Apologies to a Uighur man I stumbled into at our local (Speight's) watering-hole awhile ago - and to local Falun Gong I've chatted with in Dunedin's Octagon - for taking so long to post this; although I believe I have made some, if relatively minimal, mention of their respective plights at the hands of the Chinese authorities (over recent weeks and months)...
For it to be the American Administration's *'Sam Busby' to be the one currently running with the 'issue' of China's shameful treatment of its (westernmost-dwelling) Muslim Uighur minority - let alone its beleaguered Falun Gong - and here I'll only make the briefest of mentions of its burgeoning and long-persecuted 'underground' Christian house church 'movement'; and who knows what will - sooner rather than later, methinks - become of the proudly liberty-loving Hong Kongians? - really says it all.
Yes, the Trump Administration can apparently never get anything right, according to the received 'wisdom' nightly proclaimed into Western living rooms via an oh so sanctimonious (yet itself morally dubious and double-standard ridden) mainstream media...
Criticized relentlessly by one and all - including, many a time, I'll freely admit, by Yours Truly - especially for 'messin' around', seemingly relentlessly, in everyone else's - every other nation's, that is - internal affairs and domestic political situation...
...and then when they take an isolationist stance - as aka Donald J Trump & Co - they're endlessly pilloried as well. No, they just can't win - while Trump's leadin' 'em, anyhow! - whichever way they cut it, or seek to slice and dice it...
But pray tell me, where are all the great, global champions of human rights now? And where, prithee, are all those self-obsessed 'cultural warriors' who love to champion outrage culture?
Nowhere to be heard or seen, far as I can tell... -or, apologies: they're bending over backwards taking yet another 'selfie'...a metaphor for this self-obsessed 'Me not only 'Too', but first, last and always' generation if ever there were one...
So, all marks/plaudits to *'Mr Busby' et al - at least, and apparently unlike our own 'enlightened' (and feted-to-the-rafters) Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and her similarly-eulogized Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau, or, for that matter, the severely overrated Jesuit French President Macron - they're (i.e. the Americans), however (majorly) belatedly, making some noise and bit of a song and dance over it...which is, as I say, a whole lot more than some (others)...
...conspicuous by their absence, or rather, dead silence thereabouts...
But back to the U.N.: having, long since, dropped the ball (and then some) upon all manner of significant world 'hot-spots' with apparently 'intractable' dilemmas - be they
*the long-running Iran-Iraq War (of the nineteen-eighties) - yes, I bet you'd - long - forgotten that one (where lots of people lost their lives on both sides, I believe...
*Afghanistan (ever since the Soviet takeover in 1979/1980 or so)...
*the Rwandan and Serbian genocides/nineteen-nineties' ethnic cleansing in Serbia and Rwanda.
*the pitiful, pitiable, pitiless plight of Myanmar's [Burma's] Muslim Rohinja people.
*the longsuffering minions of Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria etcetera etcetera etcetera
...not to mention the apparently never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict...and how about the 'modern-day genocide' of Christians in their Middle East homeland, as Great Britain's (now doubtless) former Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, so valiantly helped bring to world attention a little while ago...?
Etcetera...almost ad infinitum, and certainly ad nauseum...
No, critique, criticize, lambast and pillory, castigate and condemn the ole U S of A as much as you want - and, yes, there's no shortage of examples and opportunities to do so these days...
...including, believe it (or me) or otherwise, its record under the far-from-impeccable or morally unimpeachable former President Obama...be it that Middle East genocide, the Rohinja, Falun Gong, Wegas etc...let alone failing to bring the systemic American police department outrages to heel or account...
Yes, write off America as much or oftentimes as you like or so choose...
...but I'd respectfully suggest - much in the vein, evidently, and surprisingly enough to me, of Aotearoa-New Zealand's own three-term P.M. and United Nations #3 for awhile, Helen Clark - or in the vein of her own one-time caucus and cabinet member, the ofttimes recalcitrant (but admirably so in this pleb's view) now wannabe Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere...
From the - 'our'! - United Nations we all need...a whole lot less hu-i, and a whole lot more 'do-ey'...and ipso pronto, asap...
...coz there ain't no time to lose, folks, there really ain't...
that is, if your incessant banging on about 'democracy' is really worth the lavatory paper it's written on...
