Incredible India: Up Against the Koenig Imperative

Boot camp revamp

I had a major falling out with my trainer this morning on a number of issues regarding the delivery of the curriculum leading to a certification I am in interested.

When it comes to boot camp training, it can be difficult to balance the issues of time, complete coverage, teaching, explanation and preparation for tests.

Much as I will like to attain my certifications as soon as possible, my learning methodology has never been by rote, accepted views or concepts have to have undergirding logic and I need to know that I am extending my body of knowledge.

The burden of history

For someone who has been in the ICT profession for 23 years, one can safely say a good deal of the concepts we take for granted today have their foundations in fundamentally primitive things we did decades.

People new to the field may have no need for the history of how, why and what things are today, maybe that is an advantage or disadvantage but it is impossible to expect those who have experience to just become sponges of new thinking without referencing knowledge they already have or activities that have practical affinity with the topic under discussion.

Intensive versus effective

Again, the curriculum is delivered in 6 8-hour days and sometimes Sundays, the danger of saturation looms, the trainer wanting to cover the requisite material, the trainee wanting to pace the absorption so that the quality becomes of greater significance than the quality.

In other words, there might be a case for 5 hours of effective training over 8 hours of intensive training, each trainee knows what they can handle before they begin to wilt and that is only just human.

Delivery prowess

Then, there are amazing differences between the two trainers I have had, the Microsoft Official Curriculum is tied to Powerpoint slides that were followed quite closely and made the taking of notes less easy especially in a one-on-one teaching setup.

The better delivery method with regards to the Powerpoint slides should have been having the slides offered as notes to trainees to annotate thereby helping link discussion with concept and reference.

In the case of my CCNA trainer, she is no less than prodigious, in the 4 days of my training already, she has not one referenced a note, she fills the board with point after point with literal total recall, in the probably 500 sentences she has written on the board, she has only once asked if one point had been written and that point was probably the least significant of the lot.

Rhyme without reason

Things began to reach a head yesterday when first certain definitions appeared to challenge the conventional use of language, English being the medium but meanings appearing to indicate the opposite.

I could not absorb the idea that Least Feasible Distance could go on to mean Best Option, regardless of tone, context, syntax or semantics, this was an exceptional anomaly and I felt quite uncomfortable with this.

I dare say English is not really the same between what is spoken and written in America and what the English speak especially when there is a purist determination in one’s mode of expression – that is just a fact.

English usage and meaning

I have worried that I might get caught out with American usage and Americanisms and a typical example I give is our pants are never exposed whilst Americans wear theirs openly. Alright, pants are underwear in England but trousers in America if viewed from an English perspective just as a negative is always a negative on our side of the pond no matter how many you string together whereas in America the mathematical double negative take precedent to yield a positive or the affirmative.

Another usage of Active and Passive which had the implication of opposites in the class seemed to be given a much more acceptable reading when explained in another context from other material I reviewed.

Just as we have English and US English dictionaries, I am beginning to think whilst allowances can be made for similarity and difference, there might be a case for clearly differentiating the material and not assuming English is really the same around the globe.

However, it was when a formula was written on the board that combined two unrelated units that I had had enough. I was not in class to jettison my engineering background and there had to be a reason why that formula was the accepted code.

Oranges and apples

At this point, I was impervious to the illogical and scientifically incorrect; I could not imagine that all the engineering in Cisco had produced a dimensional and mathematical inexactitude without reason.

That reason was not forthcoming, I was to absorb this by law and learn it by rote – for a person who was first precocious, then inquisitive, interrogative, curious, questioning, researching and challenging assumptions no matter how widely held, this was one of those moments where without reason there could be no progress.

Yesterday, I got up, closed my book, slammed the lid of my netbook and was ready to walk out of the course, she was able to placate me but I was far from satisfied.

Now, I know

On returning to my hotel, that was the first topic I researched and then I saw the extensive formula that got condensed to what was written on the board, the engineering and mathematical proof was evident – that for me is what you call the impartation of knowledge and the fulfilment of understanding – the why and how was there to see.

So, in the morning I took my discovery to my trainer and she acknowledged she knew this but it was beyond the scope of the course I was on. Whilst that was appreciated, I felt a conflict brewing because I was not just going to take everything as gospel but will require clear detail where assumptions are made that seem to challenge the concepts of language or science as predicated from my “wealth” of experience.

Fracture!

By the time we had exchanged a few good views about the material it was time for my trainer to say she could no more continue the training and I felt we had reached an irreconcilable impasse.

I then had a meeting with the officials and technical manager where generally what they seemed to be concerned with was the method (The Koenig Imperative – course material delivered within constrained time-frames leading to certification).

