Maybe it’s just me but I can’t tell one murder from another. They all look the same to me: equally wrong and not justifiable on scale, volume or motivation. If the aim is to take another life by violence it is wrong. I’m with Gandhi on this one. Not Tony Blair, George Bush, David Cameron or President Obama.

An eye for an eye makes us blind but a gleeful slaughter videoed and happy-snapped does not augur for an auspicious new start. And there are many victims in the world of villains internationally known and known to few; they do not all crave bloody vengeance, nor do they inevitably desire violence but more usually just pray that there are no more victims. No matter how remote that hope.

I also don’t believe dogs should be trained to hunt and tear foxes apart; I don’t approve of any bloodsport, nor cruelty to animals. I don’t eat the flesh of animals either. So why would I ever be swayed to see the vicious murder of any human being as in any way understandable or acceptable, because of what they did?

I pity Gaddafi his end but this does not excuse his evil—in the enabling and at times support of which the US, UK and other governments have been linked. Our own politicians, past and present, have the blood of innocents on their hands. But hey, that’s okay. We get to vote and that means we have a say.

To which I reply: do we? Do we really? Because if we had a say in how our little bits of world are run, tell me why billions feel utterly powerless and one per cent are doing absolutely fine and bloody dandy.

To show light and compassion to even the evil, the contemptible, the depraved, is an essential component of a working justice system. It should not involve murder, not by bullet, not by gas, not by electric chair, not by mob nor by any method of delivering death invented by humanity.

There are bullies and dictators, merciless manipulators, rapists and humiliators, sadists and murderers – torturers all, of one kind or another. If we do to them as they do to us, how are we ever to tell the difference, when the undoubtedly bad and supposedly good are equally stained in blood?

I do not mourn Gaddafi’s passing, not for one second. But I will always have pity for the suffering of other human beings, including that evil bastard, and hope I never lose that ability to feel. Those who confuse pity with sympathy are, of course, fucking idiots and likely to believe any problem can be solved by use of threats, weapons and murder.

If that were even halfway true, why is the world at breaking point ecologically, economically and socially? More bullets needed? More bombs? More oil and gas? Lower wages, longer hours and job cuts, medicare cuts, benefit cuts but don’t, whatever you do, stop spending the plebs’ money on toy Trident missiles for the stupid but filthy rich elite to pose with like strap-on dildos? Because they—this other, nebulous, tiny, powerful, more often than not anonymous group—do indeed get off on money and raw, viciously-wielded power.

All we have to do is let them do it and in comes Mammon to eat the marrow from our bones. Libya is a particularly tasty-looking opportunity right now. Gotta love the black gold! Plus they’ll be eating Uncle Sam’s shitty fast food before too long.

You either buy the consensus or you don’t, and I tell you I don’t. The consensus is for sheep. The consensus is the herd, the lemmings. The consensus is as fucked-up today as it was in the Dark Ages. We need to grow up, get real or go extinct.

Your choice and mine.