So, I was reading about King Abdullah of Jordan doing something awesome, giving ISIS a quick stiff kick in the daddy bags. The article, though, written by a US Conservative was the usual vitriolic bullshit against how their President isn't a good president for being the global Fascist that they want him to be, don't get me wrong, he is still just that, but he has changed his domain from the Middle East to Eastern Europe.
Now, Jordan. I have always been generally impressed with King Abdullah, not that I follow the structure of Royalty much, but Jordan is one of the few Middle Eastern countries that maintain a monarch with a few brain cells up his sleeves. They have generally been pretty open to helping surrounding countries in need, and have generally been balanced in their views and dealings with the West. Not always a Yes man, but knows when something will benefit his Kingdom more than sticking the traditional line.
In the article, there was talk about how America should be doing everything to "help" the Middle East situation, and personally, I think this is a load of bullshit. For starters, the West is unable to fix many of the problems in its own back yard, pedophile priests and politicians, growing inequality in the divide between rich and poor, the disgusting treatment of disabled and LGBT communities and even their own middle class. I don't know how we can dictate foreign policy to someone when our own domestic policies are in tatters around us.
So, going forward, I am actually for King Abdullah. He has declared that ISIS is a serious threat to the stability of the Middle East, and unlike the rest of the region, excusing Syria, has started doing something about it. Sure, you can go on about all the abuses committed in Syria, but for nearly everyone you can point, there is a Western Equivalent happening in either their own country, or one they occupy. As of late, they have killed an estimated 7,000 ISIS troops, that is pretty good in about 2 weeks. They have pretty much stated that they will hunt them until they run out of jet fuel and bombs, which I am sure Russia will gladly supply, and I hope they damned do.
Why do I think this? Because every time the West gets involved, the citizens of the Middle East and other Muslims around the world, think that it is some plot from America. It also breeds a complacent attitude in that, "Well, we can't help ourselves, let the West help us." Kinda like that whole "It's better teaching a man to bomb his enemies than bombing his enemies for him" thing. It also will make the Middle East to look inwards at its own issues and realize that it is something that they have to deal with, and is not only an issue to the West, which some nations are happy about, but also that there are far more Muslims being killed by suicide bombers than any Westerner since the 9/11 attacks. Seriously, this is true. More Muslims have died from their own suicide bombers, than any Christian, Jew, Buddhist and Hindu. Think about that for a minute.
So King Abdullah, hats off to you sir. I may not agree with some of your attitudes in regards to domestic policy, but living in a country that has refused to put HSBC under investigation for off shore fraud, or closing up the books on Ministerial Pedophilia, I am in no right to tell you how to clean your house, but I am glad that finally, someone is taking the lead in this. Maybe, if the US would stop interfering in Syria for 5 minutes, and let you both clean house a bit, this little issue will be done in a month, and we can all go forward with a bit of new found respect. Also, if you could get Saudi Arabia to stop funding Radical preachers, that would be nice too.
Thanks again.
12 February 2015
Dear Ed. *Miliband that is*
In relation to a post on his facebook page.
Why don't you then follow what most of the Icelandic countries have done, and make University tuition free. People need to graduate and not be worried about whether they will get a job and be able to pay their debts back. It has worked in Norway, Iceland and others. It was working fine in Australia until the National/Liberal party returned to power and trashed it.
Highly educated people need to assisted into brightening the future for others. The one thing Labour must not do again, is make themselves the same mistake of over borrowing. Also trying to stay away from IMF borrowing would be another good thing. A lot of the rich in the country are more than willing to pay their proportionate share of taxes, but under a system where they don't need to, they generally won't.
I have traditionally been a Labour supporter when I was in Australia, and when I came here, I saw a very weakened version of it in operation. It was depressing as a Labour government needs a good strong leader. I have seen you write and seen you speak, and there is a huge difference. You have a good potential sir, so please, bring that out. Also, since the Greens have similar policies to Labour, might I suggest in ridings where Labour candidates are under pressure to back Green candidates on a policy equality idea. That way, you will have decent environmental and social minded input from those who would refuse to Vote either the Left or Right wing of the same bird.
I emailed you a few months ago, and I hope that you took what I said, if you got to read it, on board. I am still undecided, and have not seen anything that is going to make me switch from a Green vote at the moment. A better outline of what you are going to do, other than vaguely written two or three liners will sway me back. I would like to see a coherent thought out strategy of how the Labour party is going to reduce deficit while at the same time increasing spending back into Burroughs and Disability as well as increasing the military and education sectors.
