Throwing stones from the glasshouse

Why is it that when some people try to do good, others simply want to dismantle that good? When someone tries to promote peace, others are ready to stir up trouble and unrest. It’s almost like peace and tranquility are dull and boring and disturbance is exciting and fun. What we are seeing in the United States at the moment is not just a case of the mischevious school child being sneaky behind the teacher’s back. What we are seeing is nothing short of promoting and inciting a new civil war.

Under former President George W Bush, we saw eight years of incompetence, abuse of human rights, centralised control and an attempt at totally disempowering the ordinary citizen. George W Bush himself is trying to get on with his life, probably quietly happy that he can just be George the ‘good ‘ole boy’ again. Dick Cheney, however, is coming out guns blazing at attacks against his policies towards detainees at Guantanamo Bay. It is this strident chest beating that has inspired the right wing to ‘rise up’ and defend Cheney and all that he stood for. Leading this charge is right wing broadcaster Glenn Beck.

Mr. Beck likes to state that he just wants politicians to be ’straight’ with the people, whatever side of the political fence they sit on. He tries to make out that he favours neither Republican or Democrat, but he does have a show on the FOX News network, which is unashamedly right wing, and he believes Sarah Palin is more real than most politicians. But more dangerous is his encouragement of the American people to have what he calls ‘the ‘civilest’ of wars’.

Did Mr. Beck ask people to rise up when George Bush was in power? Did he ask people to ‘rise up’ when Cheney and Rumsfeld made torture an acceptable form of interrogation? Did he ask people to ‘rise up’ when we found out that the war on Iraq was started on a myth? I have searched high and low for comments from him that criticise the Republican party and for the life of me I can’t find one. But now, with President Obama in the White House, we find Mr. Beck on the warpath against a President who is trying to bring back credibilty to the United States for the first time in eight very long years.

Are the Democrats perfect? Of course they aren’t. No politician is. But to incite civil unrest simply because the new leader does not have the same ideological thinking as you do should be a punishable offence. President Obama has barely been in office five months. He has ideas in his head of where things should go, and has put in place some of those ideas, but if he dropped dead right now, his Presidency would be forgotten in history. It is way, way to early to tell how these policies will pan out in the long run, and the long run is what creates Presidential legacies. Bush’s legacy is not pretty, and barely has a flicker of credibility in it.

The point here is the United States government, under the ‘care’ of Bush/Cheney, have emphasised the importance of ‘national security’, and were at pains many times to warn us all of threats to that ’national security’. It became such a buzz phrase that now everyone around the world uses it. Robin Williams even made a joke of it once:

They couldn’t call it the Department of Fatherland Security, because they would have old German men saying “Zat’s very goot.”

If we are serious about protecting our citizens and our countries, then it is vitally important we put a stop to this ‘civilest of wars’ nonsense, because that threatens national security. If something, God forbid, happens to President Obama or his family, will the right wing stand back and say, “It wasn’t anything to do with us?” It sure as hell will have a lot to do with them. With people like Glenn Beck putting seeds of paranoia into the minds of his faithful, it is only a matter of time before the bomb goes off in someone’s head and the safety and well being of the President will become an issue.

Let me leave you with Glenn Beck on ‘The View’. What is absolutely priceless about this is how Barbara Walters pins down Beck and exposes him as a man who does not check his facts, and makes stuff up in order to get a reaction. If he does this when relaying a minor incident such as the one you will now hear about, what ‘facts’ is he presenting to the narrow right wing audience that watch his show?

Whoopi and Barbara? You go girls!

Enjoy your day

A few blog posts back, I wrote about the strength of China. China is becoming incredibly powerful. In this day and age of the ’survival’ of the fittest, China is winning hands down. But what comes with that is a massive responsibility.

Two political regimes are continuing to cause havoc; Burma and North Korea. Burma is blatantly trumping up charges against opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, trying to ensure that she does not take part in elections to be held next year. They know she will win and they have to do something to ensure that she does not take part. Her home detention expires today, and they have no legal reason to detain her, so a trumped up charge must be created in order to maintain the status quo. International condemnation does little to Burma, if nothing at all.

Then there is North Korea. They have today declared that they have ‘torn up the truce’ between themselves and South Korea, effectively declaring a resumption to hostilities that ended in 1953. They have tested missiles and are ready to get nasty. Not a good situation.