In some ways, I acquiesced and we agreed to continue the course because the curriculum is really an abridged version of the more serious engineering concepts that I will find more interesting and aligned to my engineering background.

Patching up

I can understand my trainer’s frustrations though I cannot say she fully appreciates that I cannot extend my knowledge of these concepts just by faith without seeking the fundamental reasons for why and how such conclusions were arrived at – it is just the bane of my kind of background, that I have become a somewhat difficult and impossible trainee after her having delivered this curriculum to well over 500 trainees is unfortunate.

I am not a robot, God help my intellect and we both need a healthy dose of patience with each other.

We appeared to patch things up and continue with the training, an interestingly eventful day. 

Artyom Savelyev deserves a loving mother

It cannot be true

I could not be consumed with greater indignation when I read this story which was pointed out to me by a friend.

The news article headline read – Unwanted adopted boy sent back to Russia [1] – it was the kind of story that drew you into the detail, you just wanted to know why.

Something about our way of life and comforts in the West can sometimes lure us into a sense of entitlement and the drive to acquire any faddish thing that twinkles or sparkles to satisfy a whim.

In the case of Torry-Ann Hansen a 27-year-old unmarried “nurse” from Tennessee in the United States, it took her 6 months to realise that what she wanted was not a child but a Tamagotchi [2], however we now find ourselves in the midst of what by all means is cruelty beyond expression meted out to an innocent child by a selfish, inconsiderate and irresponsible adult.

An excursion to Moscow

This 7-year old child, Artyom Savelyev who apparently has a living birth-mother who in 2008 was relieved of her motherhood rights was adopted from an orphanage in the autumn of 2009, he has now been returned as a unaccompanied child on a 10-hour flight back to Russia with sweets, biscuits and colouring pens in his rucksack and welcomed by a stranger who was paid $200 by Ms Hansen to make him part of her history – a closed chapter.

Ms Hansen is unfortunate to have a name that sounds like that of the boy in the Hansel & Gretel [3] fairy tale but has cast herself most ominously as the evil child-eating witch in the story.

A 7 year old reality of life

There is no 7 year old child that comes with a zero-memory life whose behaviour defaults to a foetus template ready to be moulded like plasticine into some fancy toy perfect kid – even puppies at times need behavioural classes.

Whilst there might have been no clear information as to how and why the child ended up in the orphanage by reason of his mother losing the privilege of parenting, it is possible that it would have had some impact on the child. [Video in news story says the mother was drunken.]

The appearance of Ms Hansen as an adoptive mother might have been like a God-send for the child but the mothering skills of Ms Hansen are now more than questionable, her mental state must be suspect and as a nurse, her professional capability probably leaves patients in danger of serious harm.

Reprehensible indeed

Regardless of the supposed behavioural problems of Artyom, this impatient malcontent of a woman cannot have in 6 months decided that work of parenting was so impossible to dispatch that the motherly instinct that sent her on a journey to the far East of Russia in the Primorye Krai [4] region (Siberia to you and me) had been exhausted.

What this exemplifies is a fundamental flaw in our society which oozes of privilege, opportunity and inordinate acquisition; a shopping-mall complex that feeds the addictive yearning of a shopaholic who grabs at every luxury item without any thought of how it would eventually be paid for until the bills finally come in.

In this case, what was shopped for was a child, once the novelty had worn off the warranty allowed for the return of goods with a valid receipt.

In the bizarre case of life imitating the absurd is the heartlessness of this contemptible woman who subjected this child to a sense of indifferent detachment that would rarely be found in lower forms of life by telling the boy he was going on an excursion, then arranging for a complete stranger to pick him on arrival in Moscow and that was still about another 7 time zones from his native land.

The return slip? “I no longer wish to parent this child”, he lived with her for six months and he is still this child? [Cool me down with a pail of freezing water, please]

A hateful, spiteful woman

She passed the responsibility of return on to others when the least she could have done was to hand him back to the orphanage where she first acquired this bundle of love without consideration of the cost – the cheapest flight by Aeroflot to that region would have cost another $500 but it was convenient to entrust the care of the child to an Internet stranger for $200.

It must have been such good fortune on the child to not have fallen into the hands of traffickers or abusers, though the greatest abuse had already been meted out to the child by twice having motherly care withdrawn from him.

What the poor child could have done to have such great evil befall him from such an unstable person who no doubt is in need of supervised and regimented care escapes me but the saga must not end there.