*I'd certainly swear to that being his name, though despite reasonable efforts just now, there seems to be no easy, ready reference available on the net to who specifically this fellow (mentioned and shown upon a TV3 or TV1 nightly news segment) actually is..so you'll just have to trust me with this one...
For it to be the American Administration's *'Sam Busby' to be the one currently running with the 'issue' of China's shameful treatment of its (westernmost-dwelling) Muslim Uighur minority - let alone its beleaguered Falun Gong - and here I'll only make the briefest of mentions of its burgeoning and long-persecuted 'underground' Christian house church 'movement'; and who knows what will - sooner rather than later, methinks - become of the proudly liberty-loving Hong Kongians? - really says it all.
Yes, the Trump Administration can apparently never get anything right, according to the received 'wisdom' nightly proclaimed into Western living rooms via an oh so sanctimonious (yet itself morally dubious and double-standard ridden) mainstream media...
Criticized relentlessly by one and all - including, many a time, I'll freely admit, by Yours Truly - especially for 'messin' around', seemingly relentlessly, in everyone else's - every other nation's, that is - internal affairs and domestic political situation...
...and then when they take an isolationist stance - as aka Donald J Trump & Co - they're endlessly pilloried as well. No, they just can't win - while Trump's leadin' 'em, anyhow! - whichever way they cut it, or seek to slice and dice it...
But pray tell me, where are all the great, global champions of human rights now? And where, prithee, are all those self-obsessed 'cultural warriors' who love to champion outrage culture?
Nowhere to be heard or seen, far as I can tell... -or, apologies: they're bending over backwards taking yet another 'selfie'...a metaphor for this self-obsessed 'Me not only 'Too', but first, last and always' generation if ever there were one...
So, all marks/plaudits to *'Mr Busby' et al - at least, and apparently unlike our own 'enlightened' (and feted-to-the-rafters) Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and her similarly-eulogized Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau, or, for that matter, the severely overrated Jesuit French President Macron - they're (i.e. the Americans), however (majorly) belatedly, making some noise and bit of a song and dance over it...which is, as I say, a whole lot more than some (others)...
...conspicuous by their absence, or rather, dead silence thereabouts...
But back to the U.N.: having, long since, dropped the ball (and then some) upon all manner of significant world 'hot-spots' with apparently 'intractable' dilemmas - be they
*the long-running Iran-Iraq War (of the nineteen-eighties) - yes, I bet you'd - long - forgotten that one (where lots of people lost their lives on both sides, I believe...
*Afghanistan (ever since the Soviet takeover in 1979/1980 or so)...
*the Rwandan and Serbian genocides/nineteen-nineties' ethnic cleansing in Serbia and Rwanda.
*the pitiful, pitiable, pitiless plight of Myanmar's [Burma's] Muslim Rohinja people.
*the longsuffering minions of Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria etcetera etcetera etcetera
...not to mention the apparently never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict...and how about the 'modern-day genocide' of Christians in their Middle East homeland, as Great Britain's (now doubtless) former Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, so valiantly helped bring to world attention a little while ago...?
Etcetera...almost ad infinitum, and certainly ad nauseum...
No, critique, criticize, lambast and pillory, castigate and condemn the ole U S of A as much as you want - and, yes, there's no shortage of examples and opportunities to do so these days...
...including, believe it (or me) or otherwise, its record under the far-from-impeccable or morally unimpeachable former President Obama...be it that Middle East genocide, the Rohinja, Falun Gong, Wegas etc...let alone failing to bring the systemic American police department outrages to heel or account...
Yes, write off America as much or oftentimes as you like or so choose...
...but I'd respectfully suggest - much in the vein, evidently, and surprisingly enough to me, of Aotearoa-New Zealand's own three-term P.M. and United Nations #3 for awhile, Helen Clark - or in the vein of her own one-time caucus and cabinet member, the ofttimes recalcitrant (but admirably so in this pleb's view) now wannabe Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere...
From the - 'our'! - United Nations we all need...a whole lot less hu-i, and a whole lot more 'do-ey'...and ipso pronto, asap...
...coz there ain't no time to lose, folks, there really ain't...
that is, if your incessant banging on about 'democracy' is really worth the lavatory paper it's written on...
*I'd certainly swear to that being his name, though despite reasonable efforts just now, there seems to be no easy, ready reference available on the net to who specifically this fellow (mentioned and shown upon a TV3 or TV1 nightly news segment) actually is..so you'll just have to trust me with this one...
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