A Few Dictionary Definitions

Hello Rambling Masses,

How's life treating you? Well, I trust. You know, it's amazing what a dictionary or encyclopaedia can teach you, if only you take the time to idly thumb through them. Heck, you don't even have to lug dusty tomes around, banging them onto tables and attracting stern stares from those around you in the deathly quiet library. These days, you can just click on to Wikipedia, and surf to your heart's and mind's content.

The following are acknowledged as excerpts from Wikipedia definitions.

• The Geneva Conventions consist of four treaties formulated in Geneva, Switzerland, that set the standards for international law for humanitarian concerns. They chiefly concern the treatment of non-combatants and prisoners of war.

• Ethics, a major branch of philosophy, is the study of values and customs of a person or group and covers the analysis and employment of concepts such as right and wrong, good and evil, and responsibility.

• Morality refers to the concept of human ethics which pertains to matters of right and wrong — also referred to as "good and evil" — used within three contexts: individual conscience; systems of principles and judgments — sometimes called moral values —shared within a cultural, religious, secular or philosophical community; and codes of behavior or conduct morality.

• Human rights refers to universal rights of human beings regardless of jurisdiction or other factors, such as ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sex.

• Humanitarianism is an informal ideology of practice, whereby people practice humane treatment and provide assistance to others. Humanitarianism is based on a view that all human beings deserve respect and dignity and should be treated as such. Therefore, humanitarians work towards advancing the well-being of humanity as a whole. It is the antithesis of the "us vs. them" mentality that characterizes tribalism and ethnic nationalism.

So, where am I heading with this? Bear with me, and all will become quite clear.

• Imperialism is the policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations, countries, or colonies. This is either through direct territorial conquest or settlement, or through indirect methods of influencing or controlling the politics and/or economy.

• Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler colonies or administrative dependencies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled or displaced. Colonizing nations generally dominate the resources, labor, and markets of the colonial territory, and may also impose socio-cultural, religious and linguistic structures on the conquered population.

• Guantanamo Bay detainment camp serves as a joint military prison and interrogation camp under the leadership of Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) and has occupied a portion of the United States Navy's base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba since 2002. The prison holds people suspected by the executive branch of the U.S. government of being al-Qaeda and Taliban operatives, as well as those no longer considered suspects who are being held pending relocation elsewhere. The prisoners were captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world.
  
  The detainment areas consist of three camps in the base: Camp Delta (which includes Camp Echo), Camp Iguana, and the now-closed Camp X-Ray. The facility is often referred to as Guantanamo, Gitmo (derived from the abbreviation "GTMO" ), or Camp X-Ray.
  
  The camp has drawn strong criticism both in the U.S. and world-wide for its detainment of prisoners without trial, and allegations of torture. The detainees held by the United States were classified as "enemy combatants". The U.S. administration had claimed that they were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against this interpretation on June 29, 2006. Following this, on July 7, 2006 the Department of Defense issued an internal memo stating that prisoners will in the future be entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions.
  
  Most of the detainees still at Guantanamo are not scheduled for trial. As of November 2006, according to MSNBC.com, out of 775 detainees who have been brought to Guantanamo, approximately 340 have been released, leaving 435 detainees. Of those 435, 110 have been labeled as ready for release. Of the other 325, only "more than 70" will face trial, the Pentagon says. That leaves about 250 who may be held indefinitely.

• Auschwitz (Konzentrationslager Auschwitz) was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps. The camp complex consisted of three main camps: Auschwitz I, the administrative center; Auschwitz II (Birkenau), an extermination camp or Vernichtungslager; and Auschwitz III (Monowitz), a work camp.

Draw your own conclusions. oh Rambling Masses, as I have drawn mine. The red text links are a rather serendipitous afterthought.
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The Art Of Growing Old Gracefully

Hello, oh Rambling Masses,

I must profess that as I grow older, I try to find ways to do it in as graceful a way as possible. I don't look forward to wearing my Y-fronts pulled all the way up to my armpits, but if that is the future that fate has planned for me, then so be it. I will wedge, and do it gracefully.

The art of growing old gracefully is all about the balance between disappointment and mediocrity.

