Manner of Gaddafi's death is difficult to feel too sorry about

The 'liberation' of Libya, to use the interim administration's own term, and the resultant capture and on-the-spot execution of the despot Muammar Gadaffi, has been featured in the news as much for the way in which he was killed as for the significance of the revolution itself.

Firstly, I must state clearly that from an ethical point of view it would have been better for justice to be seen to be done 'properly', in an open and fair trial. Of course, the sort of summary justice dealt out to him is not the way to deal with a captured and unresistant prisoner. But the various calls for an investigation by other governments, including those who have been happy to lend military support to the rebellion, rather stick in the craw.

Gadaffi died at the hands of his own people. A people he'd subjugated for 42 years. A people who lived in fear of him, thousands of whom he'd allegedly imprisoned, tortured or killed in the manner typical of tyrants like him. Any trial he'd undergone would have inevitably ended in his death anyway, so what exactly would it have been held for? Would a trial have been put on so that justice be done, or would it only have been to make it OK to kill him, make it official, that with the sanction of a judge his execution would somehow be different? He'd still be dead one way or the other and any trial would have felt, to me, like a salve on the consciences of the states who'd helped overthrow him, killing many of his supporters in the process.

He'd also have been given the opportunity to turn it into the kind of grandstanding farce that Saddam Hussein's trial often degenerated into. And look how his execution turned out - the clamour to kill him, while understandable, was so hysterical that in his last moments that evil, murderous bastard somehow became the dignified one, the only one to come out of the process with any credit. So any judicially approved killing would not necessarily have been much better.

And where were the howls of protest at the execution of other dictators in the past? Nicolae Ceauşescu and his wife, for example, were executed after a show trial so hastily arranged and carried out that he was dead before the TV cameras could get there to cover the trial, let alone the execution. Not a peep from other governments at the time, as I recall.

So, as I say, I entirely understand that to make the process legitimate, to lend weight to a new regime's judiciary, to see justice administered ethically and to avoid lowering themselves to his murderous level, it would of course have been much better for him to stand trial. But I find it difficult to feel any sympathy for him, and I find it even more difficult to find any credibility in the clamour for an investigation coming from outside Libya. I hope the Libyan people can now be left in peace to find their own way forward, and that they do so peacefully, without the societal divisions that are so clear in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Count your blessings

Partly because I've been fortunate enough to be spending a pleasant week in Galicia, getting drunk a lot and eating way too much extremely high quality grub, I've not really felt like saying too much about what's been going on in what feels like a tormented world at the moment. It has, frankly, been easy to feel extremely detached from it.

But those of us who are detached from the daily realities of such torment should not forget how good we have it. It's bad enough seeing the natural disasters in New Zealand and now, even worse in magnitude and destructive power, in Japan. But now the feared civil war in Libya is made real, there's developing violence in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and who knows what else yet to come in the Arab world. None of this is likely to happen in Britain on any even vaguely comparable scale.

It's all made me think how fortunate not just I am, but all of us are who live in a stable, tolerant country, in which we're free to criticise the politicians who may be deceitful, grasping, insincere careerists, but are not Gadaffi. Where the problems which face us as a country at the moment, hoever acute they may feel to us, are largely of a financial nature. We are not seeing our society rocked by State-sponsored violence and murder, nor are we having to watch distressing pictures of entire cities laid waste by nature's indifferent killing power, or wait for news of hundreds of deaths to take shape from patchy details in the wake of an earthquake or some such.

I'm flying back home to London tomorrow, from one stable and still comparatively wealthy country to another. To see friends and family I count myself privileged to know, to return to a job I feel fortunate to have, and to a roof I'm grateful to have over my head. Watching the suffering of those in other parts of the world at the moment, I can't quite believe how lucky I am. Think on it.

Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not happening

Before the media's head was turned by the much 'sexier' goings-on in Libya, you may recall there was trouble flaring in Bahrain. More on that in a moment. First - the good news.

Before Libya, or Bahrain, properly kicked off, there was a little event in Egypt which you may recall, and it's to that which I want to return for a moment. Listening to rightfully proud Egyptians speaking eloquently to the BBC in Tahrir Square in Cairo, in a language other than their own don't forget, was a lesson in the power of educated, determined and peaceful protest to catalyse change. The Beeb, in the aftermath of Mubarak's fleeing the country, found hundreds of people cleaning up the mess left behind by the protest, self-organised and without obvious direction.

From somewhere, diggers and heavy equipment had appeared to clear away burned cars and makeshift barricades. People apparently sported badges saying, "Sorry for the mess. We will build Egypt." Well they might be proud of what they've done. With very little violence, most of which in any case seems to have come from Mubarak's cronies, they have brought the beginnings of democracy to this most ancient of countries.

Would that the same had been possible in Libya, but there was a depressing inevitability about the descent into anarchy and bloodshed that's going on there. Gadaffi took power in a military coup in the first place, and was always likely to try to retain his grip militarily. The best that can be hoped for there is that it doesn't descend into outright and prolonged civil war. With any opposition completely crushed under Gadaffi's rule, is there even a credible potential leader among his opponents?

With grim stories of large numbers of deaths and widespread violence, and chemical weapons apparently at Gadaffi's disposal, it's only to be hoped that it doesn't go on much longer. But I wonder if the news media feel the same - how interesting it was to watch them basically abandon coverage of the trouble in Bahrain when a larger conflict broke out at the neighbours'. They couldn't wait to pack up their kit and hurry off to somewhere that may give them 'better' pictures. I haven't seen a single piece on Bahrain for at least a week, and I sincerely doubt it's just calmed down and gone back to normal just like that simply because the cameras have left.

Have the cameras haven't turned to face elsewhere because of some ghoulish interest in a 'proper' conflict? I fear there is an element of that. Or does the media only care because there are more British interests invested in Libya? I sincerely hope that all the Brits that are stuck out there get home safely, of course, but the question occurs, what the hell were we doing business with such a despotic regime for in the first place?

Anyway, whatever the real motivations are for the media to switch off in one country and focus on another, I really hope that when they eventually deem Bahrain worthy of their attention again, it hasn't turned into a little twin of Libya.