It is an outrage that this woman would ever think she could walk away from this issue completely exculpated and vindicated; already this selfish action of hers has lead to the Russian authorities suspending the adoption of Russian children by US citizens.

This is right and just because there might really be the need for some re-education about what adoption entails and the attendant responsibilities of parenting which Ms Hansen appears to have lacked.

Justice for Artyom

Much as one would want to rain abuse on the woman, there has to be a criminal dimension to this woman’s actions if she is considered to be mentally stable and in control of all her faculties.

Society, no matter how liberal, tolerant and amenable should not countenance this without the utmost disgust, umbrage, scorn and retribution – NO CHILD – deserves to be treated in such a way and in almost unquenchable ire with exhausting exasperation, I say – Lock this woman up and throw away the key.

And honestly, that does not begin to bring a sense of justice to the plight of Artyom Savelyev.

Sources

[1] Unwanted Adopted Boy Sent Back To Russia - Yahoo! News UK

[2] Tamagotchi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Hansel and Gretel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Primorsky Krai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thought Picnic: The Americe First Principle in Fort Hood

No more a news junkie

But for the guest living with me whose presence helps my recuperation no end, I would not have seen anything on television since I returned from hospital about a month ago.

In fact, of all the television I have watched, most has been DVDs or a Friday night Dutch entertainment programme; I have suddenly become a non-news junkie.

I am no more interested in channel-hopping news channels seeking opinion and fulminating analysis of the events of the day.

If the breaking news is that I have won the lottery, eventually, the letter confirming the win will arrive in the post and we can do what needs to be done. One has to ask, what use is breaking news if you are not locked into a hypertensive stock market where your blood pressure undecided vacillates with the market, every minute is lived on the verge of a heart attack.

Even the diehard would soon realise the heart and mind does need respite from the pestilence of news and wars that surround us, we cannot find inner peace if we continue to bombard ourselves with the negative that masquerades as news.

Late on Fort Hood

It is this situation of deserved withdrawal that left me late on the trail of the Fort Hood killings; I refuse to give that situation any volatile labels because there is an underlying issue well below the rhetoric and public pronouncements that needs review.

The man joined what some people have called a family, the family of the United States Army and he was resident amongst his folk in the broadest sense of what family means.

As a psychiatrist, one would suppose his functions include “ministering” to the mental needs of siblings in that family who for all intends and purposes are trained to attack, kill and overrun the enemy, the survival instinct being alive and sometimes this ignores the way war and conflict changes a man into something yet to find adequate description apart from a fighting machine.

This man on certain aspects of merit had been honoured in the family, he had risen to the rank of major, so he was no idiot, he earned that rank, deserved that rank and was respected in that rank.

Accentuating his difference

However, there were other issues, the man happened to be Muslim, not that it should matter, I have close family members who are Muslim and they are no different from me, they are respectable, honest, diligent and worthy people whom I honour and treat with the utmost respect and regard.

Apparently, in his family, that is to say the US Army, this man found little acceptance, was disrespected and treated “badly”, one would assume. At least, this treatment within the family did lead to him wanting to leave the US Army but some hard-headed disciplinarian within the family thought little of considering this request and I am sorry, that person or persons are just as culpable in this act not by commission but by omission.

The family dynamic broke

The family is supposed to be a harmonious setting but if one of the siblings is ostracised for whatever reason and the parents do not act to make that sibling inclusively loved and cared for as to feel equal and accepted as equal in the family, it is a recipe of great disaster.

The superiority of the other siblings that belittles the abilities and the status of ostracised sibling usually ends up later in exchanged roles where the ostracised suddenly holds all the aces and everyone else is left begging for something they no more have the ability to keep or protect.

For all the opprobrium the Fort Hood killings would generate about religion, people of foreign descent and many other things that excite bigotry in the name of commentary and condemning a supposedly dastardly act, the problem started long before the man made Major, it started when they saw he looked different and did different things – nobody dealt with it then and now we have a monster. No excuse for the act itself but it calls for a deep soul-searching in the US Army hierarchy.

The family dynamic can only thrive when everyone is helped to feel part of the family, that responsibility first falls on those in charge like parents and then on the siblings who hopefully have good examples to follow from parents and good leadership.

American first no matter how different

It is a tragedy, no less but the triggers were pulled long before the guns downed the many unfortunate victims of a dysfunctional family situation that was allowed to thrive to the point of disaster.

The family needs to come together and ensure everyone really feels in and involved without ostracism, that would take longer than an inquiry, it would be a paradigm shift and complete change of mindset because the diversity of America would soon be fully reflected in every establishment and there would be no place to differentiate between people apart from the binding fact that you are all Americans first and Americans always.

