A whale of a time

I don’t get it. When three or more countries are in accord, we’ll quite happily walk into someone else’s country, killing innocent people and stealing valuable resources, but when the whole world is in accord with only one notable exception, we can’t stop a goddamned whale hunt. Odd…

The solution as I see it is simple. The world gets together and agrees on the sea as it has in various meeting rooms, someone provides a couple of ice breakers, we gather just a small portion of the world’s sea going fire power, stock it with food, fuel and marines, find the whaling vessels, board them, take the pirates prisoner, sink the ships, hoist the “jolly roger” and head back to port happy in the knowledge of a job well done.

Then, when they cry foul, as they most assuredly will, tell them to shove it or we won’t give the prisoners back. Someone could make faces and say “ner, nerny ner ner!” too. They deserve it…

But seriously, I’d like to know why it is we allow those we elect to serve in the corridors of power to be so damnably stupid. Or is it that we allow ourselves to be duped into electing such stupid people? I can’t work it out, they seem reasonable enough on the hustings after all. Yet we allow international terrorism on a grand and almost global scale, but only where valuable recourses and commodities are at stake.

Lets face it, we all know that if we really wanted to do some good we could do something like help Africa into the 21st century. Perhaps the U.S. could take on Mugabe as they did Saddam. Now there’s a bloke that could use a lead enema, if ever there was one. But the way I see it, if the killing of a couple of hundred thousand innocent people is the trigger, then Mugabe and Zimbabwe should probably have been first.

But what’s in Zimbabwe that the U.S. could possibly want? Well it has some of the best farmland in the world, no doubt. But if they help to develop that, they’d create themselves a competitor in the world food market, not good for the average U.S. farmer, so strike that one from the list.

Or even at a diplomatic level, perish the thought, simply allowing African nations to burn coal or gas to make electricity would help. Currently, the WHO does not allow this. Oh yes, it’s perfectly ok for “developed” nations to pollute the world’s atmosphere while we smugly trade carbon points, and we can have energy, development, progress and a first class, “first world” civilisation, but Africa is not allowed to I’m afraid.

I don’t know. Sometimes our leaders seem so clever and strong but when you take a closer look, a weaker more lily livered bunch of cowardly and hypocritical sycophants you will not find anywhere else on the face of the planet. That’s not to say that governments and organisations like NATO, The WHO, The United Nation, etc have a monopoly on stupidity, oh no, but it certainly seems to be where the cream of the crop congregates.

There’s so much that could be being done to stop the killing, but at every stage we fail to take the opportunity. It’s probably because we’re way to interested in keeping and protecting our way of life; the partner, the kids, the house, the lawn mower and the family bloody barbeque. We use fossil fuels and guzzle energy at insane rates and rape and raze whole nations at the drop of a hat to protect it all and get more, but do we care? Of course not, so long as the killing and abuse is happening beyond arms length in another country on the other side of the world, why would we?

Personally I’m of the opinion that we should wake up to ourselves and clean up our act, but the kids just bought me a new wiz bang four burner BBQ for chrissy, so that’ll have to wait until next year now…

Thanks to Dikkii for reminding me that sometimes a good “rant” is just the tonic…:)