Is the pen really mightier than the sword?

Last week, President Mugabe asserted his attitude to the elections scheduled for the 27th June- 'We are not going to give up our country because of a mere X. How can a ballpoint fight with a gun?' Given Tsvangirai's decision today, he certainly seems to have a point.
Mugabe is 84 years old he has controlled Zimbabwe for 28 years. I do not know many men or women past the age of 80 who particularly scare me,(apart from Hugh Heffner perhaps)but I am absolutely terrified of what this man stands for. The question that seems to reverberate across the Western World is how and why has the situation been allowed to escalate in such a manner? Why has nothing been done to challenge the continuous corruption and bloodshed?
From the early Matabeleland massacres to the constant election violence Zimbabwe has borne witness to since the MDC first stood in 1999, Mugabe has always chosen fear over respect as his tool of control. Now it has got to the point where a party that gained 48% of the popular vote (compared to his 43%) cannot stand against him. This is for several sad and sorry reasons: even if it were safe for the public to vote freely, the MDC cannot even campaign due to excessive roadblocks and and police intimidation. To label recent events in Zimbabwe a farce implies a mildness in tone that I do not want anyone to infer.
The civilsed world often looks back at the "lessons" that the 20th century have supposedly taught us and the "never again" ethos is banded about whimsically. Do we fail to see that genocide and a culture of fear are not political concepts that we have managed to distance ourselves from? They seem to be ubitquitous aspects of human nature and they will remain so unless countries change their attitudes and move beyond old ties, affliliations or prejudices that no longer exist.
With the absence of a viable contender, it is more than likely that Mugabe will announce his victory for another term. This may suggest that there is nothing that can be done to stop more years of the same. However, this could be the point when Mugabe is at his most vulnerable, whether he would like to admit it or not. With inflation hitting 1.6 million % and a critically severe food shortage, he is not in a position to stand alone; he needs allies more than ever if his regime is to economically survive.
There are really three paths that could be drawn for Zimbabwe. One has a fairly large roadblock in front of it, for good reasons. A National Unity Government would not work- if The MDC are not even allowed to campaign, then how can they hope to have their voice heard in government? Addtionally, Mugabe's ego would never allow it primarily because he doesn't believe he has to. Civil war is a possibility but this option assumes that the public have the resources or energy to facilitate yet more bloodshed. All they want is peace, or perhaps more urgently to survive. That leaves international intervention: the only real(final) solution.
Until now, African Leaders' attitude towards Mugabe have been far more equivocal in comparison to the outrage voiced by the West. Some would argue that they have been loathe to ostracise him as they still nostalgically view him as a fellow veteran of the anti-colonial uprising. This perception may be beginning to alter, in no small part due to them having to cope with the ever increasing multitude of refugees from Zimbabwe that are starting to drain their already sparse resources and amenities. Cynically, certain critics have argued that African nations are reluctant to turn their backs on him because he knows too much about their own indiscretions. Do we need to have a human rights amnesty? That reminds me, to get Mugabe between a rock and a hard place, China needs to follow suit.
Armed insurgence is not the answer though. The UN need to provide financial and diplomatic support to a credible opposition. Strict economic sanctions need to be applied by all countries. The international community need to refuse to recognise him in both a fiscal and domestic sense.
Mugabe is not formidable; he is an 84 year old bully who has had his day.