Luc Montagnier takes the Nobel Prize for isolating HIV

It is Nobel week

This week is Nobel Prize week and the first one has already been named for Physiology or Medicine 2008 [1].

In what can only be the recognition of peers and retribution of the gods, one name stuck out in the list of winners, the prize is shared by three persons, but for me, the name I can remember is Luc Montagnier.

What causes AIDS?

Professor Luc Montagnier [2] was a pioneer at the world renowned Pasteur Institute [3] in Paris whose work has been acknowledged and feted in the search for the causative agent of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

Just like the arms race between the West and the Soviet Union, there was a virus race between America and France to isolate the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV).

As history would have it, there was an acrimonious dispute about who first isolated HIV and the reckoning that now accepts that it was first isolated by the French but the glory was snatched away with a rushed announcement by the Americans under the genius abilities of Dr. Robert C. Gallo [4].

The work of others

Now, this is not to discount [5] the ground-breaking work of Dr. Gallo because Prof. Montagnier discovered the virus and Dr. Gallo showed that the virus caused the disease, he also went on to create a blood test which has a shared patent between the French and the Americans.

Laughing last

But today, for all the work and in recognition of a man who at times looked wronged, was once frustrated and trumped by the ascendancy of publicity over the once respectable endeavour of scientific research for the good of humanity; he takes the prize, just a quarter of it, but the Nobel Prize is the Nobel Prize whatever the share. Some might record this event as controversial and did I forget to mention that Professor Luc Montagnier sharesone half og the prize with Françoise Barré-Sinoussi [6], a lady, with whom he shares the work for which he is honoured.

Congratulations! Professor Montagnier and thank you very much.

Sources

[1] The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2008

[2] Luc Montagnier - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Pasteur Institute - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Robert Gallo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] The sound and fury of HIV - US News and World Report

Luc Montagnier – From Internet FAQ Archives

Robert C. Gallo – From Internet FAQ Archives

Power of Our Example

Awakening to vision and audio

I was up last night as I always sleep with my television on, my dreams of sound and imagination just eases into the reality of vision and audio with the hope I have not arrived from a terrifying Steven King saga.

I prefer to sleep with news channels on rather than music channels, I do however remember a time I had the gospels playing back during me sleep, it sometimes made those stories and events alive and vivid.

Anyway, I got up to CNN’s coverage of the Democratic National Convention when Bill Clinton was about to speak.

Taking time to accept Obama

So much had been made of Bill Clinton being sour about Hillary losing to Barack Obama, he has been one of the most ardent supporters of his wife’s bid for the nomination and who can blame him?

It also took time for me to realise that Obama was at the head of a movement whose time had come rather than a motivator for a campaign to fulfil an ambition.

As Bill Clinton came on stage, one could see that that he was still well liked, there was lots of adulation and the ovation went on for minutes that he had to entreat the people to stop and sit down for business to continue.

The talk that matters

He finally got to say his bit and it was vintage Bill, the Democratic Party today appears to be blessed with at least three very prominent people who have found the key to the use of words to inspire people, the other two being Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Bill Clinton successfully linked the relationship between a strong America at home and a secure America abroad as he forcefully backed the candidacy of Barack Obama for President.

I have the feeling the Hillary Clinton might not make another run for the White House if Barack Obama takes the Presidency in November.

Example of our Power

However, what I found the most striking about Bill Clinton’s speech was when he said “People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.” [1]

This subtle use of and juxtaposition of words speaks volumes, just as certain people would attempt to view the failings of Bill Clinton as a poor example of moral rectitude, the example of power he has portrayed has been for the good in many places.

The judgement call for Americans is the preparation for posterity and the beginning of history – it would ask if America would be viewed as projecting the power of example as to have become a civilisation in its own right or whether the example of power has made them no better than vandals, Barbarians and plunderers whose self-interest left the world in great turmoil as we have today.

Under siege or higher purpose

The weight of history need not fall on the shoulders of Americans today but the future that begins today provides a path that can make a whole difference towards the troubles America faces today – Where “the American dream is under siege at home, and America's leadership in the world has been weakened.”

Shall they and the American dream remain under siege with a continuation of the policies of the last 8 years or shall America’s leadership in the world be strengthened with the advent of a man who “has a remarkable ability to inspire people, to raise our hopes and rally us to high purpose?”

A place called hope

That man was Bill Clinton 16 years ago and he has passed the baton today to Barack Obama; the alternative, for all intents and purposes falls far short of that higher purpose because the passage of time seems to have vindicated the measured and insightful views of Barack Obama than the belligerent machismo of John McCain on the war in Iraq, the timetabled withdrawal of troops and talking with Iran.

