Saturday, July 4, 2009

SITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION - WORLD, TOO

Readers will have noticed that this site has only one page and even that is incomplete.  I’m still trying to find the right host, and even with support, building a site is difficult.  My apologies.  I hope readers will be patient, as other writing projects must take priority.

Perhaps it’s just as well, because, well, what can one say about the state of the world that hasn’t already been said?  I think we focus too much on the daily story, the latest coup, the growing ranks of homeless and hungry, here and abroad.  I’m trying to find the right balance between being on the right side of the issues - or history, as President Obama said recently - and accepting that life equals disorder.

Of course we have to be on the right side of the issues!  But perhaps we can manage that better if we realize that the various dramas that are being played out are variations on one theme: that of inequality.  A moving documentary seen on public television narrated by Mia Farrow iabout Rwanda fourteen years after the massacre of Tutsis by Hutus shows how survivors and murderers - who have been released from jail - are coping with forgiveness, as they try to put their lives back together.  We have always been told that this was a tribal issue, but in the intro-duction to the documentary, I learned that the Tutsis constituted a sort of upper class of farmers, while the Hutu were herdsmen.  If you dig a little into any conflict, you usually find a significant economic factor.

A step in the right direction toward building a global economic system was recently taken by the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon who called for new international institutions to regulate finance, feed the hungry and create jobs.

At the same time, a coup in Honduras leaves observers wondering: the ousted president was a left-winger, yet the coup was condemned by President Obama.  Will it eventually turn out that right-wing elements in the CIA cooperated with the Honduran military to oust a president who is supported not only by a majority of Hondurans,but by the growing cohort of Latin American left wing governments?  And that the purpose would be to embarrass President Obama?

July 4
This  morning the news is that Ahmadinejad’s side is heating up, a full three weeks after the election.  A major hardline newspaper called for Moussavi and former president Khatami to be tried in a “people’s court”.  I wrote in a previous blog that nothing could stop the situation in Iran from getting out of hand.  No one could know at the outset what the coming bifurcation would lead to. Just as it seemed that Iran could enjoy a green revolution, the flow of energy through the system accelerated to a bifurcation point that took the direction of greater repression.
Britain and the United States are too conscious of the military danger to be behind this: but Israel may be trying to force its “masters” to include Iran in its military intervention in the region, which already includes Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan.  They may be right to assume that the American public will continue to do nothing, as “NATO” gets deeper and deeper into a quagmire.

In case you think I"m being too pessimistic, get this: yesterday, 1000 immigrants were sworn in as American citizens in front of a castle at......  Disney World.  It would be funny if it weren't tragic: your new government is telling you right from the start that life in America is one big fairy tale.

3 comments:

  1. Hello,
    Ugh, I liked! So clear and positively.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry I cannot read your language. IF you are reading my blog you must know some English. If you can tell me what language you write in, I may be able to get an automatic translation.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry I cannot publish your comment because I don't read your language.

    ReplyDelete