A young  woman’s first baby was born as she sat on the toilet. The baby dropped right into the toilet bowl. The incident happened in the climax stages of one of the most widely celebrated carnivals in the Caribbean—that of Trinidad and Tobago.

The mother is a teenager of nineteen who moments before the discovery had complained of “feeling hungry” and having belly ache.

The events unravelled at a local fast food establishment in the early morning hours, just as the business day was commencing.

A genuine humanitarian spirit caused a worker at the business place to enquire of the young lady who was seen overly rested.

Mysteriously, the teen mother declared she was just about five or six months pregnant. It seems likely she would have had little or no preparatory sessions for motherhood or for dealing with childbirth.

Her solo status signifies that the child’s father is not in the picture. However, the worker who came to her aid was a trained nurse’s assistant. God must have set up this particular encounter because the worker checked in the toilet bowl after the young lady had eased off the seat. It was then the baby was seen and pulled from the toilet bowl.

It is not the kind of birth that anyone would want to hear they had as they grow older. But the child started to cry after being raised from the waters in the toilet bowl.

The teenager happens to be living pretty much on her own, according to reports after the incident occurred. Hopefully, after she and her baby leave the hospital some individual or corporate entity will volunteer to take care of this single parent family.

However, that need not be the case. Let me explain. Most natural feelings of loneliness come about as a result of our longing for and expecting that another person should step into our lives to make us feel complete or happy.

Anybody who waits for another person to make them feel at peace as a human has missed the valuable lesson in humanity 101.

Happiness is a simple choice. No matter what you are experiencing, or who may or may not be there to talk to, you CAN be happy every moment you breathe. In fact, I have found out that all the angst and inexplicable circumstances we face daily are only trying to remove our happiness and peace of mind.

You know, if you are not able to face yourself and live with your own personality and idiosyncrasies, then you will never be able to live with someone else. In short, if you are unable to love yourself as you are, you make an emotionally fatal mistake to expect a separate person to love you.

Talk about suicide!

Often times, too, when a person finds himself or herself void of immediate friendships  there is very likely an important lesson that person can be learning to empower their mind to be less dependent on hand-outs but more dependent on the power of self actualization.

A hand-out is more than just a tangible item like a piece of clothing. When you keep expecting some friend or acquaintance to always come to cheer you up or keep your company you are expecting an emotional hand-out. Any over dependence on people will always produce disappointments which inevitably leave the persons having those predefined expectations hurt, disillusioned and even bitterly lost.

Life is made up of seasons. Being physically alone is just another season in life. Use your alone-time to enrich your own personal growth, esteem, identity and goal-setting.

Many of the people who have had consequential effects on the world have been people who learned to master the lessons gained from some of their most physically alone time.

Loneliness is a state of mind just as happiness and contentment are. Your experiences during times of loneliness are meant to help beam a light unto and for others to help them avoid mental and emotional pitfalls which may keep them from achieving their life’s purpose.

There are little things you can do all the time while alone to positively occupy your time while richly satisfying your emotions. A plant never knows if it is surrounded by other plants; what matters to the plant is that it is planted in arable soil, being irrigated and receiving natural sunshine.

No human presence is needed to provide those essentials to the plant.

Similarly, once you are accepting the natural food of life provided by your Creator, it will not matter whether you have a barge full of friends or are like a church mouse: you will grow, blossom and produce because you are planted in life-giving soil.

If you are alone you do not have to be lonely.

Make this moment the “one moment in time” when you choose to overcome your own personal struggles

The world is reeling from news that singer Whitney Houston is dead. the circumstances of her sudden death are all too familiar to other celebrities who have died over the years.

While there is probably a price to be paid for world fame, resorting to some form of drug addiction has become a fatal plague for movie stars, singers and other global icons.

Whitney, a lady unusually gifted with singing talent, struggled with cocaine addiction through the latter part of her life. So many people right now are mostly saddened by this: her career might be remembered only in light of her personal struggles.

But is it fair to magnify the personal struggles of celebrities as though they should not have any struggles at all?

