What can one do?

trump knows which campaign promises to keep in order to make sure his base is happy.  So, of course, he pulled the US out of the Paris agreement on limiting greenhouse gas emissions in order to try to keep the world from roasting.

Source

Der Spiegel notes in a lengthy editorial essay:

Trump's withdrawal is a catastrophe for the climate. The U.S. is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases -- behind China -- and is now no longer part of global efforts to put a stop to climate change. It's America against the rest of the world, along with Syria and Nicaragua, the only other countries that haven't signed the Paris deal.
But the effects on the geopolitical climate are likely to be just as catastrophic. Trump's speech provided only the most recent proof that discord between the U.S. and Europe is deeper now than at any time since the end of World War II.
Now, the Western community of values is standing in opposition to Donald Trump. The G-7 has become the G-6. The West is divided.

At this point, it seems like only a major volcanic eruption can cool the planet.  The downside to that eruption is, well, the the suddenness of it all will be catastrophic; be careful what you wish for!

So, what can one do on this World Environment Day, right?

Even if you are a New York billionaire--that other guy--there is not much you can do.

Unfortunately, private philanthropy is just not big enough to replace government funding. You can advocate. You can demonstrate.

As much as Bloomberg is putting his own money where his mouth is, we too can do things in our daily lives even as we continue to resist the maniac that 63 million people voted for.  Like, for instance, "You’re better off eating vegetables from Argentina than red meat from a local farm":

Eating local is lovely, but most carbon emissions involving food don’t come from transportation — they come from production, and the production of red meat and dairy is incredibly carbon-intensive.

And, yes, simplify your life:

It’s better not to consume the raw materials in the first place, so you may want to think carefully about whether you’re really going to use something before you buy it.

Oh, of course, continue to protest against the horrible human being and continue to shame the 63 million who voted for him.

June 1, 2017: A date which will live in infamy

So, ... it finally happened.

President Trump announced Thursday that he will withdraw the United States from participation in the Paris climate accord

The asshole did it.

Source

I bet his 63 million voters, including two frequent commenters in the pre-election years, are orgasmic with this premature withdrawal.

It is not only the global climate change, about which I have blogged enough, that worries me.  This decision by the worst ever human being will mean that in the international politics of give and take, well, most of the rest of world will begin to work around the US.  And when we go knocking on their doors, they will flash their middle fingers to reciprocate trump's gesture.

The US as the "leader of the free world" no more.

Fareed Zakaria on Trump and climate accord: This could be the day the US resigns as leader of the free world https://t.co/TTwMoMjqEn

— CNN (@CNN) June 1, 2017

I wish people would understand something that many serious people, and the insignificant me, have been saying ever since trump became a candidate: most of his policies are in tune with what most of the GOP is all about.  In this context, it is not merely trump who denies global climate change and the human causation of it--that is pretty much the mainstream GOP position.  trump just happens to speak crudely and plainly, whereas the "establishment" leaders use appropriate euphemisms!

Oh well ... I feel so exhausted. It is not even five months into the asshole's presidency.

If you prick us, do we not bleed?

It is easy to dish out philosophical advice and comfort to others upon whom the cosmos might have showered misfortunes.  When a death happens but in a different home, we trot out all the platitudes.  The believers might even say things like "your loved one is now with god" or "god's will hath no why."

In the old country, there is an expression: தனக்கு பட்டால் தான் தெரியும், which translates to something like "you will truly understand it only when it happens to you."  When, for instance, a death happens in our own home--even if it is the death of beloved dog--we cry and sob just like how the neighbor did and we forget all those philosophical platitudes that we dished out to the neighbor.

It is one thing when such events happen at a personal, individual level, but, another when an entire country is going through an upheaval that I cannot even begin to imagine in my wildest imaginations.  I am referring to Syria here.  When the war and the killings unfolded in Syria, all those over the past few years apparently mattered less to us compared to when the horrific killings happened in our own home, in Paris:

Monuments around the world lit up in the colors of the French flag; presidential speeches touted the need to defend “shared values;” Facebook offered users a one-click option to overlay their profile pictures with the French tricolor, a service not offered for the Lebanese flag. On Friday the social media giant even activated Safety Check, a feature usually reserved for natural disasters that lets people alert loved ones that they are unhurt; they had not activated it the day before for Beirut.
“When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag,” Elie Fares, a Lebanese doctor, wrote on his blog. “When my people died, they did not send the world into mourning. Their death was but an irrelevant fleck along the international news cycle, something that happens in those parts of the world.”
The implication, numerous Lebanese commentators complained, was that Arab lives mattered less

That was after a double suicide attack in Beirut only a day before the Paris tragedy.  A city that was finally becoming calm and peaceful after years of unrest, and despite all the chaos next door in Syria that was pushing out refugees into Lebanon.

“Imagine if what happened in Paris last night would happen there on a daily basis for five years,” said Nour Kabbach, who fled the heavy bombardment of her home city of Aleppo, Syria, several years ago and now works in humanitarian aid in Beirut.
“Now imagine all that happening without global sympathy for innocent lost lives, with no special media updates by the minute, and without the support of every world leader condemning the violence,” she wrote on Facebook.

I want to be very clear here, before some troll thinks that I am minimizing the tragedy in Paris--I am not, and these two posts make that very clear.

"All of these tragedies are "an attack on all of humanity," writes this commentator, who points out how the media even reported the events very differently:

Although the terrorist group behind the attacks in Paris and Beirut was the same, the Western media narrative has been vastly different. In Paris, ISIS attacked the city's progressive youth, massacring dozens enjoying their night out at a concert, a soccer game and a restaurant. In Beirut, ISIS struck a "Hezbollah stronghold" in the "southern suburbs of Beirut," a poor, majority Shia area often characterized as a bastion of terrorism in the region. The attack was portrayed as little more than strategic punishment for Hezbollah's ongoing involvement in the Syrian civil war and support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

As much as we are shocked and sad about the Paris attacks, don't we need to think about other places too where the same ISIS has made daily life a hell on earth?  Shouldn't what we feel for Paris and France be the same as what we feel for Aleppo and Syria?  For Beirut and Lebanon?  For Baghdad and Iraq?  for ...

