Bono's Op-Ed Article: Africa

The other day I took one of those stupid Facebook poll/quiz things. This one asked me to vote for the worst president out of a short list of five presidents. The five are not important, but I happened to pick Jimmy Carter as the worst, and, it just so happens that one of the other choices was our president just before Obama: George W. Bush. I immediately had a friend comment on the quiz and ask, "You really put Carter behind Bush #43, really?" My answer was, "Yes. I would. Talk to me in 25 years."

Today I read an op-ed article written by Bono and published in the New York Times on July 9, 2009. The title of the piece is "Africa" and you can read it by clicking on the title there.

I'm not one to give a lot of credibility to musicians' or actors' political opinions. I have been ignoring Bruce Springsteen and Barbra Striesand for years and they're two of my favorites. However, Bono isn't playing politics. Instead, he's trying to love well. As a result, I feel he is honest, no ax to grind.

One line in one paragraph of Bono's article about President Obama's visit to Ghana in particular drew my attention. Here is the paragraph: "The not-so-good news — that countries like Italy and France are not meeting their Africa commitments — makes the president’s visit all the more essential. The United States is one of the countries on track to keep its promises, and Mr. Obama has already said he’ll more than build on the impressive Bush legacy."

The sentence that I would actually love my friends that have a vitriolic opinion of our 43rd president, Bush to reread is this: "The United States is one of the countries on track to keep its promises, and Mr. Obama has already said he’ll more than build on the impressive Bush legacy." Did you catch that, "the impressive Bush legacy" part? What an honest guy to actually stick his neck out there among all the Bush haters to recognize that Bush's leadership with regard to Africa was important and admirable.

As for that Facebook poll I took, I can't recall ever reading somebody using the line "the impressive Carter legacy" to talk about something President Carter did while actually in office. Perhaps something he did as an ex-president, yes, but the poll wasn't asking about that. Who knows, maybe we won't have to wait a quarter of a century for history to present a realistic view of President George W. Bush.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On

That sure was exciting yesterday. We had a moderate earthquake here in the greater Los Angeles basin! I heard they downgraded it from a 5.8 to a 5.4 though. I was at work when it occured at 11:42 in the morning. The epicenter was located in Chino Hills which is only about 16 miles from the school I work at in Santa Ana. Of course, being at an elementary school, we had to have the students get down under the desk and all that. Some of the parents chose to come pick-up their kids early too. I've gotten to where earthquakes don't scare me too much, but of course now we're all thinking about the so-called "Big One" again. So, did you feel it?

Maybe I'm Just Highly Evolved?

This one was just released on "Yahoo! News" today.  This may explain a lot in my life . . . 

SARCASM SEEN AS EVOLUTIONARY SURVIVAL SKILL

by Meredith F. Small, LiveScience's Human Nature Columnist, from LiveScience.com

Humans are fundamentally social animals. Our social nature means that we interact with each other in positive, friendly ways, and it also means we know how to manipulate others in a very negative way.

Neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin at the University of California, San Francisco, has also recently discovered that sarcasm, which is both positively funny and negatively nasty, plays an important part in human social interaction.

So what?

I mean really, who cares? Oh for God's sake. Don't you have anything better to do that read this column?

According to Dr. Rankin, if you didn't get the sarcastic tone of the previous sentences you must have some damage to your parahippocampal gyrus which is located in the right brain. People with dementia, or head injuries in that area, often lose the ability to pick up on sarcasm, and so they don't respond in a socially appropriate ways.

Presumably, this is a pathology, which in turn suggests that sarcasm is part of human nature and probably an evolutionarily good thing.

How might something so, well, sarcastic as sarcasm, be part of the human social toolbox?

Evolutionary biologists claim that sociality is what has made humans such a successful species. We are masters at what anthropologists and others call "social intelligence." We recognize and keep track of hundreds of relationships, and we easily distinguish between enemies and friends.

More important, we run our lives by social calculation. A favor is mentally recorded and paid back, sometimes many years later. Likewise, insults are marked down on the mental score card in indelible ink. And we are constantly bickering and making up, even with people we love.

Sarcasm, then, is a verbal hammer that connects people in both a negative and positive way. We know that sense of humor is important to relationships; if someone doesn't get your jokes, they aren't likely to be your friend (or at least that's my bottom line about friendship). Sarcasm is simply humor's dark side, and it would be just as disconcerting if a friend didn't get your snide remarks.

It's also easy to imagine how sarcasm might be selected over time as evolutionarily crucial. Imagine two ancient humans running across the savannah with a hungry lion in pursuit. One guy says to the other, "Are we having fun yet?" and the other just looks blank and stops to figure out what in the world his pal meant by that remark. End of friendship, end of one guy's contribution to the future of the human gene pool.