I say no.

The death of celebrities is never welcomed news; people would wish celebrities could live on earth forever. But the death of Whitney Houston is a timely reminder that life on earth IS just a temporary journey.

I wish to point out that each and every human being will and have to face some form of personal struggle. It is part of the human life contract.

It is my belief that God, as Creator and owner of the earth and man, has empowered man at his birth to be an overcomer. God has confidence in each person alive that he or she can face and master whatever opposition is faced.

In order to help you put life into perspective let me share something interesting I just double checked as I weighed in on Whitney Houston’s death.

The last recorded messages from Jesus Christ to people on earth, in Revelation, shows that for each of the seven churches He addressed, He specifically ended with a challenge for His audience to overcome.

I think that is important because Jesus knows life on earth will not—cannot—last forever. But He also knows what will become of each person after death.

Since no corrupt thing can enter heaven, each person is responsible to use his or her days to get his or her soul cleaned up from the many pollutants, viruses or addictions on earth. These addictions and problems were around before you were born and they would be here after your death.

What makes life worthwhile from the human stand point is the ability to overcome one’s personal addictions, proclivities and areas of weaknesses.

A final point I wish to raise also comes from the Bible, this time Peter who asked his audience to “prepare your minds for action; be self-controlled”.

The advice to be self controlled is given multiple times by the Christian writers in the New Testament. I believe it is for a good reason. Nothing is achieved in any life without the person first making up his or her mind to do something about it.

I want to say to all persons reading my words that it is up to you to master and then conqueror your addictions, weaknesses or adversaries. It is the reason you wake up each morning. The thing is, like Whitney Houston and other celebrities, a morning comes when we will not even know it is our last morning on earth.

As you think of Whitney Houston being dead, and as you ponder on your own life, remember that you are a legend in your own way—the whole world need not know you by name or picture. you have what it takes to overcome your difficulties. But you have to take control of your mind first and foremost.

If girls and young ladies would boycott sex and demand that their boyfriends stay in school and get their education, the rebelliously rude attitude of our young men would change.

Young boys and young men are among the most difficult of persons to deal with these days. Of course, there are those females as well who are just as recalcitrant as the young men. However, girls tend to bounce back positively from their own broken lives at home or in the society from which they come.

Boys take all their brokenness and use their emotion to convert it to hostile anger and dangerous hatred. The only product that appeases our young men is the power of the female’s anatomy or, to be specific, vagina.

The overwhelming majority of young men is only motivated to do anything when it involves the likelihood of getting close to a girl or getting sex therefrom.

It is becoming the young generation’s norm that the guys do not even want to sit next to another male in a public transport vehicle; they get upset because their particular class in school does not have enough girls in it. A social occasion is definitely taboo if there are more men than girls present.

Should such thinking persists, pretty soon, our boys and young men will have absolutely no interaction with their own gender, at any level. All of life for the upcoming generation revolves around sexual satisfaction. Sex has become the elixir and only life goal for our young.

In 2011, there were at least two reported cases, one in Africa, the other in Columbia, where women withheld sex from their partners until the men made some societal issues non existent.

And in both instances the women got what they wanted.

That made me realize the reality of the present day gender and social construction that our males are only really moved to do good in return for some sex. It is like giving the cartoon dog Scooby Doo its Scooby Snack so that it does what its master wants.

As more and more of our young boys and young men head towards a life of little regard for manners, respect, hard work, community peace and purity it is necessary for our females to use the one thing in their possession to avert a future of social disasters and violence.

Too many men (some of them still teenagers) are becoming fathers and only try to be around their child just because they know it would please “their baby mama”.

How sick.

I am convinced that is the reason for the unmitigating rate of single parent families. And until something is effectively done to change the men’s attitude, the problem will be with us.

Girls and young ladies everywhere must begin to send a clear message to their boyfriends and sex-hunters that life is more than getting naked and sexercising. If our females put their foot down and decide that they do not just want a man with a penis, but they want  a father, an income earner capable of intelligent behaviour, our men and boys will begin to see their attitudes in its real deplorable state.

