Hosni Murabak, ex-president of Egypt, has been shown on TV, world-wide, lying on a hospital bed inside a metal cage in a courtroom.

His humiliation is complete.

His chance of a fair trial is nil.

The apparent moral of this story is that — in this world – if there is a war on, you had better win.

Do whatever it takes.

If you win, you won’t have to justify your tactics.

If you lose, they’ll kill you.

* * *

They’ll say they are killing you for “crimes against humanity” or whatever.

In fact, you’ll be dead because you didn’t win.

If Britain had lost the 1939-45 war, Churchill would been hung for war crimes.

Whoever ordered the bombing of Dresden would have swung for conducting a “Holocaust”.

Likewise whoever ordered the bombing of Hiroshima.

* * *

But in the realm of reality, it’s not in this world that judgement happens.

Judgement is something God reserves to himself.

So the ultimate winners will be the “losers” of this world – the powerless, those who suffer for their faith.

It was in the early days of the Christian movement, while thousands were being martyred, that the Catholic Church grew faster than ever before or since.

Hence the saying: “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

* * *

So the real – as opposed to the apparent — moral of all this is to do what is right.

Persevere in obedience to God, regardless of the cost.

Leave the outcome of your obedience to God.

God is the God of history.

Anders Behring Breivik killed 76 people last Friday.

The media have been referring to him as a “Christian fundamentalist”.

If they checked his writings they would learn that he is no such thing.

He says himself that he has not attended church for over a decade:

 “I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic.”

But it suits some to label him a Christian anyway, and to make it stick.

From now on, whenever we are confronted by Islamic terrorist atrocities, the answer can be trotted out, “Yes, but what about Christian terrorist Breivik and his atrocities?”

Saturation media brow-beatings about how all religion is evil — especially the Catholic religion.

Some within the Church seem keen to help — obediently issuing apologies.

* * *

This week the CEO of Catholic Health Australia publicly apologised for adoption practices of a generation of two ago.

Implying that the unmarried teenage girls who surrendered their babies could have raised them better than the adoptive parents did.

I can remember those days, and having regular dealings with young women in such situations.

Sometimes the right decision was made. Sometimes probably not.

I suggest that when wrong decisions were made, the motivation was seldom malicious.

But anti-Catholics won’t want to concede that.

Nor that it was government policy being carried out — the Church acting in accordance with the current thinking of the authorities and “experts” of the day.

Once an unmarried teenager becomes pregnant there is no good solution — the best one can hope for is the lesser of multiple evils.

We should be concentrating on ways to make it not happen.

Facebook sites which feature rating of the “sexual performance” of named persons are attracting hundreds of users in districts all around Australia

Most are apparently secondary school students.

This is obviously bad.

Commentators compare the dangers with those of cigarette advertising.

Surely it is much worse.

* * *

Those posting slanderous material on the internet are breaking the law, insofar as their action is “using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence”.

If complaints are made, police can force Facebook to identify the source – then make arrests.

With new sites appearing all the time, police action seems a cumbersome tactic – although if sentences were severe enough, it could be an effective deterrent.

Facebook itself (and whatever other networks) should be required to take the initiative, to monitor and to delete – or find its proprietors in gaol.

* * *

Ideally, no doubt, best if young people could be made to see why they should have nothing to do with this hateful phenomenon.

Why cannot young people treat each other with respect and love (in the best sense of that word)?

Well we don’t set them a very good example.

Insults are part of the adult Australian way of life.

Listen to Parliament.

Listen to climate change deniers and climate change dupes railing at each other – calling each other “fascists” and/or “ignorant”.

* * *

Everybody today seems to love to gossip. Everybody dislikes being on the receiving end of gossip.

Basically we hate each other.

Jesus Christ taught that: “For every idle word men utter, they will answer on the Day of Judgment. It is by your words you will be acquitted and by your words you will be condemned.” (Matthew’s gospel, chapter 12)

That’s what makes all this worse than cigarette ads.

The Chinese government-owned newspaper, “Global News”, has warned against Prime Minister Gillard saying too much about human rights in China.