This sounds like an inherently negative statement, but upon deeper inspection, this is far from the truth. The truth is that, as one gets older, the tendency is to lower one's expectations of life.

No one can say that they have achieved all that, in the fiery flush of youth, they set out to do. With our dreams coursing through our veins, we, as pert young things full of vigour and vim, attacked the mountainside of life with all of our vitality, and climbed for all that we were worth.

Experience, that great leveller, taught us many things as we climbed. Those who now have the wisdom of years have learned to respect their limits, for none of us is able to achieve EVERYTHING that we set out to do.

All of us have goals that, as we age, we realise we may never achieve. This can't help but to breed a sense of failure and disappointment to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the individual. To protect ourselves, we lower our goals, and if this becomes too much of a habit, then we descend into mediocrity.

This is the great balancing act that we must play in our lives. Set our sights too high, and we are doomed to failure and the bitter taste of disappointment. Set our sights too low, and we condemn ourselves to a life of mediocrity, and we end up being so much less than we are capable of.

Finding the balance is, in my humble opinion, one of the hardest things in life, but a task well worth the endeavour. We should continually strive to test our limits, to not fall into that oh-so-simple trap of mediocrity. Don't settle for sitting in front of the TV with a bag of crisps resting on your laundry-greyed Y-fronts (again with the Y-fronts!), watching the latest regurgitation of reality TV posing as entertainment. Quite often, we are capable of more than we think.

Know your limitations, but never EVER sell yourself short.

I choose life over mere existence any day. The difference is not just the challenge that you set yourself every day, but even more importantly, identifying that there is and should be a challenge.

The People Of The World Need Your Help

The extract below is from the Médecins Sans Frontières (sometimes called Doctors Without Borders in English) website. I urge all of you to sign the petition against Novartis, once you have checked the facts, of course.

Once again, the old chestnut of profit over all else rears its ever-so-ugly head, and I am joining the fight in an effort to make a small difference in this world where we could be so much more than we are if only we would concentrate on the things that really matter - human life, liberty, advancement and justice.

Just to put it all in a nutshell, Novartis, like all pharmaceutical companies, are trying to protect their obscene profit margins by shutting down the generic drug companies of India. These Indian drug companies manufacture cheap (i.e. affordable to the developing world) copies of drugs such as AIDS treatments so that all can have a chance to live a decent life free of the worst side-effects of this and other scourges of humanity. Novartis are currently pushing their AIDS drugs for something like $20-25 per pill (one needed per day), which is clearly beyond most people in the developing world. How long must profit be considered above humanity, I ask you?

Links to MSF can be found in my links area in the right hand section of my blog window (or here -> Médecins Sans Frontières).

As they say on the website, and this should be a universal call to all peoples of the world -

People before Patents: The lives of millions are at stake!

And just in case you are worried that this may hurt Novartis' profits to the point where they will no longer be able to provide the world with pharmaceutical development dollars, there's this extract from Novartis' Annual Results Conference in 2006:

Dynamic 2006 Group performance:

• Net sales rise 15% (+14% in local currencies) to USD 37.0 billion
• Operating income advances 18% as productivity initiatives more than offset acquisition costs and investments in new pharmaceutical product launches
• Net income up 17% to USD 7.2 billion
• EPS rise 16% to USD 3.06 per share in the fifth consecutive year of double-digit profit expansion

The suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of people in this world who cannot afford the overly inflated cost of AIDS treatment drugs should be on the consciences of these people who crow about their double-digit profit expansions. May they rot in hell, I say!

Let me go on record as saying that a prerequisite for all CEOs and Financial Officers of these mega-pharma corporations should be to tour disease-ravaged areas, and face the people that they should be helping, before they are placed in positions where it becomes a simple equation of profit over all else. Let them know the human consequences, and one would hope that they would behave in a different manner.

Extract from MSF follows:

Novartis was one of the 39 companies that took the South African government to court five years ago, in an effort to overturn the country's medicines act that was designed to bring drug prices down. Now Novartis is up to it again and is targeting India.

India produces affordable medicines that are vital to many people living in developing countries. Over half the medicines currently used for AIDS treatment in developing countries come from India and such medicines are used to treat over 80% of the 80,000 AIDS patients in Médecins Sans Frontières projects.