Being the most powerful country in the world, the responsibility that comes with that position is self-evident – the example of power has won wars but we are still in battles and the power of example has saved lives and won victories in the most intractable situations.

We have Bill Clinton to thank for articulating in words the clear purpose of the day and the duty Americans have to assure and safeguard their future and that of those after them by electing a man that embodies our hopes rather than one that accentuates our fears.

Source

[1] Democratic Convention, Bill Clinton Speech Transcript - Democratic National Convention Speech Transcripts - Zimbio:

So Saddam dies

More for the body count

As if enough blood has not been shed in Mesopotamia, the death sentence of Saddam Hussein has now been confirmed without option for appeal or commutation.

As usual, the appeal of humanity and barbarity welcomes this announce, Europe asking that this sentence rescinded and America heralding it as the quest for Iraq to "replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law". It all sounds hollow to me.

The death of Saddam would not suddenly staunch the flow of blood just as his capture did not change the ferocity of the insurgency.

The miscarriage of justice would be so evident in the finality of his death, as I once stated, Saddam is now guilty of one specific crime, the killings in the town of Dujail, however, he is accused of many others and probably would be guilty of those too.

If however, his sentence is carried out within the next 30 days, the other crimes and accussations would possibly be tried post-humously - so is the legacy of the rule of law that America has bequeath to Iraq.

Illegimate justice

Basically, I do not expect any lawyer to waste their time trying to defend a man who is dead and buried, except if there is a principle at stake. That principle of has already been compromised and made of non-effect by what constituted a circus of a kangaroo court, accepted by many but would hardly be legitimate by ordinary Western standards.

Beyond that, if the death sentence is to be carried out, there is a tradition to execute military men by firing squad, to kill Saddam Hussein as a common criminal by hanging, having ruled his country for about 30 years, albeit tyrannically would leave all involved lesser men that they purport themselves to be.

Blood thirsty plague

There is however a deficit of global leadership on dealing with tyranny, if Zimbabwe, Burma (Myanar), Sudan and North Korea, to name a few thrive on oppressing their people and quenching their aspirations to better government.

Then the appeals court in confirming Saddam Hussein´s sentence was of the opinion that the life sentence given to one defendant was too lenient - baying for more blood obviously.

It can be said that before America visited Iraq, the blood-thirstiness was the preserve of the cabal of Saddam´s kith and kin, now, everyone has a taste for blood, in my view, these sacrifices of human beings would not bring peace, love and joy to Iraq, not that it has brought any respite to all involved.

American Congress failing the American People

Red face from reps page

Three pieces of news coming out of America appear to show how so different that land is and it so fills me with amazement that people find such comfort in that place.

Probably 10 years ago, the by-line would have been – Rep pages page’s pager … or something along those lines if the tabloids ever got into the salacious side of a sad story of child sexual abuse.

Apparently, for a few years, a Republican Congressman has found the pastime of sending sexually explicit messages to pages – students who get the opportunity to walk the corridors of power as messengers and assistants.

The youngest of who might have been 16, now, for a man in power and authority having membership of the caucus on missing and exploited children it was wrong to abuse his position in that way and it was wrong to subject the young men to such illicit and lewd communication.

Culpability in inaction

If Congressman Foley considered his actions a form of mentoring young men into understanding sex, well, one can only speculate; however, the Republican leadership of the Congress who appeared to have known about this for a while now seem to be feigning innocence as the whole affair has suddenly consumed the fire of their campaign hardly six weeks to the mid-term elections.

It reminds one of the inaction that accompanied sexual abuse claims within the Catholic Church, alas, lessons are not being learnt.

The converse of this is, the young man was 16, quite well past puberty and in Europe would have been more sexually aware, intelligent or active rather than being utterly sexually naïve as one can almost expect of Americans of that age.

There would be some mileage in this thing before the elections turf out a few more Republicans, meanwhile, Mr Foley has demonstrated a classic, accepted guilt, gone for rehabilitation for alcoholism and behavioural problems – it is unlikely the birch would be introduced to teach bad boy – Mr Foley – a useful lesson.

Sadly, the abused child might only be able to afford a comforting ice-cream from mummy and daddy before the media circus helps to ruin the young man’s self esteem for life.

Gambling on a fools gambit

Then, as usually, the warped argument about online gambling leading to addiction, debt and enticement of children has lead to a bad law being promulgated to ban financial institutions like banks and credit card companies from processing payments for participating in online gambling.

