One Big Happy World
Think of the world as itself in a microcosm reflected by a family situation. Unfortunately, not the thriving family of legend with all of its members protective and appreciative and loving of one another, but the dreaded dysfunctional family. Where the senior residents attempt to lead and inspire, to instill in the junior members respect for one another and most particularly for the seniors among them. Power plays reign supreme. Seniors invoke seniority; juniors rebel.Accusations fly. Demands are ignored. The juniors are incorrigibly self-concerned, the seniors indignantly, blisteringly righteous. Each views the other with suspicion, anger, dread. A wide gulf separates them. No one is willing to accede to the other's demands. The elders see the younger as self-absorbed and injudiciously rejecting of the wisdom of their elders. The divisively platitudinous edicts and demands of the elders frustrate and infuriate the dependents.
All is not well with the family. It is not long before affinity and patience and concord disintegrates. Grudges are born. Hostilities firm up. Misunderstandings abound, with little effort expended to bridge the gap. The family home is abandoned, the elders bereft and puzzled and furious at one and the same time. The children relieved to go their own way and determined it is their right to make their own mistakes.
And here's the great wide world we all inhabit. Where we all are determined to re-invent every human construct of emotional disagreements conceivable. The energy expended in denying one another's concerns, needs and feelings leaves us exhausted, worried and incapable of imagining a world without conflict. And little wonder: since time immemorial mankind has proven conclusively that it is more inclined to conflict than peace.
- U.S. president George W. Bush is adamant that the White House is "making it very clear" to Turkey not to launch a cross-border military strike against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. Turkey's parliament voted overwhelmingly to put the country on a war footing, empowering the military to strike against the Kurdish Workers Party which has been staging murderous raids into Turkey from bases in Northern Iraq. The Kurds, in Iraq, Iran and Turkey are anxious to acquire their own sovereign geography.
- Terrorist suicide missions within Iraq continue apace, Shi'ites pledging to wipe out Sunnis and Sunnis determined to destroy Shia communities. Iraqi civilians remain targetted, most particularly those seeking work as police in the horribly destabilized society, where there is a shortage of everything from food to energy to hope for the future, as Iraqis continue to flee the country, anxious to find safe refuge elsewhere.
- The Taliban are resurgent, returning to positions in northern provinces of Afghanistan where they were formerly absent. UN- and NATO-affiliated forces continue to apply themselves to infrastructure rehabilitation, and the ongoing work of training Afghan military and police. The spectre of a return to the past where women were objects of religious scorn and commodities, where children were indoctrinated if male, and uneducated if female, is joined with attempts to eradicate poppy-growing leaving farmers bereft of income and grudgingly supportive of the Taliban against the aliens.
- China is protesting the U.S. granting the Congressional Medal of Honour to the spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, a force for world peace, on a mission, unappreciated by an "undivisible" China administration to recognize the need for an autonomous spiritual Tibet, albeit under agreed Chinese rule. China is outraged at the world's purported 'interference' in its internal affairs vis-a-vis Taiwan and Tibet.
- President Vladimir Putin warns the United States against the mistaken potential for invasion of Iran. Russia remains supportive of a nuclear-ambitious Iran with an obvious agenda to accessing nuclear armaments, seen as a threat to the world by most other nations. Russia is committed to supporting an Islamist Iran threatening to annihilate a UN-member country, Israel.
- India continues to try to balance its population of indigenous Hindu (and Sikh) religious against that of the Muslim population, each unrelentingly aggressive against one another, occasionally murderously expressed. Its perennial disagreement with Pakistan with respect to the rightful ownership of Kashmir and the attacks against Indian citizens by terrorist-inspired Islamists over same is a continual worry since both countries have nuclear weapons capabilities.
- Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, given the encouragement of General Pervez Musharraf's dropping of corruption charges, has returned to the country to work out a partnership with the present prime minister, despite threats of suicide attacks by three Islamist terrorist groups. Insisting on ground transit rather than by air, a suicide attack leaves her safe while destroying the lives of a hundred supporters. Together they can discuss the future of the Islamist-terror-targeted country.
- Burmese pro-democracy activists are imprisoned. Some are tortured, some die as a result. The country is in political and civil disarray. Burmese authorities have sent their military to arrest any known activists, among them thousands of Buddhist monks who have placed themselves front and centre in protesting the repressive military government.
- Zimbabwe continues to implode. Its economy in shreds, its inflation rate soaring beyond economic comprehension, its people beggared. Zimbabweans are threatened by food, fuel and foreign currency shortages. Businesses are shuttering their premises, bullied by president Robert Mugabe's insistence that they manufacture and make products available at prices well below production costs. The population becomes dependent upon foreign food aid.
- North Korea, in agreeing to give up its aspirations for nuclear independence, including its search for nuclear arms in exchange for foreign investment and aid for its starving population, has nonetheless stealthily exported scientific-nuclear expertise and infrastructure to its allies in Syria. Whereupon Israel equally stealthily bombed the nascent nuclear facility out of existence. To the great chagrin of Syria and the nonplussed alarm of Iran - Israeli aircraft somehow having bypassed Russian-built detection systems.
- The Islamic government of Sudan continues to deny it is responsible for encouraging its allies, Sudanese Arab Janjaweed, to destroy hundreds of black Sudanese villages and towns and farming communities, raping and murdering thousands of Sudanese backed by insurgent militias. It reacts to UN and world alarm over the as-yet-unsolved crisis termed a genocide, with hundreds of thousands displaced Sudanese in refugee camps as interference, and with scorn rejects attempts to protect militia-raided and bombed camps.
Labels: Human Fallibility, World Crises
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, October 18, 2007
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