It seems like we have forgotten this part that Shakespeare wrote:

If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh?
if you poison us, do we not die? 

But want to remember only the lines that come after that:

and if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?
If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

Caption at the source:
The relatives of one of the victims of the twin suicide attacks in Beirut mourned
during a funeral procession in the city's Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood.

Paris, je t'aime

The highly empathetic pacifist that I am, I felt my body tightening up after reading the news about the latest act of terror in Paris.  I shut down the computer and lay down for a few minutes in silence.

As I blog this, it is nearly a full day since that first report.  "Third World War" is one of the trending themes in Twitter.  Turns out that it was after something that Pope Francis said:

Left behind in Paris were the latest scars, said Pope Francis, from the “piecemeal Third World War.”

If we really want to talk about a Third World War, then I would submit that it already happened, and it was in a different context--Congo:

Between 1998 and 2003, an extremely complex and chaotic civil war engulfed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo) -- a vast, thickly-jungled nation in Central Africa the size of Western Europe -- and spilled over into neighboring countries, including Rwanda, Angola, Burundi, Zimbabwe and Uganda.
While the estimated 5-million death toll from this war pales in comparison to the 15-million lives lost during World War I, and the 60-million who perished in the Second World War -- the DR Congo inferno was nonetheless was one of the ten deadliest wars in recorded history.
Moreover, given that the DR Congo war erupted in such incredible violence during the turn of the 21st-century (amidst the global internet communication phenomenon), its relative obscurity is puzzling, to say the least.

It was the deadliest since WW II.

In addition to the terrible tragedy of loss of lives and traumatic injuries--physical and mental--to many more, another problem arises, as Nick Gillespie wrote five years ago:

The problem isn't with the current moment's rhetoric, it's with the goddamn politicization of every goddamn thing not even for a higher purpose or broader fight but for the cheapest moment-by-moment partisan advantage. Whether on the left or on the right, there's a totalist mentality that everything can and should be explained first and foremost as to whether it helps or hurt the party of choice.

How can we begin to engage in constructive dialog in such contexts?  I do not mean a dialog with ISIS--those are irrational actors who are beyond any dialog.  I mean a dialog amongst the overwhelming majority of us who, thankfully, do not think and act like how ISIS and other terrorists do.  "It’s a simple strategy. It’s just not easy to implement":

[Reframing]  political arguments in terms of your audience’s morality should be viewed less as an exercise in targeted, strategic persuasion, and more as an exercise in real, substantive perspective taking. To do it, you have to get into the heads of the people you’d like to persuade, think about what they care about and make arguments that embrace their principles. If you can do that, it will show that you view those with whom you disagree not as enemies, but as people whose values are worth your consideration.
Even if the arguments that you wind up making aren’t those that you would find most appealing, you will have dignified the morality of your political rivals with your attention, which, if you think about it, is the least that we owe our fellow citizens.

Yep, easier said than done.  The inability to engage in a constructive dialog is why responses include stuff like this:

I hope some day we will learn how to talk with each other and take care of our common problems like ISIS.  Until then, it seems like this pacifist will have only stress-filled days :(

Wishing for peace

Finding the direction in our lives ...

A decade ago, when I went to Dubai, I noticed that the table in the hotel room included an arrow that pointed in the direction of Mecca.  I suppose in Dubai or most parts of the Islamic world, there is always an explicit, or at least an implicit, orientation towards Mecca.

We have similar orientations in the secular world, too.  Artists, stereotypically, seem to be always oriented towards Paris. This city is their Mecca, even if the Eiffel Tower is not their Kaaba.

In The Summing Up, Somerset Maugham writes about his first experiences in Paris when he was a young man, struggling to create a life as a writer.  From the continent, and from across the channel, writers and painters and dancers and everybody seemed to converge on Paris.  It turned out that much later in life, Maugham didn't find Paris to be the charming and alluring place it was to him when he was young.  But, I would think that Paris did give him a frame of reference.

A neighbor has a similar Paris-orientation. Well, to all of France.  The artist that she is, it is an annual trip that she makes to that part of the world.

The Dordogne ... yes, I was there!

I wonder if that is her pilgrimage, as much as going on Hajj is to the devout Muslim, and like how I go on my own travels that are pilgrimages in the sense of how much they let me understand my place and purpose in this world.  We all do what we can in our own ways in order to get our bearings and to orient ourselves in the correct direction.

A couple of evenings ago, when the sun was shining, I saw this neighbor heading to the river.

Bonjour, madame, I yelled out from my front porch.

Without looking towards me, and not even pausing to wonder who said that, and almost as a reflex, she replied, bonjour, monsieur.

And then she turned towards me and said something that sounded like "bzz bzzz bzzzz bzzzzz ..."

"Hey, I used up all the French I know when I said bonjour, madame."

"That's all you need to know and say, really" she replied with a smile, as she continued on to the rivière.

A little after that, an old friend swung by to have coffee with me. After six years.

The coffee I brewed, and the eats were from the store:
salty plantain chips, pound cake, and amaretto cookies

A lot has happened in those six years.  C'est la vie!

Looking back, I am relieved, more than anything else, that over those years I didn't my lose sense of direction in life. My Mecca, my Paris, and my everything, are all within me?  Merci!

(Old) Photo of the day

Caption at the source: PARIS—In the foreground: Gene Kelly during a rehearsal, 1953.