If Novartis is successful in its challenge against the Indian government and its patent law, more medicines are likely to be patented in India, making it very difficult for generic producers to make affordable versions of them. This could affect millions of people around the world who depend on medicines produced in India.

Tell Novartis it has no business standing in the way of people's right to access the medicines they need. Sign on and urge Novartis to DROP THE CASE against the Indian government.

Questions That Need Answering

Why do they call them Automatic Teller Machines, when you still need to manually key in your PIN, the amount you want, which account to get it from, and whether or not you want a receipt?

What will unlucky lovers say, now that there aren't plenty of fish left in the sea?

Why are there approximately 25 different types of toilet paper of all different kinds of ply thickness, colours, patterns and bleached pristine whiteness (bleach is bad for the environment, you know) when it's all really about poo? Is this the best that capitalism has to offer?

Do sheep publish silly videos on Ewe-Tube?

Why is Egg Like nothing like eggs?

Has anyone ever tried to make ear wax candles?

Why don't we connect gym equipment to generators, so that we can make electricity whilst we get fit?

Why, in this age of rampant obesity, don't we pull out all the shopping mall travelators and escalators, and replace them with good old-fashioned stairs (with a few lifts for the less mobile)?

Can you get skin cancer from too much Moon Tan?

When the astronauts landed on the Moon, did they bring bits of bread and fondue forks?

Why do golfers dress like bad seventies' pimps?

Do elephants get nose bleeds?

What is it that hyenas and kookaburras find so funny?

Do sloths exercise vigorously when the Discovery Channel cameras are turned off?

Wouldn't it be great if onions made you laugh instead of cry?

How is it possible for Keith Richards to still be alive? Is Death scared of him?

Time For Some Levity

Alright, Rambling Masses,

Time for some bad jokes to lighten the mood a bit:

Did you hear about the gay spider? He couldn't keep his hands off his mate's fly.

A horse walks into a bar, and the barman says "Why the long face?"

A grasshopper walks into a bar, and the barman says "We've got a drink named after you." The grasshopper says "What, Gerald?"

A guy walks into a bar and asks for a double entendre, so the bartender gives him one.

A dyslexic walks into a bra...

How many dyslexics does it take to change a lightblub?

The above two jokes were brought to you by the BLP (International Dyslexia Association).

Did you hear about the Irish circumciser? He slipped and got the sack.

How do you start a pudding race? Sago.

How do you start a Teddy Bear race? Ready, Teddy, Go.

Why do elephants have big ears? Because Noddy won't pay the ransom.

Why don't worms have balls? Because they can't dance.

Strike while the iron (or blog) is hot

Well, it is exciting having a blog, at least for the first little bit. I am sure that I will tire of it one day, but in the meantime, here's an update.

I thought that I would share a poem with you, oh Rambling Masses. I wrote it many many moons ago, during a particularly dull university lecture, and I still kinda like it. Enjoy.

Terror Former

Terra Firma,
Terror Former,
Release your grip on me.
Tug of love,
What goes up comes down -
Stupid planet, can't you see:
It's fatal attraction,
A lethal action,
Reaction,
Faction,
Fight,
Loss of sight -
Can't you see,
It's fatal attraction
To keep us here,
Because we'll destroy you
Through our fear.
Sinking feeling,
Stinking stealing -
Mother! We will abuse you;
The situation is grave -
Only one way to save
Yourself:
Gravity -
Don't.

3rd April, 1992.

Greetings To The Rambling Masses

Greetings to you, oh Rambling Masses,

What a wonderfully smart-ass greeting, pretentious, wild and derogatory. A great way to start this, the first blog of one Peter Walder.

If you have heard of me before, then you are one of the very few, for I do not actively seek the 15 minutes of shame that is alloted to all of us carrot-munchers. Fuck popularity, I say, which is indeed what I would say, considering I was an unpopular child growing up, beaten by bullies, teased and largely alone.

Thankfully, I did not give up my individuality, that most precious of commodities, purely for the sake of avoiding a few rough times. The most important things (apart from "da bussy" as one taxi driver once told me) are individuality, free thought, open expression, and a will to live instead of merely existing.