This is America where gambling is extremely big business Las Vegas is the bastion of wanton decadence and gambling like no other place on earth and somehow people who go there cannot play the same games from home. Absurd.

Well, the greater reason is, the clout of these casinos as lobbyists and sponsors of politicians has prevent Internet upstarts from establishing online gambling businesses, it is also amusing that having raped indigenous American Indians of wealth and land, they are allowed to build humongous gambling empires in their reservations as a sop for past injustices, part of what lead to the Abramoff scandal.

It is the taxes, stupid

More so, Americans being able to gamble in a global market from the comfort of their homes in a $12 billion business registered offshore, the federal and state governments get not taxes or revenues from these organisations lodged in tax havens all around the world.

No online gambling dollars lining the campaign funds or hospitality troughs of politicians is a cause to fight for and nip the financial transactions in the bud and let it all get more sinister, go underground and less regulated – because the American Congress has been elected to protect the American People from things they as adults should have the sense to know to want to do or abstain from.

The thing about children getting addicted to gambling does not wash, you need a credit card to join an online gambling facility and you can only get a credit card at a certain age – the same credit card can be used to register on porn sites, but I see no Congressman seeking to ban financial transactions to porn sites except those of the fundamentalist and Puritan kind.

Those who want to gamble would gamble in anyway they want; regulation is the better use of law not prohibition, just as drug addicts or alcoholics cannot be legislated out of existence. This is one rather bad law, it might hurt the online gambling businesses for a while, but it would not cure the 50% trade that comes from America from their addiction if they are already hooked.

Suicide gunners and schools

Utterly depressed, repressed or disturbed people with access to guns and ammunition that have been seized from the cold dead hands of Charles Heston have visited schools and shot people, already, thrice this week in America.

OK! We did have one occasion in Dunblane in Scotland where a crazed loner shot 16 children with their teacher before killing himself, one well-adjusted and successful kid from that school is Andrew Murray the rising tennis star – thank God for that – I could almost assume such a recovery might be difficult in America, but that would be both facetious and cynical.

However, it appears people do not want to singularly and quietly commit suicide anymore because their insignificant and uneventful lives might not even make the village rag, so they walk off into a nearby school, take children hostage, run the airwaves for a few hours, appear to negotiate and then shoot up innocent people and then themselves.

I am tempted to say that suicide bombers have a cause and these people have no cause, no purpose and no souls – why use innocent blood to give some publicity or credence to your suicide? This applies to all “suiciders” (a Bushism) all around the world.

A gun law is needed

If there is a case of the Congress to settle on, it is the getting of guns off the streets and reducing the availability of guns to just anyone, the warped interpretation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is a problem.

It is still my belief that what it means is; the right to bear arms is only justified as part of a well regulated militia – basically, if you are not in the forces, that right does not exist except when you can called up to defend the state – it does not say you cannot own a gun, but it is not a right to hold one, just as you can own a car, but that does not become a right to have a car.

If there is any need for a new study too, it is that about finding out why these people choose vulnerable people to experience their gruesome deaths when they could find an isolated barn and do the deed if they so wish to end their lives.

How many more headline grabbing shootouts of kids in schools like Columbine do we need before the guns are grabbed out of living and dead hands and burnt out of existence?

Do you read this, the way I do?

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Second Amendment

An opportunity to make friends - with Syria

Syria, the pummelled

Syria for a while had become the poster child for what is wrong and unsettling about the Middle-East from the American perspective.

Having been implicated in the gruesome and explosive assassination of the ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri leading to the reluctant but coerced withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon, then their support for Hezbollah and the brick bats they received with Iran regarding Hezbollah’s attack of Israel, they have every right to be indifferent about American issues.

Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General visited Syria recently and extracted a cooperation where Syria would impose an arms embargo on its Hezbollah ally and even allow troops to patrol their border with Lebanon – my point – it is good to talk.

Syria, the brave

So, some cack-handed terrorists poorly executed a plan to bomb the US Embassy in Damascus – Yes, the US is accorded diplomatic recognition in Syria though with no one at ambassadorial level, despite what they have to endure from America – the Syrian security personnel spirited foiled the attack in which one of their number was killed.

Ironically, this “supporter of terrorism”, be it the insurgency in Iraq or the Hezbollah in Lebanon is a fighter of terrorism on its own land even if it pertains to the endangerment of life and property of it chief accuser, America.

America could not but acknowledge with grudging gratitude Syria’s efforts through Condoleezza Rice though that was soured with another comment from the White House that Syria should play a more constructive role in the war against terrorism – take a deep breath of despair.

