Barack (From Hebrew Baruch meaning Blessed)
The people of Iran are celebrating Naw-Ruz, the first month of the Iranian solar year. The first day of spring has been celebrated since time immemorial in the region of Iran – land of the ancient Persians. There are evident links to a pastoral fertility festival and legend attributes the foundations of the celebration to King Jamshid, a king who lived long before the great deluge. One particularity of this celebration is that it has “survived” the onset of different religions from Zoroastrianism to modern day Islam. Zoroastrians and Shi’i muslims alike celebrate this day, traditionally held on the vernal equinox (21st March) and it is also one of the nine Baha’i holy days on which work is suspended.
In Iran, this is the one holiday celebrated by more than one religious group. President Obama’s advisors are therefore proving to be more informed and better equipped to deal with dialogue with the nations of the Middle East than his predecessors had been. Barack Obama in fact chose the day of Naw-Ruz to deliver a video message to the people of Iran and extend a meaningful olive branch to the people of one of the oldest civilisations on this earth. There would be no paternalistic tones, no aggressive threats, no self-defined policing role. This was an open invitation to dialogue. It was more than that – it was an acknowledgement of the rich history, the rich culture and the rich potential of the Iranian people. It was a request for Iran to take up its rightful place among the great nations – an appeal to allow diplomacy rather than spear rattling to work.
In sharp contrast to Obama, Israeli President Shimon Peres also broadcast to Iran on Israeli Farsi radio. His were much heavier tones and he dismissed the Iranian leadership while appealing directly to the people – telling them that they could not feed their sons enriched uranium. Obama’s speech on the other hand was not naive. It gave Iran a choice to stand up, bear its international responsibilities and obligations and stand tall among the big nations. Obama offers mutual respect, a far cry from the Dubya tones of hellfire and bible-bashing. In their respective Now-Ruz speeches neither the Ayatollah Khamenei nor President Ahmadinejad mentioned Obama’s speech in any way although Khamenei did mention that world powers had been convinced that nothing would stop Iran from achieving its nuclear programme.
The President of the United States offered a most poetic ending to his appeal. Quoting the poet Sa’adi his was an appeal to unity and recognition of the one-ness of humankind: “The Children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence”.
Benedict (From Latin meaning Blessed)
Obama spoke to the people of Iran, the nation situated close to the cradle of civilisation. If one particular theory about the origins of man were to be believed then the human species came straight out of Africa and it was to the Dark Continent that Pope Benedict, head of the Roman Catholic Church headed. His first stop was in Cameroon where he landed on Saint Patrick’s Day. Speaking aboard the plane that took him to Cameroon’s capital, the pope touched on Africa’s AIDS pandemic, saying that condoms were not the answer in the continent’s fight against HIV.
The name Cameroon is derived from Rio dos Camarões, which is what the Portuguese discoverers named the region in the 15th Century. That was Portuguese for “River of Prawns” which gives the impression of a red river but was really named so because of an abundance of crayfish and prawns in the rivers of the land whose longest continuous inhabitants were pygmy groups. Pope Benedict had barely touched the ground of the land that had been colonised by Germans, French and English that his controversial statements with regards to the efficacy of rubber sheaths of impermeable membrane had begun to cause ripples across the world.
Here was the Head of the Roman Catholic Church, spiritual guide and guru for one-sixth of the world’s population going out on a limb with regards to a very human activity that has been with us since Adam and Eve roamed the earth. Now the Catholic Church has invested much in turning most things sexual into taboo exalting such qualities as virginity, abstinence and “purity” while denouncing promiscuity and a lax lifestyle. Whether you were spanking the proverbial primate or indulging in erotic desires of even the mildest dangers there would always be a spiritual guru from within the Catholic fold who would convince you that yours were the desires of satan and his ilk.
The anathema of most things sexual proved to be a winner argument for centuries and great thinkers like Augustine (the Saint) found it hard to move from “O Lord, make me pure but not yet” to “Total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation”. The modern day assault is on Condoms as the new weapon in Beelzebub’s arsenal of propaganda. Benedict condemns condoms because they are, to him, a symbol of sexual promiscuity. A young man does not walk around with a condom in his wallet because he is responsible but because he is sexually promiscuous – he sleeps around. The condom is anathema because it causes sexual promiscuity – at least the Pope tells you so. In so many words.
Which is just plain stupid. I know its Benedict the whatever number who is saying it. I also know that he condemns condoms in spite of all the facts that show that the spread of HIV can be prevented when condoms are used during sex. The Catholic church believes that sex is only for married couples and preferably for procreation (though not only). Good for the Catholic church. Calls for moderation and prudence are not unreasonable either…there’s no harm to be done with a bit of self-control. But to give the impression that condoms are not a solution to the HIV problem in the face of all the evidence to the contrary is downright ignorant.
The spread of ignorance is not helpful. It is dangerous. Condoms are not a solution if you want to live a life in accordance with the accepted doctrines and standards of Catholicism. Nobody has a quarrel with that. Abstention and abstinence are the recommended daily requirements for a Catholic Sexual Diet. Admittedly it is not the strongest marketing ploy but the Catholic Church ain’t a business but a religion.