They are still peeved about ex-PM Kevin Rudd, who had plenty to say.

At present, China is in the middle of a nasty crackdown on Christians — some of whom worshipped God at Easter time.

“Dozens” have been imprisoned. “Hundreds” are under house-arrest.

The Australian and Chinese governments are tip-toeing around each other, hoping that no such disharmony will interfere with negotiating a “free trade agreement”.

* * *

This blog has no great knowledge of economic matters.

But any child of ten could work out that such a so-called free trade agreement would be a joke.

The joke would be on Australia.

China could buy and sell us, on a weekly basis, using only the contents of their petty cash receptacle.

* * *

Anyway, the serious question is whether either nation has any claim to talk about human rights.

Australia, for example, permits abortion as though human life has no rights if it is young enough and helpless enough

Most Australian politicians want this subject never to be raised in parliament.

A few of the more psychopathic MP’s, notably the Greens, plus members of certain factions in the Labor Party, want it debated, with a view to making baby-terminating even more accessible.

A few holding the opposite view – that human life is sacred – would like a chance to debate abortion in order to get it abolished.

Most MP’s, however, are terrified of any such debate.

Including many who call themselves Catholics. Such persons are not easy to respect.

* * *

If Australia likes to lecture the world about human rights, while maintaining our present mindset re abortion, little wonder if we get no respect.

Bullying is in the news — disgusting examples of people tormented to the point of desperation, even suicide.

It crops up in schools, workplaces and the military.

People are asking “What must we do to achieve a society free from bullying?”

* * *

Once upon a time this man was driving somewhere (let’s say to Sydney) and became lost.

Seeing a little boy playing by the roadside, he asked, “How do I get to Sydney from here ?”

The boy replied, “Mister, if you want to go to Sydney, you don’t start here.”

* * *

That’s our problem.

To get rid of bullying, it’s no good starting with a society like ours.

Our society is wall-to-wall bullying — some obvious, some disguised.

Advertising is bullying. Peer pressure is bullying. The message being that if you don’t own one of these . . .  or if you don’t look like this celebrity . . .  or if you don’t conform with trendy fashions of thought and dress, then you are an idiot.

Such thinking is what people base their lives on.

It’s no good resolving to “do one’s own thing”.

Too late. You’ve already been bullied into believing that your thing is what the media/ peer group etc. tell you it is.

* * *

The one alternative to being squeezed into the mould of bully-society’s mindset is to join your will to the will of God.

Obey him in everything — his standards are totally out of this world.

Saint Paul wrote in one of his letters in the Bible:

“I urge you, my brothers . . . offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God . . . Do not let yourselves be conformed to this contemporary world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God . . . .”

This is practical — more than fancy words.

Bullies might make you dead, but they can never make you surrender your will – not once God has taken it over.

In the Australian rural city of Warrnambool, it has been a tradition since 1967 that an illuminated Cross is displayed, from Christmas through to Easter, on top of a local water tower for all to see.

Now the local council is going to have it removed.

Why?

One citizen, Mr Graham Keith, lodged a complaint.

He said that because Australia is a “secular” society — and because the Cross is “a religious symbol” — it is therefore “not right that it should be on public property”.

Not what? Hasn’t Mr Keith got his wires crossed?

If we’re committed to being secular, then nothing is “right”. And nothing is “wrong”. Life is simply a power struggle. You get your way by coercing others — exploiting their fear and/or their greed.

Any idea of anything being “right” is a purely religious concept.

* * *

Warrnambool’s local priest, Father John Fitzgerald, said, “I can understand some people objecting to a religious symbol like the Cross being placed on a government-owned structure and I respect that.”

That sounds a bit weak.

Isn’t the Cross more than just a “symbol”?

The Cross is the instrument of suffering on which Christ the divine Son of God died to redeem the world.

Surely the priest is obliged to make that point.

Not everyone may be ready to accept that it is so. But isn’t the role of the Church to challenge others to think about the Cross whenever the opportunity arises?

* * *

Every Christian family in Warrnambool should now put up a Cross on their property where everybody can see it.

Make a stand for God.

Why not?

And at the same time push for the Council to restore the public Cross.