To Teheran with love

Then switch to Teheran and it is Assyrian/Persian hugs and kisses between Ahmadinejad and Al-Maliki, the Iranian President and the Iraqi Prime Minister respectively.

The Great Satan (America) would be completed miffed with this visit to a possible abode of three – Iran in the Axis-of-Evil.

Despite all the American views about Iran stirring up the Shiite insurgency in Iraq, Iran has offered to cooperate in ensuring Iraq security and stability along with other extensive cooperation deals on oil exploration and export.

With all the American lives being lost in Iraq, the government does have to chart its own way and they are showing that regional cooperation matters regardless of who America counts as friend or foe.

As far as the Middle-East is concerned, Iran and Syria after the Hezbollah skirmish in Israel are the new brokers for regional hegemony in that region with Israel now being exposed as more vulnerable than they thought they were.

Talk and communicate

It is really time to start talking rather that flinging hateful words and vitriol from the White House and State Department like intercontinental precision ballistic missiles.

It is time to try and become friends and talk though your differences, this whole idea of the guarded self-importance of the President of America precluding him from meeting with other people just in case he offers them clout, recognition or legitimacy is self-conceited to the extreme.

It would do well to engage in high-level talks according each other a modicum of respect and courtesy; that said, it is not a team that should include John Bolton even under sedation.

The Bush Doctrine

Pre-emptive thinking

When Dick Cheney introduced us to the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive action, which is to strike the threat before they strike us, many would have thought that was an unfunny joke.

Well, we learnt the very hard way; the logic follows that you choose an enemy, throw a few reasons about your decision to attack in the basket and then coerce your weaker allies to join in your bludgeoning of the tougher allies and the enemy.

In the process call every voice of reason irrelevant, lump all opposition with your enemy, justify that stance with any means possible and this is by no means unilateral.

As we know, you are doing a tough job, making tough decisions and taking well, liberties.

The Underhand

The read in the news yesterday morning that the coalition had performed the underhand to the representative exiles that constitute the new Iraqi government was as pre-emptive as you could get.

A bit of trivia informs us that nine were educated in the United Kingdom and eight in the United States and by consequence they know Western values and freedom.

It obviously pre-empted every thought and preparation for the original hangover date of the 30th of June 2004 no matter how unprepared they are for this onerous task.

Definitely, this has also pre-empted the almost definitely expected carnage that might have been unleashed by the insurgents on the day of the underhand, maybe smart, we knows with these pre-emptive actions.

However, I still contend that Western values of democracy, freedom and liberties may still not be as adaptable to the Middle East as the theoreticians of the American neo-conservative doctrine might have hoped.

Premature ejaculation

Excuse my use of a rather crude phrase, but it all smacks of a problem you cannot talk about, that bothers you so much and you wonder what to do.

All the worry only tends to complicate the problem until you read an advertisement placed by some charlatan with more degrees than a lake of molten magma in the classifieds of a reputable broadsheet newspaper offering a cure for all your ailments.

Desperation, curiosity and daring-do challenge all your faculties of reason in this inordinate quest for a cure which you never get.

The allegory only baffles you about what other pre-emptive actions might be taken apart from the others like awarding the Iraqi contracts to only America and its allies, then asking the non-allies to forgive Iraqi debt.

Consider the pre-emptive actions of officially sanctioned prisoner abuse then realising that you have forfeited moral high ground to seek an extension to your waiver from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Now you take other pre-emptive by signing bi-lateral agreements with 90 little Bantustans to undermine the scope of the ICC.

In the obscure situation surrounding the sovereignty of the Iraqi government and the coalition who would now defer to Mr John Negroponte, the erstwhile US ambassador to the UN, now US ambassador to Iraq - I suppose it is a just reward from hothouse diplomacy based on faulty intelligence to another hothouse prison to protect you from the insurgents.

That apart from the expected pre-emptive - a misnomer - bargaining power that he holds by withholding funding, or releasing it at whim, the American troops who have done so well to maintain the security of the large Green zone in the middle of Baghdad do not pull out too soon.

Even I am being presumptuously pre-emptive about suggesting that. Another thing, Al Paul Bremer has left the country.

American misconceptions of a greater world

Nations and identities

It is with interest that one observes the way the general American public thinks about world issues.

At first is the anomaly of calling national sports finals the World Series, though rightly or wrongly, the provenance of World is probably related to some other function rather than the world itself, however, on first hearing it one would wonder what other countries are involved in a game primarily played in the Americas.

It might be something fundamentally wrong with the American education system that allows them to see American as a country and then every other grouping of people in terms of geography, race, religion or affiliation is pigeon-holed into an equivalent entity.