The Age of Deferral

On any given day, how much time do we actually spend in the present? How many hours are spent fawning over past predicaments and procrastinating over future failures? Even when our bodies and minds seem to be reacting to the present, I think it is interesting to consider whether our behaviour is really influenced by something else entirely.
I was watching Tiger Woods playing in(and winning) the U.S. Golf Championship on Monday and the reaction raised from a ball going in a hole was quite extraordinary. I appreciate that, for him, this was a moment to be lived in. I also know that there will be many who will shake their heads at me- I clearly do not understand. Nevertheless, my actual argument is this- as those people jumped in the air, throwing a punch of exaltation, what were they actually celebrating?
Expanding on a sporting context, we as a nation are not even in Euro 2008, yet it seems as though it is human nature to cling to whatever tenuous associations we have to a country adept enough to actually qualify and live our footballing dreams through their experience (obviously if they are knocked out, the intricate ties are strangely and abruptly severed). The psychology behind supporting a team or a player so intensely strikes me as odd. Do not misunderstand me, I'm not focusing on those who like a bet, support local talent and so on. I am really trying to get under the skin of the loony in the pub, bashing his head repeatedly against the jukebox when HIS team loses (again) on penalities.
Why do people feel the need to live their lives through the success and failure of others? Well this is where my theory comes into play. We are living in an Age of Deferral. Rather than tackle the real issues at hand, (maybe some people are so dull or apathetic that they actually have none) people would rather transfer their redundant emotions to outside elements. It is much easier to feel happy or sad about someone else's life than one's own. It also conveniently removes responsibility which, if we're honest, no one really likes.
I am aware that that many loyal sports fans will disagree with my opening assertions. Therefore, please bear in mind that these observations are merely the catalyst for further development. Take the current generation's obssession with reality television. Big Brother series infinite- every week the Great British public like to play god and control the lives of individuals, so desperate for attention, they are even willing to temporarily defer their entire lives. We villify certain contestants and praise others for doing nothing special; we waste hours and hours watching and debating their behaviour. Why are we so bothered? Because all the time we are making ethical decisions about their inconsequential lives, we do not have to think about our own.
Whilst binge drinking is an issue that may not seem to have an obvious link to my argument, I'm afraid there is a commonality. The government have launched a new, hard hitting campaign based at 18-24 year olds in a desperate attempt to stop this "culture". Where did it come from? Why do young adults want to get wasted? I believe that it is another aspect of deferral. When inebriated, there is a distinct lack of control and therefore, again, no need to confront responsibility and live in the conscious present. It seems that, like ignorance and apathy going hand in hand, so deferral has an undeniable alliance with escapism. Whilst I do accept that my points on BB and binge drinking may focus primarily on young adults, it is only possible to learn what has been taught. I am as guilty as the next person. The Age of Deferral is not a post milllenium phenomena; I fear it extends back much further than that.

Father's Day

Due to funds running dry with the career change, I am now shamelessly exploiting my talent (?) as a gift giving facility. To add insult to injury, I am also posting it up for all to see. Sorry Dad, hope it's worth it.

Not Darth Vadar

It takes more than
Luke, I am your father
To claim to be man
enough to be known as Dad.

A seed can be sown,
But it still needs to be nurtured
Even when it has grown.

Eye level with your jeans' buckle,
Giant.
Omnisicence was a given,
Until you moonwalked muddy tough love
Throughout my teens-
Conciliatory fish and chips
Meets a homicidal teaspoon
In my head.

The wealth of Life's rich tapestry
That you are sewn
So intricately into
Cannot be undone.

Your title can't be
bought, borrowed or stolen-
It can only be harvested slowly;
I love you Dad.

Freedom of the Press?

A criticism from Chris Moyles started me thinking today. He was lamenting the fact that journalist, Mark Jeffries from the Mirror had effectively paraphrased his "exclusive" interview with Sharon Osbourne that had aired yesterday morning. I had also listened to this (after hating Moyles for sometime, his strange allure of arrogance and ego has won me over)and as the team went through soundbites of Jeffries' story, it certainly did seem as though he had lifted her words and created his article around Chris' scoop.
The roly poly(ha) DJ's bugbear was the fact that The Mirror had neglected to credit Radio 1 at all within the article whereas other papers had run the story but made sure that they mentioned his impromptu interview. Comedy Dave also drew attention to the hypocrisy surrounding the incident: when they have debated a story and neglected to include their source, newspapers have been known to get quite irrate.
I can certainly see their point but if we expand this argument, I think the eventual conundrum becomes obvious: who owns news? I am approaching this query from an entriely ideological perspective rather than considering it from a legal point of view. Once you share news, do you cease to have sole ownership of it? Once in the public form, is it essentially a free for all?
How many times have you had a particuarly witty anecdote told to you, pocketed it and recycled it at an opportune moment? Everyone is "guilty" of this crime and if you are not then you either need to listen more carefully to your friends or find some new ones with something interesting to say. When you seize your limelight, I imagine that in order to do the news justice, you probably doctor it a little, personalise it so that your audience laugh indulgently in a "that is so typical you!" manner. Through editing the information, it's also possible to convince ourselves that plagiarism hasn't occurred, the humorous acquaintance has merely inspired creativity.
So we all do it in a microcosmic sense but let's return to the big picture. News eventually turns into history. Interesting to decide when this transition happens- is it a day after, as we chuck the papers away? Or do we have to wait 50 years to really judge an event outside of its own context? My point here is that if we accept that whoever discovers the news first has ownership and needs to be referenced, does their copywright have a sell by date? Ideally, I imagine that a capable historian always investigates the primary source and then makes their own intepretation. Perhaps that what Jeffries should have done.