I was lucky enough (and we really do make our own luck, in my humble opinion) to be blessed with a great family and a fine circle of very close friends. They help me to center myself, to complete me, and to justify the belief that there are great people living on this planet, great people who have the potential to achieve great things.

So, you ask yourselves (those who are (un)fortunate enough to stumble across my wild ramble), what is this blog all about? Good question. I don't know myself. In fact, it is guaranteed to change as time goes by, as I discover my literary voice in this vast vapid sea of the internot.

As I get older (I am the ripe old age of 35 at this point), I find myself getting more and more opinionated, more and more angry with the world that surrounds us, more and more fed up with capitalist dogma, religious extremism, short-sighted power-hungry pork-rind groping their way towards ephemeral power and money, and vast vapid seas of ignorance that cloak themselves in self-righteous costumes of right and wrong.

In fact, the older I get, the more I think that perhaps anarchy is the best form of government, considering that we've had a crack at trying to develop a form of mass co-existence for the past 5 or 10 thousand years, and have made only a perfunctory, rather ordinary progress in that direction.

Let's face it, half of our world is ruled by bloodthirsty fascists, the other half is ruled by equally bloodthirsty capitalist pig-dogs and figureheads (I won't even try to have a go at George Bush, for he is not even worthy of a vague derogatory comment, being a mere lap-dog for the monied powers that be).

So, what is the alternative? It is easy to have a go at "the system" - that's a real no-brainer. But, to truly contribute to the worldly school of thought, you need to start proposing some genuine alternatives. To be a critic is the easiest thing in the world - in fact, they should give out lobotomies to all critics, just to help them on their way. Criticism is piss-easy, something that hardly needs any effort. What really takes brains and guts is to suggest alternatives.

My confession at this stage is that I have a couple of minor alternatives, but they are poorly thought out, and not really worthy, but hey, at least I am trying.

Which is more than I can say for "Beige", the man who currently governs the country in which I live (Australia). He has spent some 20 years in politics, learning the great art of never saying anything, never committing to anything, never making a contentious decision, never advancing beyond the immediate concerns that impact on the chances of another term in government, which is unfortunately something he is not alone in, despite being a grand master of the art.

Now, hog-tie me, cover me in honey, and dump me on an ants nest if I'm not one of the most naive bastards on this fair planet, but I believe that we are one world. I was born in Denmark, and at the tender age of 8, I started a new life in Australia. Old enough to remember the old life, young enough to adapt to the new life, I have the enviable power to be able to pick and choose the best of two worlds, albeit both being of narrow western viewpoints.

One of the things that really blows my mind is the continual hustle and bustle that revolves around arbitrary lines drawn on a map, around which imaginary friend you believe in (let's call it religion for now), around which capitalist (or fake communist) ideals you follow with your every living breath, around petty power and ephemeral might, around who willl win the next rash of mindless reality television concept that is just another copy of a shite pretense of entertainment to begin with.

Why don't we, just for once, start to consider the deeper meanings of life, to contribute in a real sense, to make something of our lives more than the surface day-to-day that we think makes us who we are? Who cares what shoes we wear, what cars we drive, how big our house is? I don't, for one, but I seem to be much in the minority.

So, why am I writing this blog? To vent my spleen. I am lucky enough to have been born into circumstances where I have been able to fight my way from below the poverty line to a position of comparative wealth. I have the financial freedom to pick and choose my destiny, unlike the billions who are unfortunate enough to not be in that situation. And so, I ask myself the great question of life - how can I make a difference, how can I contribute to this life that we all hold so dear? It seems that one of the strengths I have is my ability to write, and so I write. And in writing, I hope to explore and to crystallise that which I believe in, and to perhaps positively affect others of a like mind. What more can one ask in this world?

Be warned, for I am hoping to pull no punches, to write what I feel, and to cathartically meander my way through the complexities of modern existence, learning along the way.

I am also hoping to reach a balance - to drag down that which needs to be pilloried, to lift up that which needs to be extolled. In my eyes, I hope to mirror that which you, the long-suffering reader, see in your everyday.