A VERY HAPPY 2013

Sunday, 13 January 2013

A half month into another new year. The old one rushed by without a nod towards me, but thankfully the new year has decided to make up for it. And so, at this juncture I have a little less to complain about.

Syria is still boiling and whether it will spill over depends on Putin and the new man in China. I have yet to make his “acquaintance”. However, Putin is the man I have put enduring hope on to give some balance to a world menaced by the West headed by a man-in-black...catch my drift? Le socialiste French president is as lame as lame can be. And he could be why the IMF guy was honey trapped in the first place...to make way for a Frenchman named Hollande ( discreet little ‘e’ to make it less silly). Maybe he who likes his honey is better nuanced for socialistic policies, and this man would probably have been a better socialiste as his short IMF head term demonstrated. He will be even better now that he has been stabbed in the back by his capitalist cousins.

Putin is, as the rating shows, the world’s most powerful leader and literally second to none because nobody, not even Obama, ranks number one...hehehe. I would like to cheer him on like a naive little cheerleader would for her high school’s football, baseball or basketball team. In a sense I believe that I can because we are currently precariously balanced on a knife edge. A minuscule wrong move could plunge us all into another world war and a statesman would have to make moves calculated not to the tip things over. That Russia has been once beaten has made them most definitely twice shy. And so, Syria and also Iran cannot but stay as pawns on a chess board for a little longer, I hope.

Last year was funny in that I waited to see if the world would end, but you and I are still around and struggling to stay afloat in rough seas that could either go rougher or, hopefully, smoothen out to a time when men were talking about social justice and the debate was how to not allow indolence to cheat us of a good life that can be shared by all on a playing field made level and tuition fees in the UK and Europe, even for foreigners, were affordable. Those were the days when the world was more one than it is now.

I think back on those hippy days of my youth. If one thinks that it was all about pot and free love; Woodstock and beautiful music; and, pretty prints for miniskirts and gorgeous halter tops one is much mistaken. The 1968 student protests against the Vietnam War and great existentialist philosophers such as Jean Paul Sartre and Simone De Bouvier were all part of the hippy revolution where love was the dynamics that drove the intellect free from man made encumbrances. I would like to see a repeat of this freeing of the intellect in Islam with the doors of ijtihad opened for us all to fashion a path to the loving and merciful God.

My prayers are for a wonderful 2013 where Syria will see a peaceful transition to where it wants to go and the West will allow it to move on peacefully. I want Netanyahu to do a little navel gazing and take Israel back on a course that Rabin started where there might be peace between two states: Israel and Palestine. Iran must not be subjected to sanctions. This must stop because innocent lives are being punished on a pretext sown together by greedy capitalists in faraway countries who are intent on plundering beyond their borders. For Japan I wish a healing after the March 11 tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear reactor accident...and finally for my country that the Arab Spring and all its implications to not arrive on these shores and those of my neighbours and as far as the continent will stretch. Finally, I wish for myself, my sons, grandson, husband and daughter-in-law and the rest of my family the best that God will deign to fashion for us. For my friends all that they may wish. Those strangers that have never touched my life I wish them well and for my foes, may you understand the animosity you have towards me and then forgive yourself for ever wanting to injure me. Amen.