More to Islam than an Arab pot of gold

One of the biggest debates in New Zealand at the moment, if not the biggest, centers around the possible sale of the Auckland International Airport. In recent days a very generous take over offer has been received from Dubai Aerospace Enterprises for $NZ 2.6 billion. The rationale in recommending shareholders reject the offer would, it seems, be based not so much on economic or commercial considerations as the price offered is considered a generous one, as on political expediencies and prejudice.

In an interview with local media today, visiting British MP George Galloway simply poses the question, 'why sell to anyone?' I think his reasoning makes good sense and also challenges us to look closely at what may be a growing sense of Islamophobia on our part.

The link below is to a short video recording of his intweview with the NZ Dominion Post News Paper this morning. It's well worth the 3-4 minutes it will take to listen to it.

>>George Galloway discusses Islam in NZ

Read more!

The Meldrew Factor

I think there's a bit of the Meldrew in all of us, well in me anyway. It's probably why I identify so easily with his character in the TV series One Foot in the Grave.

For those of you who need me to 'draw you a picture' us Meldrews' are frustrated and discontented with society. We're between 40 and 60,we're fed-up with politics, and the government in general. We aren't very positive about the future, and have particular worries about public services. Another fear is our financial future, as pensions funds seem to be dwindling. We're sick of all the talk about global warming, we're tired of reality television and we're fed up with watching sanitized news broadcasts.

Oh, you too? Well welcome to the club!

Read more!

The Transatlantic Cultural Gap

I suppose our nearest 'brush' with the UK Celebrity Culture was the fact that we lived just a few doors from where the once famous Spice Girl, Posh, and the now famous Victoria Beckham used to live


Despite her mega stardom in the UK ,it seems her mana failed to follower her across the Atlantic where her promotional Reality TV special 'Victoria Beckham comes to America was described by the critic from the New York Post as; 'an orgy of self-indulgence so out of whack with, er, reality. Going on (in love of course) she described Mrs Beckham as "relentlessly self-promoting" and "vapid and condescending" The LA Times was more sympathetic, saying only of her 60 minute TV Show that well, she 'got her 15 minute of fame' Which ever way you look at it, it seems the program did not find favour with the Yanks.

On a kinder note, I think our old neighbour just misjudged the enormous cultural gap that exists between the two countries. Despite speaking the same language and sharing a similar historical perspective, what works in one culture does not automatically translate to the other.

As Winston Churchill said of Anglo/US. relationships, 'two great nations separated by one common language'.

Read more!

Ships that pass in the night

In former times she would have been called a 'White Russian', a political opponent of the Bolshevik revolution. Her father almost certainly was. He escaped with his family to America on forged documents in the days after the Second World War, and today, nearly 70 years later that heritage still defines her.

'I came here to New Zealand nearly 35 years ago' she said, as she handed me a coffee: her strong northern European accent still clearly discernible 'It's black with sugar', 'I don't buy milk.' 'Once my family's background became known to the FBI, life there was just impossible. There could be no future for us any more. But here, no body knows. Here, nobody cares'. Her words hung there suspended in the cold morning air.

We'd met just a few minutes earlier. She had walked up her drive to collect the morning paper, right where my car had stalled a moment before following an unsuccessful crash start. 'You'll need the double A service man.' she said, ' here, have a read of the paper while I go down to the house and call him for you. You can use my membership, they'll never know she assured me' Thanks, I said, and she vanished back into the mist from which she had just mysteriously appeared.

She returned and we waited there, together in the early morning mist, waiting for the 'double a' serviceman as she called him. Standing there looking out over the harbor, sipping our coffees, discussing the world news headlines and exchanging our life stories - like people who had known each other for years.

Then just as quickly as we met, she melted back into the morning mist and, thanks to the double a man, I was able to continue on my journey, and she hers.

Read more!

Things I've learned from being a Granddad

Read books that you enjoy...

Do whatever you want whenever you want...

Play with simple things...

Look for affection when you need it...

Get serious once in a while...

Forget about diets...

Show some affection

Get angry once in a while...

Change your look...

Be happy, above all,
regardless what your challenges may be.

Read more!

Turning back the clock - pt II

I discovered this French song a few months ago. Its author Tina Arina, says of it, "This is not a political song and it’s not about a political subject. It’s a metaphor - like a poem. It’s a woman saying ... I was once beautiful and now I’m in ruins, I’m destroyed."

Je m'appelle Baghdad
I have lived so happily in my palaces of black gold and precious stones.
The Tigris flowed, on crystal paved roads a thousand Caliphs jostled to dance with me.
They called me the city full of grace, God how time goes by.
They called me the capital of enlightenment, God now everything is lost.

My name is Baghdad and I have fallen under the fire of armored tanks
My name is Baghdad, disfigured princess.

Shehaeazad, has forgotten me, has forgotten me.

I live in my land like a poor beggar, under the bulldozer the spirits haunt me.
I mourn my ravaged beauty over the smoldering stones,
It's my soul they are assassinating.

They called me the capital of enlightenment, God now everything is lost.
My tales of a thousand and one nights no longer interests anyone,
they have destroyed everything.

My name is Baghdad and I have fallen under the fire of armored tanks.
My name is Baghdad, disfigured princess.
Sheherazad, has forgotten me, has forgotten me.