This is where China has all the cards. I have said many times that only China can wield a big stick with Burma and with North Korea. They have condemned North Korea in the strongest terms, but not Burma. China has too many political prisoners of its own to preach to another country about theirs. So Burma will continue to be treated with kid gloves. Aung San Suu Kyi must hold out hope that the junta wake up on the right side of the bed on the day of the verdict and set her free. Unfortunately that is unlikely.

But China is showing some signs that they have had enough of North Korea. Why this change of heart toward a staunch ally and friend? Well, North Korea is ‘pushing the friendship’ and this is why China has had enough.

North Korea’s latest nuclear test raises the question of just how long the bonds forged between old communist allies will endure.

The test was conducted barely 50 miles from the Chinese border. The ground rumbled in northeast China, and some schools were evacuated because of fears of an earthquake.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-china-korea27-2009may27,0,4005894.story

North Korea are messing about just outside the Chinese border, miles away from Pyongyang. In choosing that particular area, the North Korean regime feels the need to sabre rattle even in the face of its friends. China is one of North Korea’s only friends, if not its only one, and the worst thing you can do is bite the hand that feeds you. They are the naughty kid in the family, and China has cut them a lot of slack. But now China feels that North Korea is ungrateful, not to mention reckless.

“The Chinese side vehemently demands North Korea abides by its denuclearisation promises, stop any actions which may worsen the situation and return to the six-party talks process.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/25/2580513.htm

The reaction to North Korea has only been so strong because it threatens China. If the tantrum by the North Korean regime was directed toward South Korea or Japan or anyone else in North Asia, I don’t think China would care. But it is so close to home, they are worried about the effect it will have on them.

The only way Burma will receive the same treatment is if the Burmese do something to offend China, or threaten its borders and its people. At the moment, none of that has happened. To the Chinese government, the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi will result in her possibly going to prison. It will effect her and her alone. The people will continue to be oppressed, but so do a lot of Chinese. In many ways, all Chinese live under some form of oppression, to varying degrees. If the Burmese regime stopped deals worth millions to China, we may see China get heavy handed. But it will take something of that magnitude to get China to act. Face it, it took North Korea to test a nuclear weapon on China’s doorstep for China to even think of acting.

What more can the international community do? This is a question I have posed too many times. I don’t have an answer. No one does. It is up to China, and with China coming to any table around the world as the strongest player, there is little we as the rest of the world can do to sway them to our way of thinking.

Enjoy your day

The title for this particular post is a question that has been posed to scientists and others for many years. We have no idea when the world will end, but I am sure each of us has thought about it. Will it simply die out whimpering or will it end in an enormous flurry of activity?

For at least the last fifteen or so years, we have been told that if we do not change our ways and fix the environmental problems of the world, our world will become terminally ill and die. I myself went to a lecture in about 1993 by a scholar of creation centred spirituality. Fr. Matthew Fox, then a Catholic priest, told us that this planet has 20 years left before we are at the point of no return. That was sixteen years ago. I may be bad at Mathematics, but I at least know that we have four years left! If you think we are going to change the minds of the entire world, co-ordinate world environmental policy, and have every country and every citizen in line to fix things in four years, you are severely dillusional my friend.

So do we just let the earth die; let it get to the point of no return? I’m afraid if that prognosis in 1993 is correct, then we may just have to. The phrase ‘Too late, too late she cried…’ is a pretty obvious fact at this point. But this is where we have a choice between whimpering or going out with a bang. The mobilisation of people all around the world is quite amazing. Plastic bag use is dropping dramatically. People are using public transport more, and we are quite simply getting off our collective backsides to make our world a better place.

Will it stop the polar ice cap from melting? Probabaly not. Will we save our environment as a whole? I hardly think so. But the original question is all about whether we are going to let this earth die in it’s sleep, or are we at least going to give it a fighting chance to live, albeit in a different form. That’s the real issue. This world is changing, as it has millions of times before. Will it be the same as we remember it? No. Will our children and our children’s children enjoy this planet in the future? Yes, of course they will. But it will be a different world, and their activities will be different activities. They will learn to live with changing weather conditions and everything else that comes with a planet in flux.

I have been watching and listening very carefully to all the ‘climate change’ talk that has gone on these last 15 years. I believe the science. The world is changing, and in a lot of ways, not for the better. But I also feel the science can have a detrimental effect on people’s attitudes. If the world does really have only 4 years left before it’s goodnight Irene, people will try their hardest until that point, and then will simply give up, and return to doing all the things that caused the destruction of the planet in the first place. Why? Because they will simply see no point. That’s surely not what we want. Those of us who are recycling, reusing, planting trees, catching the train to work and driving hybrid cars are determined not to whimper. If this planet is going to die, it will die fighting a damn good fight.

