gone off at Moorgate). He also told me that the whole of the City was closed. Then I saw the army arrive and I knew that something more than a power surge was going on. Your mother rang me at that point and told me about the bus that had had it’s roof ripped off. Power surges don’t rip the roof of a bus.

I rang work and told them I was going home and then took a look walk home phoning Grandma Caudle and Uncle Phil on the way home before the mobile network became overloaded with calls. By the time I got close to home my mobile was working again and your mother confirmed that bombs had gone off and people had been killed.

When I arrived home you seemed surprised that I had come home, you also seemed to have picked up on the tension of the day. We all watched the news together as we phoned around people to find out if they were okay and so they knew we were okay as well.

As the day drew to a close I switched the television off and you fell asleep in my arms. I lay back on the bed and you slept on my chest. The tension in you was clear, as you fell asleep your hands were in tight fists but as you relaxed your hands opened and body relaxed. As I watched this I thought how I could ever explain the events of the day to you, how we went from being on a high on Wednesday to a low on Thursday. How do I explain the motives and mindset of people who kill without a second thought?

We have to go back to basic principles: is it ever justified to kill someone who poses no threat to a persons life or safety? No it is not. People who kill the innocent will always make an excuse for their actions. It maybe that they don’t want a rival idiology to take over a certain country so they feel justified in bombing and spraying a huge area with chemical weapons. It may be that one ethnic group don’t like another so decide to wipe them out.

The group that carried out the London bombings will no doubt have their excuses and justifications – they will make no logical sense and will be accepted only by the same self deluded people what believe that killing the innocent is okay. Well that’s not true because most of the people who condem the attacks have supported the killing of innocents in the past – except these innocents are a different ethnic group or live in a different country or it is beneficial to some large company for these people to be killed.

Before sending British troops into Iraq Tony Blair said quite explicitly that, as a result of the coming war, innocent people would be killed. But this was justified by Tony because he said the number of people killed would be less than the number killed every year by Saddam Hussein.

If the bombers are ever brought to court they should simply try and prove that by killing 50 odd people they managed to save the lives of many more. The judge would then have to find them not guilty and the country and the relatives would have to accept that they in fact saved lives.

Of course they didn’t save lives – neither Tony nor the bombers – they murdered in cold blood. The same as George Bush, Leon Trotsky, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill …. the list goes on as do the (excuses) reasons.

No one in the media has suggested that the bombers have a defence or inhabit the same moral place as our own leader. That will never happen but there is one thing I know son, you will hear me shouting at the television as you grow up.

I’ve seen quite a few blogs in my time and most of them seem to be a hotch potch of different information without any real focus. I thought about keeping a diary but who to write it to?

Then the thought occured to me, why not write it for my son? Why not indeed.