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The UN on Burma … handing out passes right and left

November 28, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

Anyone who reads my pro blogs with any regularity … avec their morning dose of prune juice, for example … has sensed that I am not terribly keen on the United Nations.

My International Adoption blog features an entire category dedicated to taking the UNavailing organization to task and encouraging folks to look forward to a time when it is defUNct.

Most recently, the issue was Burma and the idiotic take the UN’s “special envoy” … and just exactly what does make these people so special? … was spouting.

I didn’t see the press conference, but I have to assume that it was conducted upside down, as there is no way that praise for changes in Burma could come from anywhere other than someone’s ass.

Now, Ibrahim Gambari, the UN butt talker, is playing tag in Cambodia with Burma’s prime minister in what can only be another typically UNsavory move to run up the travel budget while appearing to have some concerns over the jUNta.

If you have interest in this issue, which at it’s foundation is the bones and blood of human rights … the supposed mandate of the UN … take a look at this report from The Heritage Foundation which carefully points out the relationship between the UN and the brutal jUNta that rules in Burma.

Here’s a taste:

The United Nations was founded in 1945 to maintain international peace and security and undertake collective measures to remove threats to peace; to promote equal rights and self-determination of peoples; to help solve problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character; and to encourage “social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.” In the Charter, member states pledge “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women.”[1] U.N. treaties and conventions, such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which the General Assembly passed in 1948, form the core of international standards for human rights.

Posted in Entitled to opinions, NaBloPoMo, The United Nations | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

Politics and life: Miss the beginning of the show and you lose the plot

November 27, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

It’s a big dividing point between American expats as far as maintaining a capacity to take in and digest present day events in the country, the 12th of June 1994.

You are forgiven if the date doesn’t set bells clanging, as events of the day easily float to the bottom of the cesspool that started filling then and continues to this day. To put it simply, this was the day Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were brutally butchered in a Southern California condo.

What followed could now probably be traced as the headwaters of Reality TV, and it ended with OJ Simpson winning the “Got Away With Murder” award.

People living in the States through that process followed along, joined the discussion, watched the glove show-and-dance, knew what Johnnie Cochran drank, how F. Lee Bailey took his coffee and what Marcia Clark was going to do next with her hair. Who didn’t have an opinion on Lance Ito, was more than a bit uncomfortable with Mark Fuhrman or thought Kato Kaelin was a moron? Eating, drinking and sleeping the OJ trail was common behavior as a cult-like fixation drew in more and more media junkies.

The verdict brought whatever emotions it brought, and those who lived through it can still be brought to a froth over specifics.

Those who left the country BOJ (Before OJ) … me, for instance … certainly heard about the case, most likely a lot, but didn’t live and breathe it. We weren’t surrounded by the story, didn’t run into video of white Mustangs and blood-soaked walkways twice a day, and weren’t assailed by details, speculation and conjecture every time we turned on a radio or opened a newspaper. We didn’t live with OJ’s oversized smirk popping up on every corner, live coverage and endless footage of the same scenes and statements over and over and over again.

Because we missed all this, we never moved into the groove that grew accustomed to the frenzy, that began to see the hype as justifiable and the massive media as a citizen’s right to know, and we didn’t for a moment see the verdict coming. In other words, we found ourselves left out of the loop that found getting away with murder a logical consequence of celebrity.

Much that has happened since in America remains puzzling to BOJs like me. The 2000 presidential election is one example; the bullshit blind involvement in Iraq, another.

Today, it’s a CNN piece that has me scratching my head … the one about the University of Pennsylvania professor who beat his wife to death last year as she wrapped Christmas presents. He’s finally fessed up and is likely to do 4.5 to 7 years for his crime.

Excuse me, but WTF kind of sentence is that?

And what kind of sentences are these … ?

“What kept them there [in the marriage] was their undying love for their daughter Olivia,” said Art Gregory, who is now raising the girl. “Both of them put Olivia first, beyond anything else, unfortunately to a very tragic end.”

Rafael Robb apologized to Olivia, who was not in court, and said he was “very remorseful.”

“I know she liked her mother. … And now she doesn’t have a mother,” he said, stifling tears..

This is how cold-blooded murder is covered in the US today? With “stifling tears” and not one single mention of how appalling it is that a creep who bludgeoned his wife to death in the middle of her Christmas prep will probably be out by Christmas 2009 … having to do his own gift wrap, thankyouverymuch … seeing as how he’s unlikely to find a wife to kill while in prison, so should get time off for good behavior, and probably also for time served while hoping to slip the noose without having to admit that he bloody well did it?

