First things first: let me wish you all a happy and prosperous United Nations Day FOR YESTERDAY!
Yes, if you were planning to celebrate United Nations Day on the 24th of October(perhaps by sending a card or giving a present to anyone you might be acquainted with who has a connection with this auspicious day) you’ve missed it.
And if you know me you also know when United Nations Day is, so ignorance is no excuse
No, this is not a case of let’s-look-at-the-calendar-and-find-what’s-on-yesterday; this is a genuine wish to celebrate a day which focuses attention on the nearest this sad world has come to finding a forum to discuss ways of addressing the putrescent sores of criminal ineptitude which disfigure the body politic of the globe.
What can one say about an organization which regularly hosts gatherings which include the criminally insane, the exultantly megalomaniac, the murdering dictatorial, the self righteously bigoted, the strutting poseur, the smugly self delusional, the corrupted, the corrupting and the lost?
Well; it’s the best we’ve got and represents the most effective (!) gathering for tempering the excesses of men (let’s face it, it’s usually the males) who try to indulge their lusty power dreams without the tedious restraint of an enfranchised population to restrain their excesses.
It’s easy to be cynical when you hear the public proclamations of decency and freedom from our representative in the United Nations and realise that he speaks while the pernicious cancer which is, for example, the relationship HMG has with the repressive (but oil rich) regime of Saudi Arabia is eating away at our credibility.
It is difficult to be upbeat when you see African nations uniting to defend the murderous dictatorship of Mugabe. It is difficult not to feel impotent rage when countries like Burma and the Sudan continue to ignore the posturing of world opinion.
But surely Churchill’s faint praise of democracy must also be applied to this virtually toothless successor to The League of Nations. “It has been said,” Churchill declaimed in a speech to the House of Commons, “that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms which have been tried from time to time.” Just substitute UNO for Democracy. And I’ve just realised what a terrible irony there is in that last sentence!
You may be wondering why it is that I feel so strongly about an organization which virtually every country in the world has condemned with contempt at some time or other. Yet I have celebrated this day throughout my life. When I was younger with the able assistance of my parents and, when I was older, with the able assistance of copious amounts of alcohol.
I will leave it to the more astute reader to work out the significance of this day for me and leave him with a picture of me sitting at my table, tapping out a short tattoo with my elegantly manicured finger nails and looking archly at the empty post box!
Robert is now back in Syria. It was his intention (and he managed it) to go to school today. This is not in itself remarkable, but when you consider that his travelling time from Barcelona to Damascus via Milan and then a five hour coach drive to his home will bring him home, looking at the clock, just in time for work –then I think this intention reaches into the realms of the heroic.
One does wonder, however, what the quality of his teaching was like after a day and a half of constant travelling. Exhaustion lowers defences and the barrier between thought and expression becomes as loose as an email! I am sure that an astute and observant student, listening with analytical attention to Robert’s utterances will have gained more insight into his character on this one day of physical depletion than during twenty weeks of perky conscientious teaching!
The alternative approach to exhaustion, of course, is one that I adopted after a particularly stressful journey back from Çinarcic in Turkey via Bucharest and Geneva. During this epic voyage (which seemed to span several lifetimes rather than the mere forty hours that it took) I utilized a fair variety of modes of transport including car, boat, lift, taxi, escalator, bus, foot, train and plane. At the end of my trip I found that I could lapse into a coma-like sleep at a moment’s notice jerking into hyper-hysterical attention for the briefest moments necessary for the maintenance of human existence and resuming my catalepsy, like a comfortable bed, at will.
As long as Robert was able to comatize himself with his eyes wide open, I am sure he will have survived the day. Perhaps he utilized his new ipod and plugged himself into one of the educational podcasts that I put on his machine and allowed the electronic impulses to flow into his tired brain and out through his mouth.
I only hope that he didn’t choose one of the more profane podcasts which also figure on the extensive list of freebies that I downloaded!
Yes, if you were planning to celebrate United Nations Day on the 24th of October(perhaps by sending a card or giving a present to anyone you might be acquainted with who has a connection with this auspicious day) you’ve missed it.
And if you know me you also know when United Nations Day is, so ignorance is no excuse
No, this is not a case of let’s-look-at-the-calendar-and-find-what’s-on-yesterday; this is a genuine wish to celebrate a day which focuses attention on the nearest this sad world has come to finding a forum to discuss ways of addressing the putrescent sores of criminal ineptitude which disfigure the body politic of the globe.
What can one say about an organization which regularly hosts gatherings which include the criminally insane, the exultantly megalomaniac, the murdering dictatorial, the self righteously bigoted, the strutting poseur, the smugly self delusional, the corrupted, the corrupting and the lost?
Well; it’s the best we’ve got and represents the most effective (!) gathering for tempering the excesses of men (let’s face it, it’s usually the males) who try to indulge their lusty power dreams without the tedious restraint of an enfranchised population to restrain their excesses.
It’s easy to be cynical when you hear the public proclamations of decency and freedom from our representative in the United Nations and realise that he speaks while the pernicious cancer which is, for example, the relationship HMG has with the repressive (but oil rich) regime of Saudi Arabia is eating away at our credibility.
It is difficult to be upbeat when you see African nations uniting to defend the murderous dictatorship of Mugabe. It is difficult not to feel impotent rage when countries like Burma and the Sudan continue to ignore the posturing of world opinion.
But surely Churchill’s faint praise of democracy must also be applied to this virtually toothless successor to The League of Nations. “It has been said,” Churchill declaimed in a speech to the House of Commons, “that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms which have been tried from time to time.” Just substitute UNO for Democracy. And I’ve just realised what a terrible irony there is in that last sentence!
You may be wondering why it is that I feel so strongly about an organization which virtually every country in the world has condemned with contempt at some time or other. Yet I have celebrated this day throughout my life. When I was younger with the able assistance of my parents and, when I was older, with the able assistance of copious amounts of alcohol.
I will leave it to the more astute reader to work out the significance of this day for me and leave him with a picture of me sitting at my table, tapping out a short tattoo with my elegantly manicured finger nails and looking archly at the empty post box!
Robert is now back in Syria. It was his intention (and he managed it) to go to school today. This is not in itself remarkable, but when you consider that his travelling time from Barcelona to Damascus via Milan and then a five hour coach drive to his home will bring him home, looking at the clock, just in time for work –then I think this intention reaches into the realms of the heroic.
One does wonder, however, what the quality of his teaching was like after a day and a half of constant travelling. Exhaustion lowers defences and the barrier between thought and expression becomes as loose as an email! I am sure that an astute and observant student, listening with analytical attention to Robert’s utterances will have gained more insight into his character on this one day of physical depletion than during twenty weeks of perky conscientious teaching!
The alternative approach to exhaustion, of course, is one that I adopted after a particularly stressful journey back from Çinarcic in Turkey via Bucharest and Geneva. During this epic voyage (which seemed to span several lifetimes rather than the mere forty hours that it took) I utilized a fair variety of modes of transport including car, boat, lift, taxi, escalator, bus, foot, train and plane. At the end of my trip I found that I could lapse into a coma-like sleep at a moment’s notice jerking into hyper-hysterical attention for the briefest moments necessary for the maintenance of human existence and resuming my catalepsy, like a comfortable bed, at will.
As long as Robert was able to comatize himself with his eyes wide open, I am sure he will have survived the day. Perhaps he utilized his new ipod and plugged himself into one of the educational podcasts that I put on his machine and allowed the electronic impulses to flow into his tired brain and out through his mouth.
I only hope that he didn’t choose one of the more profane podcasts which also figure on the extensive list of freebies that I downloaded!
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