On the other hand Condoms are a solution for the prevention of spread of diseases as well as… hear this… the prevention of unwanted pregnancies. An appeal to the people of the continent most heavily afflicted with HIV not to use condoms is crazy. As the advert in Italy of the early nineties went “AIDS… se lo conosci lo eviti“. It takes an informed public to take steps to avoid infection. Misinformation is irresponsible. The Health Ministers of both Germany and France know that and they were quick to contradict Benedict’s statement. As was the Archbishop of Berlin. Funnily enough, the Catholic Church is not the only international institution preaching on Abstinence as being the solution. The other one? Bush’s USA – at least until recently when the bible-bashers had a say in the running of government.
Joseph (From Malta meaning “Inhobbkom”)
J’accuse has been wavering on local issues mainly for work reasons but I will not bore you with the detailed excuse of why we have not been assiduously chronicling the daily downfall of the one who was supposed to lead the Labourites into the Promised Land. Ironically the nature of my main source of income precludes me from commenting on the issue of VAT on registration tax itself since that very issue might end up before the institution that is the source of my daily bread. On the other hand what I can say is that the stance taken by Joseph and Labour is weird to say the least. Weird because the “moral dues” of this government as Roberta Metsola Tedesco Triccas would describe them, are also moral dues of the next.
Joseph is choosing to establish a precedent that might prove costly for his own government in the future. He does not seem at all miffed by the fact that government coffers would have to cough up 50 million euros if it accepted his position and Roberta’s. Far from the taxation crowd there was another important bandwagon to jump on and that was the irrational racist sentiment that seems to have reached boiling point. In pandering to the anti-boat people pundits, Inhobbkom Joseph drew up a 20 point plan that included the suspension of Malta’s international obligations. Now call me stupid and a coward but I do not feel comfortable electing someone who makes the kind of promises Ahmadinejad and Omar al-Bashir would be proud of.
Some were saying that Joseph is in EP election mode. As are the Motley Crew chosen by Lawrence’s (From Latin meaning “bearing laurels”) Party to contest for the prize seats in Strasbourg. Election mode makes strange people out of normally average human beings. Some will end up pioneering a new code of conduct for Euro-Parliamentarians just (only just) before most of the conditions being signed up for become the main rule in the EP itself.
Incidentally while the local EPP representative seems to be eager to pioneer transparency rules allow me to inform you that the ALDR (that is the Liberal Democrat Group) have long been pushing for better accountability and transparency of MEP actions. The EPP, that “greatest group” in the EP is facing a tiny crisis. Tiny because a party that should never have formed part of the formation has finally decided to call a spade a spade and admit that it has as much in common with the Christian Democrats as it did with Karl Marx’s heirs. I am of course speaking of David Cameron’s Conservatives who have announced a definite split from the EP and now face the dilemma of forming a new EP group with such colourful people as Polish and Czech conservative parties.
Padraig (Irish for Patrick)
As the Irish rugby team readied itself for a grand slam we heard the sad news that some eejits calling themselves the Real IRA decided to renew hostilities and killed men serving in the British Army. Sadly this came some days before Saint Patrick’s day and it became evident that the only interest of this kind of people was to rekindle hatred and restart the war that had begun to seem a thing of the past. I read an interesting article about this kind of people. They are the people who thrived on “the troubles”, who became relative nobodies once the guns were put down and the fear subsided. They missed their position of prominence, they missed the fear in men’s eyes when they walked down the street. They needed a casus belli, a cause for war. When that did not come they shot a couple of soldiers and a pizza delivery guy dead in the most cowardly of manners.
La Fheile Padraig came and we were mourning deaths that were needless. There is really no end to the stupidity of man. It would be base and stupid to blame religion for this latest massacre. Religion has little to do with this and many other conflicts. More often than not it is the pride of man – a misplaced pride buried in a ridiculous feud with a long forgotten origin that is the cause of the problem. What is it that the bible stories told us about pride? About the devil being cast from the body of angels and of Adam being cast out of Eden and condemned to an eternity of labour?
J’accuse (French for I accuse)
It’s the end of another week. I trust you have had a good week and that you enjoy yourself in moderation. Sin sin, níl aon scéal eile agam (Irish – that’s all, I haven’t got another story)… so I’ll see you all next time.
Until then… Bain taithneamh as an deireadh seachtaine… or what’s left of it.
Jacques has blogged about Air Malta’s advertising language on http://www.akkuza.com. Will you bless us with your presence on the blog?
This article and accompanying Bertoon appeared on the Malta Independent on Sunday (22.03.09).
The leap from ignorance to stupidity is easy for the human to make. For the spiritual guide of a faith it is a bit less excusable to do so, especially when the stance being taken puts so many lives in danger. The Pope and his spokespersons have remained adamant on this position notwithstanding its having drawn harsh criticism from many quarters including within the church itself.
France’s Foreign Minister expressed deep concern at the Pope’s words on the issue. The Pope is endangering Public Health Policy was the word from the Quai d ‘Orsai. Germany’s Health Minister Ulla Schmidt contradicted Pope Benedict’s assertion and stated quite clearly that condoms have an important role in the battle against the spread of AIDS.