Fast forward a few million years and the network of human relationships is wider and more complex, and just as important to survival. The corporate chairman throws out a sarcastic remark and those who "get" it laugh, smile, and gain favor. In the same way, if the chair never makes a remark, sarcastic people are making them behind his or her back, forming a clique by their mutually negative, but funny, comments. Either way, sarcasm plays a role in making and breaking alliances and friendship.

Thanks goodness, because life without out sarcasm would be a dull and way too nice place to be, if you ask me.

Two Become One

Lyle & John at our still-under-construction gathering site.

A few days ago a local newspaper ran an article about my church TerraNova.  The piece appeared in the Orange County Register.  I couldn't be prouder of my two pastors, John Reed and Lyle Castellaw.  I hope you give it a read here:

South County pastors turn their congregations into one

Zoo Vet

And the number one reason not to become a crocodile veterinarian . . . .

Yea, that's real, from Taiwan, taken April 11, 2007.

30 Hour Famine

www.30hourfamine.org

Not A Fun Post

Coming here for some small talk? Sorry. The picture above hit me hard. It's taken in Mukjar, Sudan, the Darfur region. It's a guy named Ibrahim standing over a grave where 25 of his friends were killed, many axed to death. Meanwhile, here I am in my comfortable house complaining that I have to wait nine months for a new episode of LOST to air.

200,000, maybe 400,00, humans have been killed in Darfur. Millions are homeless. The second picture below is a photo of a rather young displaced villager. Is that child even alive as I type this? Yet, I get feelings of indignation if I have to eat cereal one night for dinner, not over the Darfur clamity. Just yesterday I didn't even put that in my top ten things that are bothering me. Why?

When I studied history at Cal State Fullerton I shook my head in judgement when I read about how "we" just sat around as the Holocaust took place. Truth is, we're living through another moment like that now. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, violence, disease, starvation, they're all present. Even as you read this post, this catastrophic humanitarian crisis continues.

Learn more at sites like ENOUGH: The project to abolish genocide + mass atrocities, CARE, or the Save Darfur Coalition.

But, hey, aren't DVR's just the coolest thing ever?

So not colorblind

Yesterday I was listening to a brief news story/summary of the Academy Award nominations on public radio. I forget what station it was, either KPCC, KPFK, or KCRW (89.3, 90.7, & 89.9 respectively in Los Angeles), one of those. So the reporter tells us what all the nominations are and then has to say, "There are a good number of African-Americans nominated this year as well" and then she mentions Forest Whitaker, Djimon Hounsou, Eddie Murphy, and Jennifer Hudson. As if that matters! Why are "we" as a society still doing this? Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of not being judged by the color of your skin cannot be realized until we can have people like this reporter on public radio actually STOP pointing out the differences in race. Why aren't Whitaker, Hounsou, Murphy, and Hudson, just good actors as opposed to African-American actors? I think most of us would find it ridiculous to say, "It's very nice that we have a two Mexicans, an Irishman, and a Japanese person nomiated this year." I used to think that being "colorblind" was something that we were striving for, but the more I actually pay attention, I don't think it's happening. Why do we continue to construct these barriers? Maybe it's just me.

Pub-goers: take note.

Here's a billboard from Scotland's current anti-alcohol campaign. Aparently, Edinburgh, Scotland has the highest number of pubs per capita in all of Europe, about 188 people per pub. The legal drinking age is 18 there. Scottish lawmakers are trying to put a halt on the tradition of round-buying in their country. I just think this particular ad is brilliant.

Congo Election Update

One week ago in my post, Refugee Wear and Prayer, I wrote about the historic elections in Congo. The elections were for a new president as well as legislature. Since I had asked for prayer and drew attention to to the election, I thought I owed an update.

Aparently, the Sunday election, didn't go too well. One veteran politician called for a boycott. His supporters burned many of the election materials at various polling places as well as threw stones at voters. Because of the violence, the polls were re-opened on Monday. Sadly, despite the unplanned re-opening of the polls, the turnout was very low. Final results of the election are not expected for weeks.

If you are truly interested in this topic, I suggest these two articles I came across in the Anniston Star. That story as well as Central Congo polls open for extra day provide updates on the current election as well as provide some good historial background.

Violence and problems continued on day two of the election. For me this one paragraph from the second article says it all. "The scene Monday underscored the postelection challenge in Congo: persuading a people driven by ethnic and regional disputes and political rivalries that democracy is the best way to resolve their differences."

We are so blessed and spoiled in the United States nowadays.

Duck Hook

This story just came in off the AP and, forgive me if it's boring to you, I just find this so interesting . . . .