We have to realise that countries like China are not going to stop the environmental heresies it is involved in. Poor third world countries barely have the energy to care about living day to day. They don’t care about ‘carbon footprints’. Plus, you have to remember that their are millions of people who do not even believe the science, and call the whole thing a ‘beat up’. If they don’t believe it, they won’t be on board to assist those of us who do.

You might think what I have written is a ‘give up, lay down and die’ approach and I am advocating a ‘whimper’ standpoint. I am not. All I am saying is we need to continue to do what it is we are doing to save our environment as best we can. In that way, the earth won’t have as many problems as it would have if we did nothing. Will we turn it around completely? No, that’s imposible, no matter how much you love Al Gore. It’s very similar to the argument a slightly overweight person said to me when I asked why they continue to diet and watch what they eat when clearly it isn’t working. She told me, “If I didn’t perservere, I would be the size of a house!”

Same too with our environment. This world will be a wasteland if we throw in the towel in four years. We have always been told to ‘go out with a bang’ and that’s just what we should be doing.

Reduce. Reuse. Recyle. Give the planet a fighting chance to retain at least some of it’s former glory. We can’t save the whole planet, but we can mend at least parts of it.

Enjoy your day

Jacob Zuma has become South Africa’s fourth President since apartheid was dismantled in 1994. He is an interesting character, and someone who is not exactly the country’s most pure citizen. But the challenge he faces is not really about him proving his worth as a law abiding citizen. It is more about what he and the African National Congress (ANC) are going to do about the sorry state South Africa’s black majority still find themselves in long after Nelson Mandela has left the President’s office.

Apartheid was a system that did nothing for the black majority, so it was logical to think that when a black President took the reigns, things would get better. Ok, it was never going to happen overnight, but 15 years? In some cases, things are no different at all.

New estimates of poverty show that the proportion of people living in poverty in South Africa has not changed significantly between 1996 and 2001. However, those households living in poverty have sunk deeper into poverty and the gap between rich and poor has widened.

http://www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0000990/

What has happened since apartheid is some black South Africans have had a taste of the good life and they like it. It is akin to denying a kid entry into the candy shop and when he finally gets to go inside, he becomes a glutton and forgets about all the other kids that still don’t have that same access. Those who have been able to have, have grabbed it with both hands and no longer is South Africa divided on racial lines, but on class lines. A classic case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. South Africa has become like every other country in the modern world. It promised so much, but has delivered so little.

Former President Thabo Mbeki suffered from an affliction that befalls most world leaders. He was handpicked by Nelson Mandela, and we all thought that he would continue the dream of turning South Africa into a truly functioning African nation rising from the ashes of discrimination. But he was a leader out of touch with his people, totally unaware of their plight, and incapable of understanding what problems they faced. His complete lack of basic knowledge of HIV/AIDS in a continent where it is on the rise, bordered on negligence, not to mention his appalling handling of Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. This last incident proved to the world that he was a failed leader, not just to his own people, but to the African continent as a whole.

But Jacob Zuma needs to demonstrate that he is far more effective than Mbeki. He comes across as a good time boy who seems not to have a good grasp of the issues at hand. Already he is blaming the ‘global economic downturn’ as a way of saying he can’t do things. Plus, he has admitted to having unprotected sex with a HIV+ woman, and ‘had a shower after’ to stop infection. Oh dear. Not another Mbeki.

When Nelson Mandela made his speech at the beginning of his historic Presidency he had this to say:

We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity–a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.

http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/mandela.html

We have to ask ourselves, as does Jacob Zuma have to ask himself, has this dream of Mandela’s been realised, or were they words that sounded good at the time, but have paled into insignificance. Zuma needs to do so many things, but I believe he has a ‘top three’.

1. Put in place some firm policies to genuinely alleviate the suffering of the poor who have not moved one inch since apartheid.

2. Educate the country (and himself)  much more on HIV infection and be the leader in Africa on how to stop the spread of this disease which kills millions of Africans each year.

3. Be a true leader who will stand up to Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and stop the humanitarian crisis that occurs there. Poverty in South Africa will only worsen as thousands of Zimbabweans flee over the border. Sorting Zimbabwe can only benefit South Africa.

