Re: War: why everyone wishes it would stop but no one can stop it.

In article <4cij7bF15ujriU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Yowie <yowie9644.DIESPAMDIE@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

This is probably cultural. I didn't care that Clinton was fooling arund with
Monica. I agree there *might* have been a power abuse, but then again, there
might not have been. Office romances (in or out of marraige) happen. As I
said at the time, Clinton isn't the first and won't be the last man to fool
around with a pretty young girl at the office, and the whole event seemed
totally disproportional to t e amount of media coverage and indeed outrage
that it generated, especially comared to the seriousness of other events
inthe world at the time. My only conclusion is that American people have a
huge cultural hang up about sex. Just like the 'outrage' of Janet jackson's
nipple. BFD (big .... deal) to the rest of us, who cares about a nipple or
some guy f*cking an intern, unless the individuals have set themselves up as
the paragons of sexual virtue, why the fuss? Its not like its going to cause
the death of thousands of innocent people, is it?

My objection is not to the sex. My objection is to abuse of power, be that
a passive or active abuse. I see sex between an employer and an employee as
abusive, period. If an employer wants to engage in a sexual relationship
with an employee the onus is on him/her to first distance themselves from the
employment relationship to ensure that the one does not wield power over the
other, before considering indulging in any other form of relationship. A
relationship where one party holds power over the other is not to my mind a
consentual relationship, and having actually seen one case where a newly hired
single mother lost her job after rejecting the advances of the man she then
reported to, because he subsequently announced that she failed her
probationary period, I have ever since known that grave injustices can occur
when one permits the notion of the mixing of business and pleasure. It is not
morality which is my hobby horse here.. My concern is entirely with the issue
of promoting and enforcing rules that serve the interests of justice for all.
It is unjust for an employer to think they can enjoy a relationship with an
employee even if they imagine this as being between equals when wearing
one hat, while simultaneously wielding significant power to do good or harm to
that employee who reports either directly or indirectly to them when wearing
the other.

Perhaps this is cultural; but I have this strange notion that we can all
across every culture on this planet find the compass that tells right from
wrong not by examining all the external trappings of our own personal
belief systems but instead by exploring the underlying issue of whether the
act helps or harms the future, and in doing so enriches or mars the past.
I think we collectively know that what helps is a very different beast from
that which harms.

Certainly, Clinton was depicted as an articulate, intelligent, capable and
effecient leader on Australian media. George W. comes across as a moron.
Could be cultural, too, but thats how it seems.


Yes rather too often I think of George Bush as Zaphod Beeblebox.. I'm not
however sure if that means I've got him right or got him wrong. But that
only makes the connection in my mind stronger.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A607727
http://www.englisch.schule.de/wiesmoor/Zaphod.htm
http://www.media-file.net/hhgg/zaphod.mov

It's not going to ever be a perfect relationship, but the very expectation
in Britain that Tony Blair should be respecting the will of the people and
wasn't, and was acting in a profoundly undemocratic manner, hurt enough to
make his commitment to the war in Iraq at least harder for him to follow
through on (though he did) than it would have been if he had been an
absolute monarch who the people backed no matter what he did, because
that was what happened when monarchs made the executive decision to
initiate wars.

At least Blair showed he was *listening* to the people...


Shout loud enough and it is hard for the person you are shouting at to
pretend they haven't heard you. Just the other day I shouted at an
automatic robotic telephone interface which had a pretty good grasp
of English (for a robot). Stuck in the endless hell of being unable
to give an an account number, and one being periodically demanded,
with small talk in between, it was a very pleasant suprise to discover
that the robot had been designed by an intelligent engineer, because
immediately upon raising my voice to maximum volume I got the response,
I don't seem to be able to help you -- let me hand you over to a human
operator. You have to give it to the robot for an imaginative response
here, even though the human operator was also totally unable to do anything
for me without the requisite account number. Do you think if I'd
tried the same raising voice trick twice the human operator might
have in turn handed me back to the robot.

<snip>

I think it hurts less to feel that one aught to be in control and that
the leaders have betrayed that trust in not respecting that relationship
than to think that one cannot hold leadership accountable, and to
think otherwise is to do no more than support the delusion that one is
in control. I'd sooner believe myself a free man reduced to slavery,
than a slave longing for freedom. The England I grew up in was a very
defeatist nation -- people tended to put themselves and their nation down,
and to think that anyone in their right mind would be off to Canada in an
instance if they could. That verye thinking made England then the place
people imagined it to be. But if I had to put my money on which nation
would be more likely to hold its leadership accountable for grave
crimes and misdemeanors it would be a tough call. I suspect that
the British people would be more willing to hold the leadership
accountable, but that the US legal system might be more likely to
actually make them accountable. The mindsets are I think very
different between the two societies.

I don't know about America, But commonwealth countries in general appear to
have a well established culture of satirising and criticising the government
of the time, regardless of which particular party is inthe leadership
position (and often have a good go at the opposition, too). I woudl suspect
that paying attention to what is being targetted to satirise is a *very*
good indicator of how the populace sees its government. In Australia, its
pretty much *mandatory*, culturally, to 'take the piss' out of any person in
a position of authority, it stops them taking themselves to seriously. And
just as importantly, a leader who can laugh at themselves will bemore
popular than one who can't, and one who can take the piss out of
*themselves* will gain far more loyalty and support than those who "have a
stick up their arse" (to use another colloquialism)


Likewise in England.. indeed I had this strong sense when in Australia
that it was England, just moved half way round the world, blessed with
a climate that was worth waking up to, etc. It was a bit of a culture
shock that.. I'd always in my ignorance presumed that a big country
like Australia would be much the same as a big country like the US,
while it would be the smaller New Zealand which would be to Australia
what Canada is to the US. Politically I read Australia when there as
much closer to the same right wing political model as the US than Canada
but culturally it felt closer to England than Canada would I think were
you to come here. A lot of our English culture got traded in for the
more convenient culture that was right next door. I had also thought
that the deserts in Australia and the US would make them geographically
similar. But I now think that it is Australia and Canada that are
geographically very similarly. Both nations live almost exclusively
on that thin strip of land that forms the border.. ours with the US,
yours with the sea, and both nations have this massive land mass which
is just there and part of the defining psyche of the people, while being
not part of most peoples daily reality.

But neither you or I live in a nation where at rodeos one can be asked to
remove ones hat, and then watch as the entire audience holds hat over heart
while being invited to sing the greatest national anthem on earth. At that
invitation I was strongly tempted to break out with Canada's national
anthem, but soon realised that I might be on the receiving end of the
joke. Being fair here, perhaps the same sort of thing happens at Rodeo's
this side of the border in Alberta, but I wouldn't know, never having been
to the Calgary stampede. Media wise the US media gives the US administration
a much freer ride for the most part than one might reasonably expect were
that media to be reporting on our system here. What is largely missing I
think in the US system is the notion that far from being unpatriotic the
system only really works when one has both government and opposition.
The democrats and republicans by contrast seem to think that the only
way that either can get elected is by singing from the same hymn book.

Ian

.

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