One thing I learned from one of the most hated men in the Australian Labour party, and in my opinion, one of the best we have had since Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating, was that a strong fiscal stance, an "somewhat" honest and informative lead up to election time with details and figures, not just sentences, and the willingness to bite the bullet on a lot of issues and admit past mistakes, will give you a better rapport with voters who are sick of feeling like mushrooms. This is the internet age, where we can go check the numbers for ourselves that we don't see in the press. We can go read actual economic policies from the last few hundred years in books and online, and not just read page 3 of the Sun or whatever Murdoch inspired paper you want to read.
Give us the respect that we are all a thinking electorate, even though we may not show it, we have an interest in it. Also, UKIP is an indicator of the distrust in the system. They won't be a threat too much, some seats will be gained, but unless you don't learn the lessons from pre-Cameron power, then they may have a better chance. UKIP is the sign of cancer in the body that is the voting public. It is an indicator of what organs are starting to fail, and the why it is failing. Figuring that out will give you a better understanding of what the British electorate needs in a few months time. We need a fully consultative and honest talk on compassion inspired immigration, we need to have a talk about disability, education and a free press. We need to have discourse regarding the inability of Westminster to come clean with the skeletons in its closets on institutionalized pedophilia and other major scandals that are happening in the press to distract us from the election. We also need to talk about the eroding rights of citizens with the net, the corporate takeovers of the NHS, and other institutions to companies such as Boston Dynamics, Monsanto and other US companies that don't need to be hired when we have British and Commonwealth as well as EU ones that can do the same. Discourse on the trade relationship between the Commonwealth would be a great road to keep moving a fantastic and mutually beneficial institution alive and modernized.
These are things that we need to talk about. Things that the electorate need to be informed about. I could keep writing, but I am afraid that I will wear out my keyboard.
Best of luck to the Labour party, what are you going to do to win back my vote?
Why don't you then follow what most of the Icelandic countries have done, and make University tuition free. People need to graduate and not be worried about whether they will get a job and be able to pay their debts back. It has worked in Norway, Iceland and others. It was working fine in Australia until the National/Liberal party returned to power and trashed it.
Highly educated people need to assisted into brightening the future for others. The one thing Labour must not do again, is make themselves the same mistake of over borrowing. Also trying to stay away from IMF borrowing would be another good thing. A lot of the rich in the country are more than willing to pay their proportionate share of taxes, but under a system where they don't need to, they generally won't.
I have traditionally been a Labour supporter when I was in Australia, and when I came here, I saw a very weakened version of it in operation. It was depressing as a Labour government needs a good strong leader. I have seen you write and seen you speak, and there is a huge difference. You have a good potential sir, so please, bring that out. Also, since the Greens have similar policies to Labour, might I suggest in ridings where Labour candidates are under pressure to back Green candidates on a policy equality idea. That way, you will have decent environmental and social minded input from those who would refuse to Vote either the Left or Right wing of the same bird.
I emailed you a few months ago, and I hope that you took what I said, if you got to read it, on board. I am still undecided, and have not seen anything that is going to make me switch from a Green vote at the moment. A better outline of what you are going to do, other than vaguely written two or three liners will sway me back. I would like to see a coherent thought out strategy of how the Labour party is going to reduce deficit while at the same time increasing spending back into Burroughs and Disability as well as increasing the military and education sectors.
One thing I learned from one of the most hated men in the Australian Labour party, and in my opinion, one of the best we have had since Gough Whitlam, Paul Keating, was that a strong fiscal stance, an "somewhat" honest and informative lead up to election time with details and figures, not just sentences, and the willingness to bite the bullet on a lot of issues and admit past mistakes, will give you a better rapport with voters who are sick of feeling like mushrooms. This is the internet age, where we can go check the numbers for ourselves that we don't see in the press. We can go read actual economic policies from the last few hundred years in books and online, and not just read page 3 of the Sun or whatever Murdoch inspired paper you want to read.