Girls, boycott sex. Tell your fellas that they must graduate from school. Tell them that there will be no sex until they can show you they have invested the time and energy into themselves which will in turn guarantee them and you a future income. A legal income.

Can you imagine how attitudes will change if the average fourteen or seventeen year old boy would realize that the girls now are serious about wanting an educated, peace-promoting man? What our modern day parents are either too busy or too frightened to do, our girls and young ladies can do.

This is also how we can get rid of our lazy, crime-generating gangs and liming on the blocks. If the young boys and men know that girls are not going to have sex with them because they are smoking marijuana, fighting over every little argument, or making guns and bullets their hobbies, they would quickly return to the good old ways which have proven to be the path to sustained life and happiness, not forgetting longevity of one’s days on the earth.

Education is the only way out of poverty. Completing school is critical in this regard. I hope that our girls and young ladies begin to boycott sex until their boyfriends drop the anger, cursing, and fighting from their ways. Girls, you have the power, through your vagina, to rehabilitate our young boys and young men before all of the future suffers—including you.

Image by ~C4Chaos via Flickr

Many Internet sites were today protesting the passage of two bills, PIPA and SOPA, as they attempt to add their voices to the moot of combating Internet piracy.

It is right for creators of any intellectual property to have legal ownership and to ultimately benefit financially from their creations. However, the placing of such content on the Internet brings certain new conditions to the table. Over the years the Internet has really become the information highway.

I recently was walking in town and saw office space now empty because the video renting and DVD selling businesses just were made obsolete. Even attending a cinema show now is a declining affair because people can so easily access videos and music files on their own. The Internet has made many middle men in the distribution process irrelevant. But the Internet has also opened the common sense eyes of the common man so that he can be cheaply informed and make critical decisions that are needed.

A friend of mine was shopping and sent me pictures and names of products to “google” so that she can buy the one that is best suited to her needs. Such is the immediacy of the Internet.  The proliferation of information technologies and their variously far-reaching effects on our daily living are not going to be undone unless one has a time machine.

The world of business and content creation must know that the rules of sharing information has been forever changed by the use of the Internet.

The legislative response to preclude persons downloading or uploading copy right content has been the creation of the SOPA and PIPA bills. The idea by the US Congress is to make US based Internet search engines and providers act as cyberspace police. They would have to keep an eye on each user of the Internet on their service.

Now, with literally millions of people using social networks, Google Search, Bing, Yahoo! and other search engines, how practical is it to expect each user to be monitored sufficiently in real time to prevent them from copying or publishing somebody else’s intellectual property  with the owner’s prior permission?

Well, the development today is that some key supporters of the SOPA and PIPA bills have withdrawn their support. The White House as well seems to have distanced itself from these bills.

And this is another thing. Congress wishes to push such public-contempt bills in a presidential election year. The public of Internet users needs to let their strong opposition be heard.

There has to be global simple education on the damages of Internet piracy. That process will take a long time and will require all primary and secondary Internet service providers to be on board.

Any attempt to enact legislation that regulates practical use of the world wide web by common people must be drafted really by those common people; at least with minimum 51% contribution from Internet search engines and providers. As it is now, SOPA and PIPA must be stopped even in its early stages. This is one abortion that is justified and civilly legal!

“At approximately 9:30 pm local time on Friday, January 13, the Costa Concordia struck an underwater rock formation off the west coast of Italy, tearing a 160-foot-long hole in the ship’s hull. The vessel began taking on water and power outages spread throughout the ship.

Almost immediately, the vessel began to list, sending plates, glasses and other objects in the full dining rooms crashing to the floor. Alarms sounded and passengers were informed that there was an electrical problem that crew members were working to fix. It quickly became apparent to passengers and crew members that this was not merely an electrical problem, and those on-board began a frantic evacuation of the ship.

Some lifeboats were launched, but due to the severity of the ship’s listing, it soon became impossible to launch more. Some passengers jumped from the ship into the cold water and swam to shore, while others clung to railings or other objects on the ship until the arrival of fishing boats and ferries that responded to the emergency. Some passengers were trapped in more precarious or isolated positions and were eventually hoisted aboard helicopters.

