Throwing stones from the glasshouse

When will the world finally sit up and say enough with this man! We worry about Darfur, we stress about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and we sit back and sneer at those nasty little men from Iran and North Korea. But we stay silent on the subject of Mugabe. I heard a great quote on CNN a while back, when they we doing a story on Zimbabwe. “It was once the bread basket of Africa, now its the basket case of Africa” This man has, and continues to, rape his country, and everyone simply glances up from the newspaper, looks at the TV and says “What’s that all about, dear?”, and continues reading the paper with not so much as a change of facial expression. President George “W” Bush made sure he picked a fight with daddy’s old nemesis, but has he ever mentioned the atrocities in Zimbabwe? Knowing George, he’d have trouble saying the word.

Mugabe has just celebrated his 84th birthday with a lavish party, while his people live in a wasteland they were once proud of. When “W” picked a fight with Saddam, he said Saddam had weapons of mass destruction…but didn’t. Then, we were to rejoice in the invasion of Iraq, as “W” had “released the dictators stranglehold from around the Iraqi people’s necks”. Ok, so now, we invade to get rid of dictators. If that’s US foreign policy, why aren’t there troops flooding into Zimbabwe to knock off Mugabe?

That is not what I am advocating here, I am simply trying to work out the logic. As the actress Mia Farrow, and most of the world, wonders why we are ignoring Darfur, I feel I am very alone in my thoughts about the hideousness of what has happened and continues to happen in Zimbabwe. The worse part about it is, Mugabe is such a robust old bastard, he’ll still be wearing that stupid cap, and licking cake frosting off those evil old fingers for many years to come. Enjoy your day.

To say I am reluctant to pouring one’s thoughts out onto a  public web forum is an understatement. But something hit me tonight that somehow made me start this, and it is on this very subject of ‘blogging’. Where this will go and how often I will do it, I have no idea. But I know I have a very specific intention in mind.

I have just deleted my Facebook profile. Why, you may ask? It’s fun, you may tell me. Well, I  finally got tired of receiving ‘hugs’, ‘water balloons’, ‘hatching eggs’ and other sorts of inane things that come with these interesting new developments in this world we call ‘the web’. Apart from that, I have always felt incredibly uncomfortable with laying my personal life bare for all the world to see.

So, you may yet again ask, why the hell are you writing a blog? A blog is full of day to day things that a person does. It lets the world in on your sexuality, your past, present, and future relationships, everything you ever needed to know about Grandad’s latest prostate operation, how work sucks, how your family drove you nuts last Christmas, and other specific tidbits about the deepest darkest (or brightest) aspects of your life.

My answer is simple, and the reason this blog has eventuated. I have no intention of letting you know much about me at all…to me that’s not the point. We all have very specific views on things, real things that are happening in this world, and to society generally. You don’t want to hear about my last root canal, or whether I had a great coffee after a movie. You want to know what I think. Just like going to karaoke (God forbid), and someone says “Go on, you can sing, get up there!” You know that they don’t want a real singer up there, they want some drunken fool who sings like…a drunken fool. Same with blogging. We all love a good argument, and we absolutely love it when someone comes along who has a point of view that is totally against what we believe, or at least far enough away from our thinking to spark resistance. So that’s what this blog aims to do. Call it my editorial comment for the day. Will I stir the pot? With some, yes. Will I be moralistic and claim that my view is the only view? Not at all. But will it be interesting and funny? I hope so. It’s really up to you to comment, and make it interesting. But I promise you, I won’t be sending you ‘hugs’, or ‘inviting you to write on my fun wall’. Just good old fashioned spirited debate on things that matter. Some blog for attention. Some blog because they like to write. Some blog because they ain’t got nothing else to do. My purpose is to at least talk about something other than me…God knows that would be boring, and you wouldn’t care anyway. Tell me what you think. Am I going out on a limb here, or am I sounding too much like a wannabe journalist? Enjoy your day.