Like coming into “Lost” in the second season, having missed the OJ show I just can’t get up to speed with so much in America these days and the point of the plot is lost on me completely.

Posted in American thoughts, Celebrities, Celebs, Expat Living, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments »

A question about politics …

November 26, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

I have a political question for today:

Are folks in America as hot over the YouTube “debates” as they look to be from out here where CNN comes only in brief, but enthusiastic spurts?

I heard the hype leading up to the Democrats doing their version of “Who Do You Trust”, and now that it’s Republicans about to step into the limelight, it seems the same attempt at frenzy whipping is happening.

For the first time in presidential debate history, user-generated video will drive two unprecedented debates.

Be still, my pounding heart.

Do people actually perceive this song and dance as some sort of prime example of true democracy in action? Or does everyone know that these are just the latest “reality programming” offerings, but with a longer wait for gratification as there is a bit of a twist on the voting procedures?

Is the process to choose a new leader of the free world now the same as deciding who is in and who is out of the house, off the island, the next pop star du jour?

Voters must realize that there is nothing democratic in the process that decides which videos make the cut, which don’t get a second look, and which are only used as teasers in the ad campaign leading up to the show. Someone with quite the agenda in tow is picking and choosing. The manipulation has to be obvious to one and all, and surely the idea of CNN in charge must give pause for thought. Mustn’t it?

“YouTube enables voters and candidates to communicate in a way that simply was not possible during the last election,” said Chad Hurley, CEO and co-founder of YouTube. “For the first time in the history of presidential debates, voters from around the country will be able to ask the future president of the United States a question in video form and hear the answer.”

“These debates take the bold step of embracing the ever-increasing role of the Internet in politics,” said Jim Walton, CNN Worldwide president. “The inclusion of the massive online community enables these debates to engage more viewers – and potential voters – than ever before.”

Hello?

So putting debate questions in “video form” somehow elevates that material above the living room dialog of the Iowa Caucuses or the coffee stops in New Hampshire? And because this was “simply not possible during the last election” it’s assumed to be a good thing?

Suppose next time around it’s possible to pose YouCube questions to candidates in 3D, will that guarantee a freer, less corrupt America and assure that the person with the most votes wins?

All one must do to get the true point of this for CNN is to substitute good demographic market targets where Jim Walton parenthetically positioned “potential voters”.

Want to embrace the ever-increasing roll of the Internet in politics? Get candidates to start blogs where anyone can ask questions, make comments, demand straight answers, and be able to search archives. Sure, it would be a massive amount of work, but politics ain’t for sissies … plus they could do it in their jammies from anywhere.

If Americans are truly concerned about moving the election process into the 21st Century, they should be demanding an end to the Electoral College instead of letting Anderson Cooper run the show.

Posted in American thoughts, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in | 3 Comments »

Time for another “pupdate”

November 25, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

They’re doing well, Dinah’s puppies, and growing so fast I can almost see the size increase as it happens, especially around the belly. Dinah is a good mom and has been very attentive, but now that her brood is approaching 3 weeks of age she’s spending more and more time away from them.

Can’t say that I blame her! Eight pups latched on and sucking for all they’re worth has to be draining in more ways than lactation can account for. There’s nothing subtle about a bottomless pit o’ pup, and there are a lot of those here, and a few hours of peace and quiet in the garden or a friendly romp with another adult dog must feel like a little bit of heaven to a mother of eight.

(I know I could sound so much more professional about all this dog and breeding stuff if I referred to Dinah as a bitch, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. She’s such a sweet girl.)

Voracious as these guys are, solid food is already relished as you can see, and because of that, I’m guessing, their mother is less interested in cleaning up after them. (Can you blame her? I am SO glad we humans don’t have to tidy our children the same way other animals do. Sure, it would save on wipes, but … blech!) With proliferating piles of puppy poop plopping on my porch, we’re moving the whole family down to the kennel today. It won’t be as easy to schmooze a pooch when they’re not right under foot, but having them elsewhere will freshen the air up here considerably and provide me with a good excuse to take a longer break more often.

I’ve taken some shots this morning, but they’re not great. The pups are almost more than a handful now, so it’s a lot harder to get a decent photo of them.

A good mom
Dinah and pups

Eyes open, but is anybody home?
Eyes open

A handful, and with big feet
Handful

Solid food!
Solid food

Posted in Family, Fun, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles | 8 Comments »

A typical Saturday … grab the earplugs

November 24, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

Ahhhh, Saturday. The weekend. The break between one work week and the next. A chance to … to … to what?