NIXON CONSIDERED USING NUKES IN VIETNAM

President Nixon, in his first year in office and eager to end an unpopular war that killed tens of thousands of U.S. troops, considered using nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese, recently declassified documents show.

By mid-1969, Nixon and national security adviser Henry Kissinger had settled on a strategy using international diplomacy with threats of force against the communists ruling the north in an attempt to get them to buckle, according to an analysis of the papers by the National Security Archive. The private research group is headquartered at George Washington University.

Kissinger and his staff began developing contingency military plans under the code name of "Duck Hook." He also created a committee within the National Security Council to evaluate secret plans prepared by Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington and military planners in Saigon.

A pair of declassified documents raised the question of nuclear weapons use in connection with the military operation against the north, which was fighting to reunite with the democratic south, according to the archive.

The first is a Sept. 29, 1969, memo from two Kissinger aides--Roger Morris and Anthony Lake--to Capt. Rembrandt Robinsonn, who had a central role in preparing the Duck Hook plans. Robinson had prepared a paper for the NSC committee outlining the Joint Chiefs plans to attack North Vietnam.

But the archive says Morris and Lake, unhappy with the document, asked Robinson to rework it to present "clearly and fully all the implications of the (Duck Hook) action, should the president decide to do it."

They said the president needed to decide in advance "the fateful question of how far we will go. he cannot, for example, confront the issue of using tactical nuclear weapons in the midst of the exercise. He must be prepared to play out whatever string necessary in this case."

The second document is an Oct. 2, 1969, memo from Kissinger to Nixon, introducing an NSC staff report on the state of military planning for Duck Hook. The report said the basic objective of the operation would be to coerce Hanoi "to negotiate a compromise settlement through a series of military blows," which would walk the fine line between inflicting "unacceptable damage to their society" and causing the "total destruction of the country or the regime."

But Nixon abandoned Duck Hook shortly after Oct. 2. Both his secretaries of Defense and state, Melvin Laird and William Rogers, opposed the plan. Nixon apparently also began to doubt whether he could sustain public support for the three- to six-month period the plan might require. He also concluded that his military threats against the North Vietnamese had no effect.

U.S. troops remained in the country throughout Nixon's first term despite a gradual withdrawl of forces that he began in 1969. Nixon was re-elected in 1972 and secured a cease-fire agreement the following year, but it was never implemented.

Two years later, in 1975, North Vietnamese forces overran the South, reuniting the country under Communist rule.

I can imagine that the idea of dropping nukes on the North Vietnamese indeed looked good to Nixon, him having looked back at Truman's decision to nuke Hiroshima in 1945. I'm sure the nuclear option smelled like, well . . . victory.

Refugee Wear and Prayer

One of things that came out of Chrisy's trip to South Africa in May is a friendship with a man named Luc. Luc is a political refugee from the Congo. Living in South Africa now, he can't go home. Luc's name is Kabongo. In order to raise money for him to live, NieuCommunities, the organization that made Chrisy's trip possible, developed T-shirts with Luc's picture on them. They are actually really hip shirts. The graphic above is what's on them. Should you want to purchase one on-line you can go here to Kabongo Refugee Wear. Proceeds support Luc.

The T-shirts are not why I am posting this though. Below is an e-mail that Luc sent yesterday. It is very interesting and I wanted to share this with you all . . .

Hello everyone,

I thought I could share with you something that has been preoccupying my heart and mind. The Democratic Republic of Congo, my country of origin, has been in the headlines lately because of a big event that is happening soon. This coming Sunday, the country will hold its first ever "democratic" elections since its independence from Belgium 46 years ago. There are close to 40 presidential candidates. Most of them do not have a strong support base in the country. They represent a tribe, an ethnic group or province. Looking at all these candidates, one has to wonder if a solution to the country's problem is about to be found. The country still has to find a gatherer, someone that at least half of the population feels he/she is patriotic and could lead the nation toward a better destiny.

I am personally looking forward to these elections because my hope is that the population of the Congo will finally become the priority for the elected leaders. The country still has to be a nation and my desire is that the next authorities will help the country move toward that.

Africa has a problem of leadership. As a continent, we are known to be community driven, but we still have to prove how well we can serve our communities of origin.

So please join me in prayer for the Congo, my beloved country.

Thankfully,

Luc

Finally, Luc is getting married to a South African woman named Petunia. If you want to read a really interesting post about how Luc had to give a dowry in order to marry Petuia, you should go here to Buying A Bride on Rob Yackley's site. It really is a very interesting and touching read.

Here is a picture of Luc (center) with Chrisy to his right as well as five of Chrisy's friends from Church. Luc and his Orange County women.

Please be praying for the Congo as well as Luc.