The ship continued to lean until it finally came to rest on its side,about half submerged, approximately 200 feet off the coast of the small island of Giglio, Italy.

There were more than 4200 passengers and crew onboard the Concordia and as of this writing, six are known to have lost their lives, dozens are confirmed injured and there is confusion as to the number still missing,with reports ranging from 16 to 29.

Firefighters and scuba divers began search and rescue operations early Saturday morning, and on Sunday morning — more than 24 hours after the ship first hit the rocks — two young South Koreans on their honeymoon were rescued from their cabin and a senior member of the ship’s staff(see below) was rescued from the third deck.

The treacherous search-and-rescue operation has been suspended at least once due to worsening weather and concern that the ship could slip in too much deeper water nearby, trapping rescuers onboard.

The Costa Concordia was built in 2006 at a cost of about 450 million euros (USD $569 million at current exchange rates). With 13 decks, the vessel towered 100 feet above the water and is nearly 1,000 feet long.It carried the very latest navigation and safety equipment, and the obvious question is, “How could this tragedy have happened?”

There are conflicting stories as to exactly what happened and why, but statements from both the cruise line and Italian government officials point to human error. An early Costa Cruises statement reports that”there may have been significant human error on the part of the ship’s master, Captain Francesco Schettino, which resulted in these grave consequences.”

The captain has been arrested and charged with manslaughter, shipwreck and abandoning ship.

Fortunately, the ship’s black boxes contain the technical data and conversations from the bridge that should allow the facts to come out.It may take months to conduct the investigation but I will cover the findings in this newsletter as soon as they are released.

In the weeks ahead, news media will carry the personal accounts of fear and chaos from passengers and crew as they struggled to abandon ship. We will hear of the kindness of the people of Giglio, who opened their homes and schools and churches in the middle of the night to provide food and clothing and shelter to strangers dropped abruptly on their doorsteps.

Is the Captain responsible for the change in route?

There will be stories of heroism, including that of the ship’s chief purser, Manrico Gianpetroni, who reportedly aided the escape of dozens of people before breaking his leg in a fall. He was found and rescued from deep inside the vessel nearly 36 hours after the ordeal began.

Cruise lines carried more than 15 million passengers in 2011. The industry is highly regulated and passenger safety is the number one concern of all cruise lines. Hopefully, as the cause of this tragedy becomes clear, new systems and procedures can be put into place to prevent an accident of this kind from ever happening again.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the dead and missing and injured, and to their families.”

Martin Luther King, Jr lived and died before my time but his life’s message is meant for me in my generation.

I somehow found myself viewing some speeches made by Mr King and his words began to speak even to my own destiny on the earth.

I am particularly intrigued by his last public speaking engagement. That was recorded a mere twenty four hours before his brutal martyrdom. Listening to him, I can sense God was foreshadowing events to come by the statements in the speech.

I, too, am compelled to be true to what I put on paper. In this case on my blog. Obstacles will always exist between a man and his dream, his calling, his destiny, his reason for being. No obstacle shall stand in my way as I face “the difficult days ahead” and fulfil my purpose.

It is really interesting that even though a bullet may have ripped his face apart, Martin Luther King’s words and indeed his voice still echo across the generations today. It lets me know that even this blog is being immortalized. Verily, words do have sustained power, even after physical actions are done and gone.

I am realizing more and more that there is a specific Promised Land for each man born of a woman. I use “man” in a general term. There is a very worthwhile reason you and I are alive. The days given to us under the sun are timed for us to get to our Promised Land.

This promised land is not just defined by a good house, vehicle, family or job, it is defined by what makes us be the best human being we can be to ourselves and those around us—ultimately leading to a tight relationship with God and His Son and so making the planet a better place to live.

Another lesson I learn from Martin Luther King, Jr is that I am to fear no man. And this is something that Jesus even spoke about. Why be afraid of those who can only harm or kill the body? Ha ha ha ha! After man has taken action and harmed or killed, there is nothing else he can do.