Review of the week

It has been emotional to say the least. That stands for personal and public experiences. For your sanity, let's focus on what has caught my eye outside of Lizworld. The bitter battle for the Democrat nomination has finally drawn to a close (although Clinton didn't seem to realise until well after everyone else). The result was going to be groundbreaking whatever the conclusion but a black presidential candidate will certainly bring a few potential Wallaces out of hiding no doubt. It will be interesting and sad to see how certain Republicans choose to villify him. Does he stand a chance against McCain? Internationally one may assume so. However, this was the mistake many made in 2004. We take for granted that our views are shared across the pond because we naively or arrogantly believe that they are right.
I went to New York in Feb and being the quintessential nosey parker that I am, I took every opportunity to quiz the US public about their political persuasions. Not that it was particularly difficult, because they are more than more forthcoming with their pearls of wisdom. It seems that politics and religion fit nicely into polite conversation in a bizarre way. But basically, to cut to the chase, the general prognosis at that point was that it didn't really matter who won the democratic nomination, a black guy or a woman were never going to make it onto the White House. Therefore McCain will win but will it be Republican status quo? I hope not.
This leads me to thinking about minorities. I can remember leaving school and believing that prejudice and (ridiculous as it seems) ignorance didn't exist. That is why it so difficult to hear the fact that educated professionals still believe that it is possible to be cured of homosexuality. The mind boggles. I appreciate that at points everyone could do with the number of a good psychiatrist, but your sexuality is your sexuality is your sexuality. No-one can pre-destine or manipulate that and in the wonderful cosmopolitan world that we live in, why would we want them to?
Negative views like this make me feel fairly disaffected, as if I needed an excuse! But I leave you with some personal pathos. A colleague's 16 year old daughter died this week. She was born with a hole in her heart and was also severely autistic. She has intricately planned her funeral with sunny colours and uplifting songs. To have that strength of character leaves me in awe and for her mother, to bury your own child will always be something that messes with my general state of being.
Where are the positives!!!?? I give you them as I've seem them- a rerun of Karate Kid. I cannot begin to describe the tingle I feel when Ralph does the dying lotus (or whatever it is) on the evil kid. That is pure catharcism for the bullied amongst us. I also welled up at my cousin's 18th birthday. I was surprised as I try to maintain an austere veneer at family dos (sometimes small talkbeats real talk) but to watch a young woman cry when her father spoke about her coming of age was food for the soul.
An average week them I guess, to be fair.

Counting the inches…

I taught a Larkin poem last week and it got me thinking…

As Bad as a Mile
Watching the shied core
Striking the basket, skidding across the floor,
Shows less and less of luck, and more and more

Of failure spreading back up the arm
Earlier and earlier, the unraised hand calm,
The apple unbitten in the palm.

Philip Larkin

I do not necessarily agree with Larkin’s sentiment. Is life futile and any attempt at developing a sense of faith and belief ultimately flawed? Hmm… Still, as I thought about human behaviour, certain aspects started to ring true.
I recalled my university degree which so utterly disappointed me. I was so desperate to gain a First but due to circumstances entirely within my control, I ended up with a 2:1. Rather than accepting this with dignified grace, I proceeded to tell everyone that would listen that I was 2% shy of a First. It is only with painful hindsight that it is obvious that when one berates life’s near misses so candidly they look like a wanker.
An analogy that strikes me is this: if a bus is missed by 30 seconds or 10 minutes, it doesn’t really matter. Ultimately the bum is not on the threadbare seat with the suspicious brown stain on it. What does this enlightened knowledge provide? An excuse to fail badly? As if one was necessary. Again, this mentality is put into practice by friends and acquaintances. I think it’s called “falling off the wagon”. What is the point of one cigarette, glass of wine or chocolate? When succumbing to temptation, do it bloody justice. We don’t seem to like half measures in our failures as much as we loathe them in our successes.
Another human trait that strikes me within this poem is the ridiculous way in which we try to control or bargain with fate and destiny. The concept that we try to decide life’s difficult decisions by making the basket/traffic light/etc in time. Everyone has their personal decision making mechanism and at points we truly believe that if we succeed in the inane target we have set, our ultimate desires will come to fruition. Why do we do this? Is it an attempt to play God in our own lives? Are we aware of how inconsequential our little battle is? Or do we manage to convince ourselves? I also like the way that we change the goal posts and allow ourselves the opportunity to cheat fate or play it at its own game. If we don’t achieve our aim (let’s use one of mine for clarity: getting the rubbish in the bin) the first time around, then we make it best of three or even five if our aim is particularly dire.
So failure and control seem to be the key concepts here. Therefore we arrive back at the question: can we truly control whether we fail? I think that perhaps failure is subjective and past failures change and evolve with time. Over five years on, I have had “closure” on the whole 2% debacle and certainly do not feel the need to engineer conversations around it. Not that my degree qualification comes up so much anymore. It seems that measuring ourselves by past achievements or failures can be the most destructive practice of all. What we should be concentrating on is eating the apple in the here and now.