Give us the respect that we are all a thinking electorate, even though we may not show it, we have an interest in it. Also, UKIP is an indicator of the distrust in the system. They won't be a threat too much, some seats will be gained, but unless you don't learn the lessons from pre-Cameron power, then they may have a better chance. UKIP is the sign of cancer in the body that is the voting public. It is an indicator of what organs are starting to fail, and the why it is failing. Figuring that out will give you a better understanding of what the British electorate needs in a few months time. We need a fully consultative and honest talk on compassion inspired immigration, we need to have a talk about disability, education and a free press. We need to have discourse regarding the inability of Westminster to come clean with the skeletons in its closets on institutionalized pedophilia and other major scandals that are happening in the press to distract us from the election. We also need to talk about the eroding rights of citizens with the net, the corporate takeovers of the NHS, and other institutions to companies such as Boston Dynamics, Monsanto and other US companies that don't need to be hired when we have British and Commonwealth as well as EU ones that can do the same. Discourse on the trade relationship between the Commonwealth would be a great road to keep moving a fantastic and mutually beneficial institution alive and modernized.
These are things that we need to talk about. Things that the electorate need to be informed about. I could keep writing, but I am afraid that I will wear out my keyboard.
Best of luck to the Labour party, what are you going to do to win back my vote?
05 February 2015
Lessons of life
I was just thinking about life, love etc, and I came to the following conclusion.
Love yourself before you love others. It is hard, but only you have the power to offer yourself unconditional love and support. There is too much beauty, creativity and life in the world to ignore it. Sure, we see a lot of hate on the news, but that is only what we are wanted to believe. The world in reality, can be a beautiful place, and if you are luck to have someone/several people, to do it with, then you are truly gifted.
People say life isn't about the end, it is about the journey. I say in a way it is true, and in a way it isn't. Life is too limited on what we can see to say that we have seen everything in life. We can't hear/see/smell as well as many of our other living things on this planet, so we will always have something out of our journeys that we miss. But I say it is more the fact that you even started the journey is even more important. Any fool can stumble along life and call it a journey, but at one point, someone chose to start that journey where others just sit and wait for things to come to them.
Waiting for things to happen is not a journey, it is a destruction of self. You must pledge to always grow and learn in your life, to love and be loved, to live and let live and to understand and come to peace with the fact that there is an end to your journey, and that point is the most important part of your journey. For it is in this final moments of life, that accepting and embracing the fact of death, will give you a more positive and calming reflection upon life. If you fear death, your life will be nothing but a list of regrets. If you embrace it, love it like you love life itself, then you will be able to look back on life and say that your not only survived all the ups and downs, the knocks and the achievements, but you can also say that you did the best you could with what you had.
I learned from a very young age that my time on this planet is not dependent on anything other than my ability to live it. I knew that as a toddler, that life stops, that it won't come back in any form that we can see or feel. That at the end, there is nothing but the embrace of the void, an end so to speak. Knowing that, gave me a drive to enjoy life. I fucked up a lot of things, I listened when I shouldn't have, and didn't listen when I should have, but I own those mistakes. I made them without help or hindrance, and thankfully, I was one of the lucky ones to learn from them.
What did I learn? I learned that gender is non-existent. You may look male or female, but you may not be inside. I learned that sometimes you look back on things and say I should have stood my ground when you retreated, and retreated when you should have stood there. I only have one, well it isn't even a regret, more of a lost opportunity, and that is I should have been more clear on this issue. I should have listened to myself. And this is where I think the 3 1/2 generations that passed after my knowing this, have it a lot easier in many ways. Yes the discrimination still exists, but there are a lot more lgbt groups for support when there were none during or before my time. Embracing who you are, and acknowledging that is wisdom. Ignoring it of your own volition is ignorance or denial.
I learned that there are many people in your life, that you are expected to trust, whether it be family members, or the government or even yourself at times, but trust is only best placed in oneself, and the ones that trust has already or is able to be established. Trusting in an entity, be it invisible or a government or a corporation, is throwing away commonsense. Growth is understanding that there are two types of selfishness. The one that you show to yourself because you give too much to others, or the type that others use to deny you your identity and life.
Many things in life are taught as being black and white. Sure there is good and evil, right and wrong, but at the same time, there are certain things that are either inverted or are in the grey area. Clinging to one extreme or the other is an imbalance. Embracing the both or the centre is a balance. Imbalance makes life a hell of a lot harder and more miserable.
Faith, there is only one thing I have faith in, and that is that I will at some point in time, die. It is the only sure thing that will happen to me. Everything else is either left to your own choice or common sense. I have faith in love to a degree, I have faith that I love things in this world, and maybe that there are some people insane enough to love me, but the thing with love, and it is the hardest thing, is that love is not 50/50. It is 100/100. If you are only giving 50/50, don't delude yourself that it is being equal, it is you being half arsed about love. Only giving everything you can, and the other doing the same, only that is love, and that is what someone who embodies it, my dear friend Kasturi, calls passion.