I do not know or understand how, but God is able to switch a person’s existence from a physical body to a consciousness and existence of a spiritual one found in the soul. Maybe it is pretty much like a back-up power source.

Think about it.

Haven’t you ever been at a public venue and the electricity goes? There is a brief moment of shockingly sad darkness. Then there is light once more as the generators do their job of providing an alternative source of power.

So, too, I believe when man kills you, there is that painful halt to physical consciousness. But then there is a new awakening of the person’s consciousness from the alternative power source—that of the soul.

Martin Luther King said that he had been able to see on the other side of things “on the mountain top”. Any body who is going to live for any worthwhile reason must get God’s perspective from the mountain top and see what is really important. See the bigger picture.

The only courage any man or woman, boy or girl can possess is to face his or her own life’s lonely and tragic moments on his or her own two feet. Standing among your supporters or in a crowd is easy. It is he who is able to stand in the lonely hour, the midnight hour is the one who is really courageous.

Even though you would have been distracted and sent on detours from your own promised land, from fulfilling your destiny, it is not too late. Once your heart and lungs are working, it is not too late. Your Creator is ever willing to forgive, accept, and renew your strength. All of heaven’s powers are with you because meeting your destiny is more important than any person or thing on this earth.

After all, good or bad, you have to part with your human body and with everybody and everything on the earth.

These are some lessons I learned from Martin Luther King and I rank them worthy of new year’s resolutions. Indeed.

POST NOTE: As unbelievable as this may sound, I had no idea when I posted this article that the very day was Martin Luther King’s birthday! I guess that is just as providentially orchestrated pretty much like the contents of Martin Luther King’s final speech just hours before he was killed. It actually reminded me of Jesus predicting His own death hours before it occured.

Here is another interesting piece of information:

This is my 77th blog post and it has 777 words.

Image via Wikipedia

I was really quite upset when I looked at an interview in the Situation Room on CNN between Martin Savidge and Wolf Blitzer and saw the openly angry gestures and tone of voice of Martin Savidge as he concluded his exclusive report on talking with Anthony McCray who was just pardoned by immediate past Mississippi governor Haley Barbour for the 2001 murder of McCray’s wife.

Reporters and journalists covering news stories are expected to do so in an altruistic a manner as possible; that is, they should not be reporting their own opinions, feelings or ideas.

Just the facts, thank you.

This post is not looking at the multiple number of convicted criminals who were pardoned by Governor Barbour—over 200—but at Martin’s inadequate response as a journalist of the “world leader in news”.

If it was anything, I thought Mr Savidge would have been quite pleased with himself for discovering the whereabouts of one of four pardoned and released murderers who were being desperately sought after by the Mississippi judicial authorities. I mean, he had a great exclusive news story, fully cementing once again the efficiency of CNN as a news leader.

Martin Savidge told Wolf that the information McCray gave to him was totally different from what Anthony McCray had told the judge in the courtroom.

In effect, Martin was calling the newly pardoned convict a liar. I do not have an issue with Martin making that statement as much as I take offense in the manner in which he communicated his own individual conclusion. Anyone who was watching that particular interview could have clearly seen and heard the tone of anger and possible resentment in Martin Savidge as he ended his live interview.

Honestly, it was the first time I was seeing and hearing a reporter in recent times coming across as someone with a personal vendetta or something to prove. I have to wonder if it is that Martin Savidge is related to Anthony McCray’s deceased wife, or maybe to another of the many convicts pardoned by the governor.

Then I thought of something else. Anthony McCray is a black man whereas Martin is white. Hmmm. But certainly a top rated reporter for a global news entity must be functioning at a higher level than small-minded, malicious prejudice, right?

Anyway, moments ago I listened to an official comment by the former Mississippi governor, Haley Barbour, as he explained his rationale for the multiple pardons.