Cut to the chase- what's the solution?

My mother refuses to listen or watch the news anymore. I think her uncomprising stance has something about an ostrich and sand within it but I also think that an increasing number of people are becoming entirely disaffected by what they are told about the world around them.
The issue of the day for me is teenage violence. As I listened to the fact that 16 teenagers have been stabbed to death in London in the last sixth months, I tried to think if it had always been this way. I can remember being scared when I was a teenager and feeling threatened when I was on my own. Nevertheless, I'm sure that young people stabbing or beating one another was not quite so regular an occurance.
Despite this inner (perhaps nostalgic) belief, I'm reluctant to argue that youth violence has got worse. Statistics argue that it hasn't. But if this is the case, why are we all talking about it? Something has changed; it's just a matter of working out what it is. Let's start with the weapon. Is it the knife or worse the gun that's the problem? Are guns more readily available to teenagers today? Not if you take Germaine Greer's point made Radio 4. She argued that all self respecting young men would have carried a knife in her day. I can remember my father's (albeit belated) glee at receiving a swiss army knife for Christmas when I was young. I believe they were considered to be de riguer of masculinity.
If we agree that knives are not a new invention and accessibilty hasn't increased then we need to look beyond the actual weapons. This seems to be something that is difficult even for the government to do. Perhaps this is because knives and guns are controllable, quantative entities whereas human will and intent are not. If Boris Johnson wants to rid London of the 'scourge' of knife crime, he is going to have to look further than the chosen instruments of assault.
People are quick to judge the law and its interminable weakness. To many, the government are failing and this is where the blame lies. We like to push dealing with evil away to somewhere non descript and distanced from our lives, like Whitehall. A policeman has said, 'Until teenagers are more frightened of the law than eachother our task is hopeless.' and I think this starts to shed some light on where I want to head with my argument.
Lord of the Flies- a novel so many of us read at school. I have taught it to my year 11 class this year. In the novel, Golding explores the concept of human fear and how it affects society in intricate detail. It is the fear that eats away at the boys and allows them to degenerate from "civilised" school pupils to murderous savages. Things go wrong for them when 'people start(ed) getting frightened'. They look desperately for an embodiment of evil outside of themsleves, from the water, the air or even a pig's head on a stick. Simon's assertion, 'maybe it's only us' is realised far too late by Ralph as he weeps for 'the darkness of man's heart' at the end of the text.
I think fear is a significant problem in society today. Due to advancements in technology, we can plague ourselves with new fears 24 hours a day. Parents are scared and consequently children are scared. But we do not share these fears enough in the cold light of day. Think about the kind of fear that Carol Saldinack had to contend with when she realised what her sons were capable of. No one wants to admit that potential for evil exists within their own home. This leads to hysteria and ignorance; both of which are cancerous elements in society.
Hysteria leads to hatred; ignorance leads to apathy and a lack of repsect. Are these qualities indicative of the new generation? Have they the ironic access to omnipotence through the web but also the disinclination to use it? Have they the absence of a "cause" to fight for and unite against?
Whenever anyone talks so generically it frustrates me but it is difficult to do anything otherwise. Something is changing in our culture and we need to recognise it in order to react to it. I believe it has something to do with Darwin. Again, an old theory for a new (?) problem.