Around here, it’s a chance to play a game of Scrabble with Gay while the kids hang with dad in the garden, pitching in with the yard work … or pretending to … while a relaxed and quiet atmosphere prevails.

Or not.

Today, not only did we have the now-constant racket of puppies a-whinin’ and a-howlin’ and perpetually-hungerin’ loud enough to beat the band somewhere in the upper octaves, these often ear-splitting wails were accompanied by the whine-whirl, vroom-vroom of weed-wacker, the deeper bass growl of chain saw, with assorted power tool embellishments.

Yes, it was men-doing-stuff day, and in my world that means NOISE.

From eight o’clock this morning until about fifteen minutes ago I could, almost literally, not hear myself think. Three men doing stuff … cutting the grass, building something, propping up the banana trees, getting the kennel ready for the puppies to move off the verandah … can make my Saturdays a practice in concentration, a day-long search for a quiet moment, wistful wishing that I still owned a mouth guard so I could take some measure to keep my teeth from rattling out of my head.

Our house is a work in progress, so some Saturdays include carpentry work. Our garden is over an acre of lush growth, so the grass needs cutting and shrubs need pruning and coconuts need picking up. Mark’s list of chores never seems to get any shorter, so there’s always something that needs doing, and just about everything requires some piece of equipment with a motor attached to do it.

There’s an hour lull for lunch … Didn’t I just clean this kitchen? … when the machines are switched off and the mouths on. With the conversation completely in Creole, I don’t spend any time trying to listen in, not that I’d need to strain my ears. Three Seychellois men munching down fried mackerel and baked breadfruit somehow manage to carry on conversation without pause and seem to crank up the volume with every bite. The talk must be engrossing, as there’s not even a second’s let up, but whenever I ask Mark what all the yack was about, like an evasive teen his answer is always, “Nothing.”

Lunch over, it’s vroom, growl, whine all over again, and seeming even louder for the absence.

Knowing that think time would be limited, I opted to clean the shelves in my kitchen, so instead of something deep and interesting for the last NaBloPoMo Saturday post, you get this.

A thought, though, before I go …

If women worked with power tools more than men did, do you think we’d make them quieter?

Posted in Adoption, Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles | 3 Comments »

UNproductive, UNscrupulous, UNnecessary

November 23, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

The power has been out almost all day here today, so I’ve been racing to get my pro blogs written and posted while I can and hoping something would slosh over to this one so my NaBloPoMo thing gets done.

I could write about our Thanksgiving that wasn’t or the fact that it’s Friday again already and how spooky this flying time thing is becoming. Or I could post photos of the puppies that are now two weeks old, HUGE, cute as anything and opening their eyes.

Nah.

Oh! Here’s something to sink my teeth into!

The UN is calling for a ‘joint climate control effort” and Ban Ki-moon is demanding action.

Pardon my language, but give me a fucking break.

Okay, okay … yes, I detest the United Nations and see the organization as a money-sucking job justification for a whole bunch of people who should be forced to find some honest work. And Ban Ki-moon, the new guy with the new suits and the massive travel budget has not impressed one little bit, even though it should have been damned easy to after Kofi Annan.

Ban in Darfur talking about how “shocked” he was gave the perfect indication of how limited progress during his tenure will be, and now he is challenging governments to action on climate change. Sounds like global warming is as much of a surprise to him as starvation and death in Darfur.

You see, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, a UN branch of the WMO arm of UNEP for anyone impressed by the ability to make alphabet soup, has reported that climate change is real.

Duh.

And Ban comes to the table from somewhere in the UNmosphere that is just getting around to hearing about this.

“I come to you humbled after seeing some of the most precious treasures of our planet threatened by humanity’s own hand,” he said.

“All humanity must assume responsibility for these treasures.”

Can we hear another “Duh”, please?

IPCC is on its fourth go-round in 20 years and is just now getting around to grinding out some numbers that put the true picture of what the planet is up against out there for the UN to take a gander at.

Too little and too late, and they’re not really going to do anything, anyway.

They’re in Bali next month to do some yacking about what we’re up against, and it’s certain that yacking will be all that’s done … well, in addition to schmoozing and preparing some really expensive, but oh-so-official-looking reports.

Here’s a link to the IPCC report in pdf. Read it and know more than the Secretary General of the UN ever will. Add the info to what you already know, and know more than anyone at the UN ever will.