First of all, the fact that Governor Barbour was leaving his position  means that the pardoning of the two hundred or so criminals was an act of desinence. People who are at the end of any major era or phase in their lives always want to clear their conscience and do their best. I believe the former governor had to be fully persuaded in his own mind that each of these persons was deserving of a second chance.

In his statement, Haley Barbour said he fully stands with his decision with which he is “comfortable” and satisfied. He can sleep soundly at nights. Many of the persons pardoned had already finished their sentences, were ill or were shown to have been sufficiently rehabilitated to the point where the former governor was able to entrust his own grandchildren to their care.

As Anthony McCray said in Martin Savidge’s report on CNN, everybody deserves a second chance at life. He was not hiding, as he was in the same neighbourhood where his deceased wife’s family lives.

Related articles

• Barbour ‘At Peace’ with Pardons, but Scandal Rages On (swampland.time.com)

Image by European Parliament via Flickr

What is in a rating? Well, a nation’s economic stability and the future standard of living of its people. This is especially so when it is Standard and Poor’s AAA+ credit rating being referred to.

In August of 2011 the world’s largest economy lost this prized economic rating. Almost half a year later, several countries on the other side of the Atlantic have been subjected to the same fate.

France has been swift in declaring that its economic wellbeing in the long run does not lie in the hands of a foreign credit rating agency, but the fact of the matter still is that the world’s economy as a whole is being strangled; it’s vital air supply slowly being suppressed while its many dependent organs, represented by world nations with their stock markets, are beginning to panic.

It is clear that the world cannot continue to promote the filthy rich lifestyle of get rich quick. Across all geographic lands people have been so busy trying to leave the “Have Nots” and join the “Haves” that the basic principle of wealth creation has been lost.

Years ago in the islands our fore parents would tell us that “hurry birds don’t build good nests”; however, that is precisely what our educated and civilized western society has been doing with its over dependence on credit. But it is a good lesson for us to learn that we should not spend monies that we do not have as yet.

You see, when we utilize credit we are in effect borrowing monies from our future to use in the present. It is the reverse we should be doing: paying forward monies from the present to have for use in the future. The present always passes but when the future comes it is there to stay. Our continuous present time is always leading to the future. It is in our future that we would sometime cease to be. It makes good sense then to prepare for that future.

So what is the point I am making? Governments as well as individuals must get back to the basic denominator for trading. We all must learn to use the little cash we have and make it do. Nothing good comes easy. Good wealth takes TIME to accumulate. The very sad thing about the world’s spending pattern is that even though it might be the filthy rich who spend on credit purchases it is the common man on the street who suffers the most when things get hard.

Now that countries are losing their credit ratings, their governments are going to find it that much harder to borrow monies. I know that the governments like mine in the islands have little to generate wealth for their recurrent expenditures. It has become a regrettable cycle of credit and taxation to keep government services and public goods available to the citizens.

There is nothing able to chase away potential investors more than the lowering of a country’s credit rating, signalling that its government has the odds against it when it comes time to repay the principal and its interest. The spill off on already struggling economies are possibly quite tragic. Can we really expect employment to be maintained or even grow?

I read with interest a day or so ago about the findings from a British research that suggest Somalian pirates are using their ransomed gains to actually develop the Somalian economy, primarily through  construction. That is interesting because there are many struggling economies which are being kept afloat by revenue from illegal activities such as trade in illicit drugs or cargo (including people).

I suggest, in the midst of such credit rating downgrades that the G-8 leads the way in finding educational programmes and better living incentives to encourage the world’s citizens to go back to cash. They need to lead the way in practically finding ways to really share the world’s wealth—if not so much among the very poor and destitute, then among the developing world’s economies that are desperately trying to eke out a living for its needy people.

Related articles

• S&P to downgrade credit rating of France, other Eurozone nations (latimes.com)

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been headlining the halls of international fearful relations for decades now. The USA acting as the unitary world police of global peace balancing has been unable to halt Iran in its determination to be a thorn in the flesh of the global community.

I remember when I first became cognizant of Iran as a not too friendly a nation; it was when I heard news reports that Iran wanted to remove Israel off the world map. That I thought was inhumanely heartless. Should the policy makers in Iran step into hell they probably would neutralize the heat due to the ice box cold heart they possess.

