Tag: UN

The swedes swing right. A surprise?

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The Swedish electorate has succumbed to the fear of overwhelming immigration. They are the last and least expected to follow the general right wing mood that is sweeping the Western World in both America and Europe.  Clearly there is abroad a fear and disquiet regarding the mass migration which is sweeping the world from the poorer regions to the wealthier ones.  Rationally, this should not be a surprise.

What exacerbates the issue is not just poverty but war, despotic and corrupt leaders, famine and disease, and of course the ease with which many people can nowadays travel. That is not to say that many who take flight do so in unimaginable hardship.

Migration is a global problem and as such should be at the top of the agenda for the security counsel and the general assembly of the U.N.. Regrettably the Security counsel is forever tied with its veto constitution which means that there is unlikely to be measurable improvement on decision making which will always be conditioned by the political divides of totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and so called democracy.

In the last analysis Messrs Putin, Xi and Trump run the world, all with competing and nationalistic ambition. It is worth noting that so far as this blogger is aware, there’s not much migration into Russia or China.  Trump who seems to be a populist simpleton is implementing draconian measures to protect the USA from the south American flood of migrants fleeing poverty and drug induced mayhem.

Putin is working hard to fan the middle eastern flames and so secure his Mediterranean base in Aleppo, whilst his axis with Iran is waging a proxy war with Saudi Arabia in Yemen fuelled by arms from the Western Alliance.

It certainly seems a complex mess, and there is an increasing imperative to improve the prospects of the African continent so that its population can acquire reasonable wealth and governance.

Africa, with its vast mineral wealth and ancient culture of learning, seems the one place that is well placed to improve its prospects whilst South America and the Middle East seem destined for prolonged chaos and thus de-stabilised populations.  The aspects of religious antagonism on the one hand, and wild drug induced dehumanisation on the other are frightening and seemingly without solution.

It is in all our interests to focus on stemming the tide of migration, not because we are afraid but because we want to share in a world that is balanced and where people can live freely and with fair material prospects.  Only then will the flood of migrants begin to slacken.

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No wonder I’m confused!

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The years go by and things change at an amazing rate. (I hate the word amazing used too much). But in this case, amazing means what it has been, mind-boggling, confusing, and dazzling.

Everything from politics to gender definition,  privacy, communication, you name it, things have changed.  What was once great, say The British Empire, is now held in contempt for the evils that were perpetrated along the way.  Slavery being the principal wrong. There were many others, institutions, and empires, where progress was defined in ways that would not be tolerated today.

The Church as I knew it has all but vanished, and the ascendency of other religions usually in the extreme form now grab all the attention and cause mayhem in the complexity of Middle East and throughout the world.

Capitalism has its fair share of detractors, and though I never believed it possible we see liberalism highjacked by the luny fringes leading to what amounts to an attack on the basic freedom of speech. Extreme liberalism is anything but, extremists use social media to shout down alternative viewpoints. Hence the birth of fake news and growing polarisation away from the consensual center ground

The history of many cultures is being re-examined in the light of modern (some say) thinking. Nothing is sacred anymore.

Yet the world still has enormous diversity not only climatic and racial, but cultural and political. I guess in the West we still cling to the idea of liberal capitalism but the EU is manifestly failing to sustain the great experiment, trying vainly to aggregate the views of Poland, Hungary, and Austria versus France, Germany and the bemused and bankrupt southern European states.  Populism, as exemplified by PORTUS Trump knows no apparent moral or legal code. Authoritarianism reigns unbridled in Russia and China, Corruption still reigns supreme in the developing world.  In short, the world is in a mess.

How are we to define progress?  What is progress?  A safer, cleaner kinder world would be a reasonable proposal. However, with such distrust and deviance of rational thinking, we are a long way from a move toward these noble aims. The UN remains hamstrung and useless because of the Paranoia of Putin, the indiscipline of Trump, the greed of many of the developing world leaders and the bemusement of the old guard. Still, a talking shop is better than no talking shop and it’s all that have.

No wonder I’m confused.

Human horror. Shout for it to stop!

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How bad does it have to get?  For the right to buy a machine gun the Americans are prepared to accept untold numbers of deaths.  It’s the Americans’ call.  However, the world watches as those poor Muslims from Myanmar are ethnically cleansed.  No one seems to give a damn.

I’ve already ranted on about the turncoat Aung Saan Suu Kyi, but I should also not forget those evil military leaders in Myanmar who actually carry out these atrocities.  The UN has called the issue ethnic cleansing but that hasn’t changed a thing on the ground.  Poor old Bangladesh which is one of the poorest nations on earth is doing its best to accommodate the massing refugee burden, and the poor refugees keep coming.

I feel like swearing in print, why weren’t we born as common flies surely we wouldn’t be so cruel and disgusting to our fellows.  The world is building aircraft carriers,  nuclear subs, nuclear warheads, sleeker aircraft and smart vacations spots for the rich and still the refugees march on through the miseries that are their lives.

Should we not be ashamed of our collective uselessness, our callous disregard for our fellow humans.  Shout!  Shout for it to stop.

A new charter for the planet.

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Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Monsoon flooding, refugee crisis not to mention the threat of nuclear war.  These are some of the catastrophes that face our planet this September day.  Add to that the deliberate acts of terror and one wonders if the human condition has a future.  Indeed does it deserve a future?

Amongst the most distressing issues are the deliberate acts of ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, sundry acts of terrorism as well as the chaos in Africa and the consequent mass migration.  These are human catastrophes which are the result of human behaviour.  These can be fixed if the human race in aggregate wants to fix them. The U.N. is the evolved institution that is at the centre of world order, and it (the UN) clearly is struggling to maintain any discipline or uniformity of behaviour democratic or otherwise.

Behind the raison d’etre for the UN is the keeping of the peace and the rule of international law and the relief of human disaster.  There is a constant struggle against the differences rather than the similarities of the international community.  Some would say, that nationalism and religious fundamentalism are the key areas of conflict and they may be right,

However, this is an impossibly complex set of issues that harbour the yet more complex matters such as competitive individual and national needs. The management of relative wealth, education, health and welfare all crowd in, an accident of geography seems to mitigate against relative success. In addition, there are the vagueries of leadership and they range from unpredictable populism to totalitarianism.  The rulers ofNorth Korea and Zimbabwe are just two examples where the great mass of the world’s opinion agree that they are just plain wrong.  The former in addition to routine murder and torture of its citizens is threatening nuclear catastrophy whilst the latter is a matter of plain thievery and the wrecking of a prospering economy. There are many other examples of rulers and communities who to the majority of world opinion believe them to be wrong.

Wrong is a big word, and conditioned by the definition of what ‘right’ means.  Sadly, on the one hand, things like women’s’ rights, freethinking, are accepted in some nations they are not in others.  The death penalty is still used in numerous states, dictators seem to be able to rise to power in the vacuum of ignorance.

The U.N. is all we have, it is certainly imperfect.  However, it exists and the institution is the only forum for all these varied and complex conditions to be aired.  Messrs Trump, Mwgabe, Kim Jong Un, and others can have a theatre where their ideas are aired.  The UN has also limited powers of intervention and an inglorious history of failure.

Nevertheless, the UN is the only hope we’ve got, so lets all support it in any way we can, for without it the world would be an even more chaotic planet.