Thursday, May 24, 2007

From a News Source Near You...

Here it is again, folks, the news of this very day, presented to us in live action. Ignore it at your peril. No one can escape its reality. What a phantasmagorical imagination that Great Visionary up in the heavens is possessed of. You want theatre? Here it is, right on this stage called Earth.

Life is anything but boring for the greater preponderance of humankind. The unspeakable excesses we are capable of when dealing with our fellowman mark us as separate and apart from most other living creatures. We’re the animal that doesn’t appear to have been able to learn from experience, doomed to repeat our stupidity over and over again. The harm we do to one another, is, often, beyond the belief of those among us who might consider to be rational, caring human beings.

Pity it’s the actions, the emotions, the intent of that smaller but still-yet significant group among us characterized by their pathological need to reject co-existence, who rail against the perceived injustices that society offers to their spectacular vision of self-empowerment through the vulnerability of others, who abhor and reject the rule of law.

They govern their needs and decision-making and actions through a rule of law of their own devising, often aided and abetted by helpful readings and interpretations of a holy script in honour of the religion they cling to, a God they worship who demands of them obeisance, and whose purpose they purport to serve.

  • China - A woman who was mauled by a rare Siberian tiger in north-east China last week could become the country’s first person to receive state compensation for injuries from a wild animal. “I was concentrating on my work and didn’t see it approach,” said Che Jinxia, 25, who suffered six bone fractures in her hands and arms after being attacked while picking herbs. “It pounced on me and bit me on the arms, but my screams must have scared the tiger and it ran away.” Ms. Che will receive government compensation, thanks to a regulation that took effect on the very day she was attacked. The regulation resulted from complaints farmers brought to bear as a result of wild animals preying on their cattle. Siberian tigers mainly live in north-east China and Siberia.
  • Moscow - Deputies in Russia’s State Duma (lower-house of parliament) voted almost unanimously to pass a new law banning alcohol consumption in any public location. “Drinking beer and low-alcohol drinks on the street is harming the morals and behaviour of our youth", said Gennady Gudkov, a deputy from the pro-government A Just Russia party. The law targets youngsters gathering for a beer or, increasingly, a canned cocktail on their way to or from work and school. Experts worry the phenomenon is the tip of a deeper problem of alcoholism, a big factor in Russia’s drastically low life-expectancy. Men here die on average at the age of 58, fully 16 years earlier than in Europe.
  • London - Fears stoked by the post-9/11 “war on terror” are increasingly dividing the world, Amnesty International declared yesterday, while rapping rights abusers from China to Darfur; Russia to the Middle East. The gap between Muslims and non-Muslims notably deepened, fuelled by discriminatory counter-terrorism strategies in Western countries, the international human rights group warned in its annual report. Human rights are also routinely flouted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the front line of the U.S.-led crackdown on extremism since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, which triggered a profound geopolitical shift.
  • Israel - Israeli aircraft yesterday demolished two money exchange shops used to channel funds to Hamas militants, the military said, hours after Palestinian leaders made a new push to restore a truce with Israel that collapsed under heavy Hamas rocket fire. President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas met for the first time since fierce Hamas-Fatah fighting broke out two weeks earlier. The two sides reached a truce over the week-end. In a challenge to that shaky internal truce, gunmen opened fire from a passing car late yesterday on the Gaza City home of a prominent Fatah official, injuring at least two of his bodyguards.
  • Iraq - The body of a U.S. soldier found in the Euphrates River in Iraq was identified yesterday as a California man who was abducted with two comrades a week and a half ago, a relative said. Pte. Anzack, 20, was one of three soldiers who vanished after their combat team was ambushed May 12. There are reports that another body was found near where Pte. Anzack’s body was found, but it is not known if it is one of the other two missing soldiers.
  • Serbia - Slobodan Milosevic’s paramilitary commander and eleven other men were convicted and sentenced yesterday in the assassination of Serbia's first democratically elected prime minister, Zoran Djindjic. The Special Court said Milorad Ulemek, former head of Mr. Milosevic’s elite Red Berets paramilitary unit, organized the March 12, 2003 sniper attach. Red Berets’ deputy commander Zvezdan Jovanovic was convicted of pulling the trigger. Both men were sentenced to 40 years in prison, while the other ten men received sentences of between 8 and 35 years.
  • Vatican City - The Pope, under fire in Latin American for claiming the Catholic Church had purified Indians, acknowledged yesterday that “unjustifiable crimes” were committed during the colonization of the Americas. “It is, in fact, not possible to forget the suffering, injustices inflicted by the colonizers against the indigenous population, whose human and fundamental rights have often been trampled”, said the pontiff.
  • Iran - The United Nations nuclear monitor reported notable advances in Iran’s uranium enrichment program yesterday while warning for the first time that its knowledge of the country’s nuclear activities was shrinking. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s findings, while not surprising, set the stage for possible new UN sanctions - the third set of penalties since December, 2006.
  • United Nations - A new scandal rocked the biggest United Nations peacekeeping force in the world yesterday as allegations surfaced that Pakistani “blue helmet” peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo had traded weapons for gold with rebel groups they were supposed to be disarming. Human rights groups in the sprawling central African nation say Pakistani officers serving in the 17,600-strong force were involved in the illegal smuggling of up to $5 million U.S. in gold from the northeastern Ituri region.
  • Lebanon - Aid agencies estimate that around eleven thousand people were able to flee the besieged refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared when a ceasefire was called on Tuesday. Another 29,000 remain in the camp, now unable to leave. “The smell of corpses was everywhere. There was no food, water or electricity and they were shooting at us,” a 21-year-old university student said of the past three days in the camp. “The army will not negotiate with Fatah al-Islam, which has two choices: either surrender or the army will take the military option,” Elias Murr, Lebanon’s Defence Minister said in an interview on Arabic satellite channel al-Arabiya.

Good thing there are a few bemusing, even amusing news items to lighten up the day from time to time. Good thing reading the news doesn't send us into a permanent downward spiral of depression. Good thing we don't give up hoping that we can manage to beat this rap and eventually turn out a performance to add lustre instead of shame to our pathetic record. We're still hoping to be able to rein in our baser impulses; does this make us naive beyond redemption?

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posted by Pieface @ Thursday, May 24, 2007

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