Several months ago I was breathing a sigh of relief when I saw that the Iranian presidential elections was likely to have a winner other than the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. My hope was short lived when the Iranian supreme leader intervened and declared Ahmadinejad the winner.

The Iranian president has put a face to the Iranian’s anti western ambitions and is doing a tremendous job of it unfortunately. They have continued to enrich uranium in their quest to create nuclear energy. That is tantamount to creating nuclear weapons. Of course, the Iranian’s official take on it is that the rest of the civilized world has no need to worry about Iran using its nuclear capabilities to create world war three.

They would have to forgive me as I find that hard to believe. Off the record i am certain that Mr Ahmadinejad and the Iranian dark knights would admit they can’t give up an opportunity to have nuclear energy to fuel their infrastructural services and not fulfil their dream of removing Israel. Maybe it is that the nuclear energy they speak of is to diffuse Israel.

The UN has been trying for years as well to get its inspectors on the ground in Tehran to see first hand what exactly Iran is doing where nuclear activities are concerned. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) seems likely to have clearance to visit in the up coming weeks.

Is that going to be another run in the maze visit?

The sanctions and blockade on Iran by the United Nations have been a slippery knot around Iran’s dogmatic neck. That knot has been tightened over the last few weeks as President Obama was able to collude with his American allies and extend the UN sanctions against Iran.

Now even though America used its resources to rescue some Iranians from pirates at sea, the response from Iran was that act was a mere humanitarian gesture and does not change the pending wild west showdown between the two nations. How do the Iranian populace feel about their government I wonder.

Two other recent developments concerning Iran is worth mentioning in this post. The first is that it seems as the sanctions realities begin squeezing the life blood in Iran, president Ahmadinejad has flown to my neck of the woods actually. He is currently in Latin America. His first visit was to his Venezuela’s counterpart, Hugo Chavez.

Of course the rest of the world is paying close attention to everything these two presidents do. Both have made audacious statements at the UN during past presentations to the Assembly. But what is the nature of Iran’s relationship with countries in Latin America?

The world of politics would dictate that leaders are always negotiating something. In fact, politicians only have friends so long as their interests are being advanced through such associations. Sad to say, pragmatically speaking, there is a whole lot more that the mighty USA could be tangibly doing for countries in the Caribbean and the Latin American geographic spread. Is it that Iran, following the lead of Cuba, will step in to be a Don and godfather to this often neglected part of the world?

Make no mistake about it, the Caribbean and Latin America are struggling with some basic socio-economic problems and threats that they will welcome help in solving. That’s politics I guess. However, many regional leaders would want at least to give the US the benefit of the doubt.

The second incident has to do with another January assassination of an Iranian scientist directly connected to Iran’s nuclear thrust. The USA has categorically denied involvement; however, Israel, who is usually co-blamed by Iran for such attacks, has indicated that they would not be shedding any tears over the assassination. Can you blame Israel?

It seems to me that the patient diplomatic efforts of the Obama administration is not even scratching the  force shield of Iran. It seems likely that yet another US administration is sliding into history with Iran still shaking its boxing glove at any new challengers who dare to step into the ring.

The rhetoric of Islam and Iran’s own cold statements over time definitely signal that with its acquisition of nuclear energy and capabilities it would be akin to a chess player manoeuvring his opponent who must then shamefully crown the successful intruder.

Iran is not going to retire from the world scene. The more it gets the more it wants. It is bent on proving that it can survive amidst all imposed sanctions. Iran is prepared long ago to be the world’s pariah. Iranians need to follow their Islamic brothers in Libya, Egypt and Syria and initiate their own people’s revolution. Better must come. What quiet diplomacy has been unable to achieve, some old fashion people power will shake the regime and bring full transparency of Iranian domestic policies and agenda.

If not, the world will not live to regret it.

Related articles

• Ahmadinejad, Chavez Mock Westers Fears (huffingtonpost.com)