Passion is that 100% devotion to something, whether you have thought it through or not. Hey sometimes reckless passion can have good outcomes :-) . But if you are going to be passionate about it, do it for not only yourself, but for others (if that is appropriate. Masturbating yourself and doing it for others usually ends up landing you in jail for indecent exposure). When you are passionately doing something YOU love for OTHERS, you are bringing a small change to someone else in the world, and the only thing I have learned in life that makes the most sense other than we all certainly will die, is that you had best be doing something GOOD with it, otherwise you are wasting your time here.
Sure, we can all have likes/dislikes or even hates, but living in those states constantly deprives you of compassion and humanity. Compassion isn't about being a walking mat for everything that comes at you, it isn't that easy sorry. Compassion is hard work, for it starts with the compassion of self. If you can't have compassion for self, you can't really show it for others. That is empathy. Compassion is like walking through a thorny undergrowth on an amazing journey to somewhere beautiful. You will get scratched, hell you might break a bone or lose a contact lens. You might even be robbed or imbued with riches. But continuing towards that beautiful place/person/time or thing, will bring about happiness and unconditional love. When you are happy, and have unconditional love for yourself, then, and only then, are you ready to give it to others.
What did I learn? I learned that gender is non-existent. You may look male or female, but you may not be inside. I learned that sometimes you look back on things and say I should have stood my ground when you retreated, and retreated when you should have stood there. I only have one, well it isn't even a regret, more of a lost opportunity, and that is I should have been more clear on this issue. I should have listened to myself. And this is where I think the 3 1/2 generations that passed after my knowing this, have it a lot easier in many ways. Yes the discrimination still exists, but there are a lot more lgbt groups for support when there were none during or before my time. Embracing who you are, and acknowledging that is wisdom. Ignoring it of your own volition is ignorance or denial.
I learned that there are many people in your life, that you are expected to trust, whether it be family members, or the government or even yourself at times, but trust is only best placed in oneself, and the ones that trust has already or is able to be established. Trusting in an entity, be it invisible or a government or a corporation, is throwing away commonsense. Growth is understanding that there are two types of selfishness. The one that you show to yourself because you give too much to others, or the type that others use to deny you your identity and life.
Many things in life are taught as being black and white. Sure there is good and evil, right and wrong, but at the same time, there are certain things that are either inverted or are in the grey area. Clinging to one extreme or the other is an imbalance. Embracing the both or the centre is a balance. Imbalance makes life a hell of a lot harder and more miserable.
Faith, there is only one thing I have faith in, and that is that I will at some point in time, die. It is the only sure thing that will happen to me. Everything else is either left to your own choice or common sense. I have faith in love to a degree, I have faith that I love things in this world, and maybe that there are some people insane enough to love me, but the thing with love, and it is the hardest thing, is that love is not 50/50. It is 100/100. If you are only giving 50/50, don't delude yourself that it is being equal, it is you being half arsed about love. Only giving everything you can, and the other doing the same, only that is love, and that is what someone who embodies it, my dear friend Kasturi, calls passion.
Passion is that 100% devotion to something, whether you have thought it through or not. Hey sometimes reckless passion can have good outcomes :-) . But if you are going to be passionate about it, do it for not only yourself, but for others (if that is appropriate. Masturbating yourself and doing it for others usually ends up landing you in jail for indecent exposure). When you are passionately doing something YOU love for OTHERS, you are bringing a small change to someone else in the world, and the only thing I have learned in life that makes the most sense other than we all certainly will die, is that you had best be doing something GOOD with it, otherwise you are wasting your time here.
Sure, we can all have likes/dislikes or even hates, but living in those states constantly deprives you of compassion and humanity. Compassion isn't about being a walking mat for everything that comes at you, it isn't that easy sorry. Compassion is hard work, for it starts with the compassion of self. If you can't have compassion for self, you can't really show it for others. That is empathy. Compassion is like walking through a thorny undergrowth on an amazing journey to somewhere beautiful. You will get scratched, hell you might break a bone or lose a contact lens. You might even be robbed or imbued with riches. But continuing towards that beautiful place/person/time or thing, will bring about happiness and unconditional love. When you are happy, and have unconditional love for yourself, then, and only then, are you ready to give it to others.
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