This gives rise to comparisons like America and the World, America and Europe, America and the Middle East, Democracy and Terrorism, Christianity and Islam and so on.

Yet, America only consists of just about 300 million people out of the 6.2 billion of the global population, a twentieth of human kind.

Them and Us

The way the present American regime has played up this issue is unfortunate, desperate and radically unethical. For all the goodwill accruing to America in the advent of the terrorist attack of September the 11th 2001, they managed to convert that account into an amazing deficit, just as they have the economy.

First was the pledge by the president to be a uniter and not a divider only to make the American society the most polarised along all lines of debate from the congress through to basic everyday issues.

Then allies who were unceremoniously challenged and riled in the UN with the view that only support for whatever America had in mind was the right way and any opposition was in favour of terrorists at best and made the UN irrelevant at worst.

The Rumsfeld theory of old Europe versus new Europe was interesting, considering it was the so-called old Europe that created the entity into which the new Europe had striven for years to join.

Old in some cases tempers the feisty with recognition of insight, wisdom and caution - all of which were lacking in America’s pursuit of its unilateral aim of deposing Saddam Hussein.

Them and us almost sounds like them and US (The United States of America), united they might be in name, and only in name as an entity.

Spain had the unfortunate situation of a terrorist attack perpetrated by Al Qaeda operatives which the then government tried to pin on local terrorists.

As the truth of the situation broke out, people for once reacted to the fact that a democratically elected government out to blatantly cajole and deceive its people is not worthy of the prize of government and leadership.

That lie was suppressed in favour of accusing the Spaniards of timidity, more so because the new government promised to withdraw their troops forthwith from Iraq and they did what they promised.

Everyone knows that Spain has suffered terrorist attacks for over 30 years, well before 9/11/2001 was hatched in the mind of Al Qaeda.

It was the most disingenuous thing to suggest; more places in the world have suffered harrowing terrorist attacks that the one in America was probably the biggest does not make the sufferings of others less significant.

America had thought themselves immune to attacks because of the Atlantic Ocean and the removal of weapons of mass destruction.

Well, the fact is that the terrorists trained in America for up to a year, and used nothing of the sort expected by the expert analysts that review terrorist activities.

Tom Clancy probably has more to say about hatching terrorist plots from what one can read in his best selling books.

Islam is neither a nation nor a people

This misconception is compounded by references made by supposedly intelligent commentators who have decried the lack of condemnation from the Muslim world about 9/11 whilst the Americans expressed revulsion at the events in the Abu Ghraib prison.

Just as there is no clear entity to identify a Christian world, Hindu world, Atheist world or some other belief system world and I can clearly state that the Muslim is not an existential entity of reference.

Rather it is simply people of the earth, scattered around the globe though more concentrated in some areas that adhere to the teachings of Mohammed.

Whilst the Pope in the Vatican is at times mistakenly considered the head of the earthly Christian religion, his remit is primarily the Catholic branch, there is the Anglican, Evangelical, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Coptic and so on; branches of Christianity, and so we have many branches in Islam, the more prominent being the Sunnite and the Shiite, leaders of these branches in the various countries are not a few.

However, we can clearly say that countries that are predominantly Muslim like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Indonesia, Morocco or even Pakistan can speak through their governments about their revulsion of these attacks, but America having alienated Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan as terrorist supporters or part of the Axis of Evil; silence or glee might as a consequence replace expected commiseration.

You cannot make public enemies of states and then expect them to sympathise with your plight, no matter how heinous. It is a standard human emotion and quality.

No single country is a representative of global Islam, just as America is not a representative of global Christianity. There are more professed Christians in other parts of the world than America.

Whilst Al Qaeda has tried to create the notion of a global Islam through their pronouncements and activities, America has helped foster that view by lumping each regional terrorist event as a synonymous Al Qaeda and Islamic fundamentalism threat and event, they in turn have promoted this view as a Islam versus Crusader conflict.

I have my doubts about America being the leader of the free world, each nation is free according to what its people allow. More so, the nations of Europe have lesser impediments to their freedom than America, where their freedoms have lead to more restrictions through the surreptitiously named Patriot Act.

As we all have seen with communist states, the People’s Democratic Republic of Bantustan is never about the people, hardly ever democratic, republican for eliminating a monarchy but still having a corrupt ruling class, and surely, every country needs to have a name - in this case - Bantustan.

American has much to learn about the world; the geography is easy, but the people and their cultures are an entirely different matter; a lack of commitment to educate, inform and enlighten from their educational system and their press is what has failed the many who if they knew better might express better and intelligent opinions and vote objectively after good consideration of the issues at hand.