Silly Season?
Seems as if we’re well into it, not helped by the silly weather. July/August came in April bringing all the flowers out up to a month early, now we’re enjoying April showers in August. I’ve only been able to go swimming on 6 occasions this summer (outdoors that is), so must be the worst summer since I retired in May 2007, and all those 5 summers have been pretty poor.
Now bitter arguments have broken out on websites linked to two areas I’m interested in, one to do with music and the other with Spirituality.
There were the riots, arson and looting in London and other British cities, and now we have the situation in Libya. These are very serious matters, of course, but how and why are the questions I am asking. Why were things allowed to develop to a point where gangs could start riots while police just stood and watched, according to many reports? Why were armed gangs allowed to rule so many city areas for years?
Why was Col. Gadaffi talking to Condoleeza Rice not so long ago and brought in from the cold, and now he is enemy #1? Why are the rebel factions in that country being helped by NATO and not a UN force? Why does NATO even exist 20 years after the Cold War ended and the Warsaw Pact was disbanded?
Why has Col. Gadaffi joined the ranks of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden in being in favor with the U.S. at one time and then the embodiment of all evil? Why Gadaffi and not the feudal dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, for instance? Couldn’t possibly be because USA gets a lot of Saudi’s oil could it?
North Korea has said it is ready for talks and to abandon its nuclear weapons program, but do we hear much about that in the media? Of course North Korea doesn’t have vast amounts of oil to be grabbed by U.S. oil companies, unlike many places in the Middle East. It is just an annoying fleabite in comparison to various rebel factions in North Africa who, if not aided by NATO, might cut off the oil supply to the West once they’ve fought among themselves to see who will be the successor to the present dictatorial regimes. Hopefully more democratic governments will emerge from the chaos in Libya and elsewhere, but there’s no guarantee. The West will be content with another despot so long as the oil supply is secured, and the same applies to Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas where there are mineral and other resources to exploit.
I hope things calm down in all these areas in the next few weeks. And that the weather improves for my holiday in September. If it does, let’s hope it’s not the ‘wrong kind of sun’ like we had earlier in the year, or the railways will stop, as they do for the ‘wrong kind of leaves’ in Autumn and the ‘wrong kind of snow’ in Winter. Come to think of it, it’s Silly Season all year round for the railways at least.
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