Posted in Entitled to opinions, NaBloPoMo, The United Nations | Leave a Comment »

Thanksgiving … the act, not the day

November 22, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

I am thankful. I am SO thankful. I am really, really thankful.

I am thankful for my life, the fact that I have had one and that I still have one. The emergency heart surgery in Singapore in ’99 was a close shave that puts me in mind every day of what a gift each is.

I am thankful for the miracles that are my children and am perpetually astounded at the people they are and how lucky I have been to have them in my life.

I am thankful for my husband, for his kind and loving nature, his generous spirit, his humor, and for the circumstances that allowed us to find each other even though he was on one side of the planet while I was on the other.

I am thankful for all my family, for my friends, for the people sharing the same plane of cyberspace I cruise.

I am thankful for my home, for clean air and clear water, the comforts my life provides, for the timing and circumstances of my birth that have allowed me to live without war in my back yard or the horrors of life as a refugee. I have never been truly hungry, and neither have my children, and that’s enough right there to fall on my knees in appreciation for.

Because my life is as wonderful as it is, I have the time and energy today to wallow in misery, and although that may sound like a mouthful of sour grapes, there is no way I can let this day pass without spending a good bit of it sad as anything and ready to burst into tears at the drop of a pilgrim’s hat. I am miserable in honor of all that I have that I no longer have access to, and as happily content as my life is now my losses still deserve commemorating, so here goes …

Today I miss my mother. I miss my oldest daughter and my granddaughter. I miss my grown son. I miss my brothers, their families, their humor and their appetites. I miss green Jell-O. I miss the country that celebrates thanksgiving so wonderfully and enthusiastically. I miss a chill in the air and the sight of my own breath. I miss the smell of sycamore leaves. I miss pumpkin pies cooling on my mom’s washing machine and the pattern on her good china. I miss the company of those who have known me for all their lives or all of mine. I miss sharing memories of Thanksgivings past with people who where there. I miss a shared comprehension of what it means to eat turkey and how important variations in stuffing can be. I miss hand-print gobblers on fridges. I miss my childhood, or at least the good parts. I miss the drive up I-5 and my mother’s kitchen.

I rue the fact that I could be in California today, that Mark and the kids and I, had we planned well and done what needed to be done, would right now be a couple of hours away from waking up on Thanksgiving morning and preparing to sit down to an early dinner with some portion of my family somewhere, if not the whole fam damily … if the planning had gone really well.

As I say every fourth Thursday in November: Next year, for sure.

Posted in American thoughts, Expat Living, Family, NaBloPoMo, The USA from the outside in | 4 Comments »

Birds of paradise, for real

November 21, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

After a couple of days of posting fears and complaints about the direction this beautiful country is taking these days, I’d like to provide a link to a small, hopeful glimmer that has to do with people trying to hang on to some of the beauty of the country.

Here is a blog written by a guy who is in the country on behalf of the Seychelles Paradise Flycatcher (Terpsiphone corvine), one of the rarest birds in the world.

It’s well worth the click. Enjoy.

I should probably mention that this bird lives only on the island of LaDigue, one of the nearby inner granite islands I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, and one that I haven’t visited since 1993. I can see it from the road as I drive to town, but haven’t managed a trip over there in close to 15 years. I did, however, see the illusive Flycatchere when there … a few of them, in fact.

One of these days, we’ll pop over with the kids and call it a vacation!

Posted in NaBloPoMo, Seychelles | 4 Comments »

Seychelles Rocks

November 20, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

My house sits on some of the oldest dirt on the planet.

Yep.

I’m not talking about the grit behind my fridge; although that has been there a while, it’s nothing compared to the soil, pebbles and boulders that make up the island of Mahé and the 39 or so other inner islands of Seychelles.

Mahé, Praslin, LaDigue, and other smaller lumps are the oldest ocean islands in the world, and our dirt here is so old that we don’t even have fossils. Can’t, because at the time what is now our little country formed there was nothing living anywhere — no plants or animals, no single-celled pre-living thing. Nothing. There was sky. There was sea. There was here. That was it.

Unlike islands people think of when tropical beaches come to mind, this island and her close neighbors have never seen a volcano. Our ground is granite … ancient, strong and lovely granite, the only mid-ocean granite islands in the world … and to geologists, granite means nothing less than continent.

There’s not much left to see now … Mahé is, after all, only 17 miles long and 4 miles wide … but where I sit writing this blog is the vestigial remains of Pangea, the super-continent of all super-continents, the one that started it all.