Tina Arina- 2006

For those of us in mid-life (like me) this song also speaks about the temptation to try and turn back the clock. About yearnng, in vain, for a past that, though glorious, no longer exists rather than learning to delight in the present, that is with us forever?'

In many ways its the same dilemma hinted at in my last blog.

Read more!

Turning back the clock

Because of the winter weather I've had a bit more time on my hands than usual. Youjae (babies dad) is a painter and if the temperature falls too low the paint won't key, and if it's too damp, it won't dry. The last two weeks have been a combination of both factors, so he's become an honorary Grandparent and taken over much of Sujins routine. This leaves me free to, well - free, which as you will see from my last few postings, has given me time to catch up on world news.

Perhaps the most interesting story I've unearthed this week, as it was not a lead story anywhere, concerned Pope Benedict. As you may recall he managed, single handed to put the Church off-side with the entire Muslim world very early in his pontificate. He did however, God bless him, have the grace to
apologise (saying he was misunderstood) but this week, as he left his Vatican office for a two week summer holiday in the Italian mountains, he dropped another series of clangers. These however were much better than the Muslim one. In one or two short statements he managed to estrange himself from Catholics, Protestants, the Jewish community and 'liberal Catholic feminists' (I use the term in jest): Not bad for a weeks work.

Here's how it happened. Catholics, it seems, were upset by his approving, against the advice of his own Bishops, a return to the Latin (Tridentine Rite) mass, Protestants by him issuing a statement that Jesus Christ came not to save all, (the post Vatican II belief of the church) but simply, many, the pre 1960's position that only Catholics were saved, and Jews by the attitude the Good Friday Tridentine liturgy has to their involvement in Jesus death. Catholic women were quick too to notice the newly revised Roman Missal banning attributing any feminine characteristics/qualities to God either in the liturgy or in the choice of hymns.

Rolling back the clock on the Churches ecumenical and interfaith commitments is one thing, but the question in my mind is this. Will modern day First World Catholics, follow him back to model of church that denied their involvement as anything more than simply a passive audience to something set in a cultural climate of the 1940.s - 50's, or will this be the crack that will eventually split the dam?

As I heard it put earlier this week, 'nothing we can do will ever change the past, but everything we do will effect the future.

Read more!

Help - we've been robbed officer!

Wintertime, being as it is, means most of the family have gone north to soak up the summer sun leaving me (Home alone,again) to keep an eye on things.

So yesterday I decided to look in on Gina & Martins ailing Peace Lilly. Well, didn't I managed to set the burglar alarm off as I went in, you wouldn't believe the noise! I fully expected to be set upon by fierce neighbors wielding large sticks, or at least the local Khandallah policemen, truncheon in hand, flailing his way toward the door, but no। Just, 'turn that bloody noise down will ya'!!!!

Oh well, at least neighborhood watch is a good idea in principle!

Read more!

What about all the other Alan Johnstons?

BBC journalist, Alan Johnston is free from his 114 days of cruel captivity in Gaza and like the rest of the world, I rejoice in his long awaited release. However, in our shared euphoria, let's not forget there are still nearly 6 million stateless Palestinian men and women who, like A;an Johnston, are forced to live in equally cruel captivity. They are chained to poverty in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt or imprisoned behind the impenetrable walls of Gaza or the West bank.

Though some limited EU funding has now been released, Gaza's economic viability is still crippled by these viscous sanctions, their farm lands are denied adequate water for irrigation and their access to domestic sewage treatment is restricted to less than 80% of their need। Their only external border, at Rafah, is still closed for days, sometimes weeks on end, even to those requiring medical treatment in Egypt or returning to burry their dead in Gaza।

These are civilians entrapped in a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions, no one denies this, least of all Alan who risked his freedom and committed his life to reporting it. Yet the world watches and the world says nothing.

Alan Johnston was lucky. He not only got out of captivity, he got out of Gaza. Something those who are forced to live there can only dream of.

Read more!

Global Terrorism, is there a Christian response?

Until now, my stereotypical 'terrorist' has been someone on the outer fringes of our 'western society', working class, unemployed and probably poorly educated. However with recent events in London and Glasgow it seems that I need to redefine my paradigm to include,
professional, well educated - and probably everything in between as well.

So, has this Eastern (Muslim) abhorrence of everything Western (Christian) all just happened overnight? A result perhaps of 911 or the Iraq war, or is it's source further back in history? I don't pretend to know the answers, but it seems to me that Christian / Muslim tensions have been brewing for the last thousand years or so. Since well before Richard the Lionheart trundled off to the Crusades to re capture Jerusalem from the Infidels - as romanticized by Cicil B DeMilne and others.

Sir Steven Runciman, the leading western historian of the crusades for much of the 20th century, ended his history with a resounding condemnation:

"High ideals were besmirched by cruelty and greed.. the Holy War was nothing more than a long act of intolerance in the name of God".

Was Runciman right? Is terrorism as we know it today simply the fruits of seeds sown during numerous Crusades?

As I say, I don't know the answers but I do know Murphy's law says that what goes round, comes round and as a Christian I know that that there can be no progress in relationships of any sort with out contrition, repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation, on both sides।

So, does that leave the reconciliation ball in our court?

Read more!