Let me leave you with some more of Mandela’s famous words. Let us hope true freedom will come to the poor in South Africa and true respect will finally be shown.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

 

Enjoy your day

When governments win elections, it is usually because the majority have spoken. Call it the popular vote, call it winning more seats than the other party, the fact still remains; the majority are needed for change of government to occur. That is what happened to Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama won the majority of the vote. But what seems to be happening is a gathering of strength in the conservative minority in the United States. Not only is it strong, vocal and obstructionist, but what scares me is it has the potential to become a lynch mob, stirred up by irresponsible right wing commentators hell bent on a riot. This is not only iresponsible, but dangerous and bordering on inciting a class war based on morals.

Terms like ‘Road to Socialism’ are meant to conjure up images of the Cold War era and Hugo Chavez dressed in red. The fact that Barack Obama is not a socialist is neither here nor there to the right wing. They just have to make their listeners think that Obama has a socialist agenda. That, in turn will incite them to rise up in revolt against what they see as a new ‘evil empire’.

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney was, and probably still is, an incredibly dangerous man. I have made this statement many times before. What he did and what he authorised during his time as Vice-President was nothing short of criminal, torture being just one of the many breaches of human decency he allowed to happen. But the right wing were not there when Cheney was taking away the civil liberties of his fellow human beings.

Hatred comes out of jealousy. The right wing have had their man lampooned for the last eight years from all circles. As a matter of fact, they never talk about him, or very rarely. Why? Well, wouldn’t you be embarrassed? In a recent discussion between right wing commentator Sean Hannity and columnist (interesting how they don’t call him a journalist) Mark Steyn, the childish schoolyard jealousy of the popular kid they see as Barack Obama shone through:

…and it’s amazing, when these gods walk among us, they do such a great job as passing as human. Who would have thought it?

This exchange between Hannity and Steyn would be seen by some as simply innocent fun banter, taking a gentle dig at the President. After all, the liberal media panned Bush for eight years and we all had a good laugh. But liberals are a different audience to the audience the right wing media appeal to. The right wing audience are much more narrow in their thinking, are heavily evangelical Christian and are much more gullible when it comes to sensational news stories with lots of hype and very little substance. You and I could watch the interchange between Steyn and Hannity and laugh, call them idiots, and walk off. Those that watch Sean Hannity religiously (pardon the pun) will interpret his comments to mean that 1) Obama is trying to be God, and there is only one God   2) He is not really human and   3) He is a person not to be trusted.

You may think I am overreacting, and I may well be. However, the conservative base of the Republican party is wanting the party to move further to the right, as being a ‘centrist’ party has failed. So the call is made for all those who wish to save their nation to rise up and make their voices heard. They want momentum to build to a point that Obama’s government and it’s agenda for the future will fail. It could be suggested that they are gradually building up to the point of toppling the government. In  old fashioned terms, the right wing media could be seen as inciting treason. Too strong? Well, let’s take a look at the definition of treason:

Oran’s Dictionary of the Law (1983) defines treason as: “…[a]…citizen’s actions to help a foreign government overthrow, make war against, or seriously injure the [parent nation].” In many nations, it is also often considered treason to attempt or conspire to overthrow the government, even if no foreign country is aided or involved by such an endeavour.

The right wing media want us to watch what this President is really trying to do to the United States. Let us then, as liberals, do the same. This is not innocent banter. These are not light hearted digs. This is not intelligent difference of opinion. These are dangerous, baseless assertions designed to anger their base to the point where they will see President Barack Obama as someone that should be removed. What scares me even more is what method they will use to remove him.

If anything bad happens to President Obama, and the right wing media is blamed for encouraging anti-government unrest, the right wing media would not feel bad and would take no blame for what happened. This is where they are a shallow, empty group who are demonstrating negligent behaviour. Many of the most emotionally needy, God fearing christian people believe what the right wing media say, some hang off every word and see certain members such as US ’shock jock’ Rush Limbaugh as heroes. The old saying goes, ‘a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing’, and most of the time, the right wing media give their listeners a ‘little bit of knowledge’. When one does not get the full picture, they rely on what they have been given. This is very dangerous indeed if not substantiated or put into context.

But Barack Obama is a product of the Chicago political meat mincer. If you can come through that system and surivive, you can survive anywhere. All the stuff he has had thrown at him so far is small fry.

Enjoy your day