The soil in my garden was here before Gondwanaland decided to be its own chunk, and that was about 520 million years ago. Before dinosaurs roamed, before the places dinosaurs roamed were even places, the rocks I train my alamanda to grow over were warming in the sun and shedding rain.

These are rocks worth celebrating, wouldn’t you say? As ancient as the planet itself, slowly decomposing as granite does over the millennia, tiny residual land masses sinking a fraction of an inch every 1000 years, what else could signify Earth as well as these islands?

Apparently, the answer to that question would be: Well, a whole bunch of trendy hotels that are guaranteed to be out-of-date white elephants within little more than a decade should do the trick.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, these islands are being hacked and hewn at a rate that provides a horrifying example of the destruction humans worship.

Our rocks? Blown to bits by dynamite over and over again, as my house shakes with each blast and I jump out of my skin as the booms sneak up and bite another piece of beautiful granite and reduce it to rubble. And now the hotel construction devils … proudly making the way for environmentally sensitive tourists to stroll manicured gardens and swim in temperature-controlled pools … are employing a silent destroyer of venerable rock — a chemical that gets poured down a jackhammered hole, expands overnight, and cracks and splits what has for millions of years held its form.

Yesterday I was mad as hell. Today, I’m still mad, and totally sick about it.

Sam on rock

Posted in Entitled to opinions, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles | 13 Comments »

So damned mad!

November 19, 2007 by Sandra Hanks

People are so strange. It takes just one look at the stats page for this blog to see how true a statement that is — here are some search terms entered that ended up bringing people to this site yesterday:

plastic boobs
top ten things in a good man
big honkin tits
adopt as an expat
nurses cleavage
things women want in men
the meaning of pre occupied
green thanksgiving jello

Okay, I get how it works, but can’t for anything imagine someone Googling “nurses cleavage”.

Anyway, on to what’s on my mind today …

Rape and pillage and plunder. Yep, that’s it. Not in the sense of ancient Vandals who found such methods conducive to compliance with their expansionist goals … well, not literally in that sense … but rather having to do with hotels doing what amounts to the same thing.

It’s land and lifestyles being raped and pillaged and plundered around here right now, and today provides quite the good example of how this works.

Please keep in mind that hotels in Seychelles will try to pass themselves off as all environmentally aware and culturally sensitive. Bollocks!

The new Four Seasons Hotel project that has been reducing nature to rubble in my backyard for the past couple of years is getting ready to move into another phase of destruction that involves an area yet untouched that will eventually be covered in ‘executive villas’ … multi-million dollar holiday homes for obscenely rich Saudis and Russians.

The first step in ruining this part of the island for anyone but rich Saudis and Russians is to get rid of the road that runs down to Anse Soleil Beach. Never mind that there is already a small, locally-owned hotel there, not to mention my in-laws’ house, the home of Mark’s grandmother, uncle and family, and a restaurant, because they apparently count for nothing. The plan is to build a parking area a good half-mile-plus of hell hill away and let the people that live down there, and the people who support the hotel and the restaurant, walk.

The arrogance of this is beyond belief.

Mark’s grandmother is 86. Mark’s dad is 67. The walk, even in good weather, is long and tough; in the rain it’s slick and treacherous. PLUS, it’s a public road there to provide access to people that need to get back and forth from the beach to the village.

I won’t even go into the mess they’re making of one of the world’s most beautiful bays, how the construction waste is taking a fatal toll on fish, sea turtles and corals. (In the environmental impact assessment required before permission was given to build this horror, a big deal was made about the “low impact lighting” they would have so as not to bother nesting sea turtles!)

We’re set to get 60 more of these hotel projects over the next few years … 60 … none of which will be built where the white elephants of past trends stuggle to keep afloat with 10% occupancy are rotting away. And all will be just as arrogant, just as much a disaster as this Four Seasons project. Tourists will come and go, see only the artificial and groomed corpse of what once was and figure they’re getting their money’s worth, while the super-rich will stop by as long as it’s trendy to stop by here, then will move along to the next victim.

In the meantime, the people living here will watch the bits and pieces of this beautiful body of land as they’re bloodily hacked away, and try their best not to be shoved out of the way with the rest of what belongs here.

Today it’s my in-laws fighting for the continuation of the right to drive to their own home. Tomorrow, it will be something else as this island is turned from paradise to playground, and like everywhere else in the world this has already happened, it will be ruined forever.

How long ago did Joni Mitchell sing the song?

I am so damned mad!

Posted in Family, Island life, NaBloPoMo, Seychelles | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

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