Today is another year already! Because, as I write a little later than usual on purpose, Celebrations for the New Year have passed midnight elsewhere.
It so happens as I hinted to before that things are up in the air today.
Will the US fall down ( or climb since cliffs run both ways ) the Fiscal Cliff. The bug is for Republicans to accept that 4% more taxes over 4 years for people who can bear it is better overall for the Nation than even 1.4% on all including the poorest and those hard at work to make ends meet, no matter what their revenues. Unless of course they now believe past Mitt’s costliest blunder that well past 90% of americans are not likely to vote for them anyway because 4.5 million people are over the limit incomes suggested so far … on 210 million voters? 2-3% ? Not the strongest electoral basis, huh?
Of course, ( and even though there are some darn stup…born Democrats shifting in reverse ) there are some brilliant and very humane Republicans so that by the last possible vote, even were the deals not to change, I am pretty sure that the needed bill will pass. Thank you good people!
Xi Jinping is traveling around China on an effort to understand and fight poverty. The vice-Premier Li is on the same job and the new leaders seem intent on not forgetting the base. Kudos!
I would like to offer this link to my readers from the excellent Hamid Dabashi at Al-Jazeera. The view he expresses, explains is that time is computed and denominated by Man or by geo-political conceptual environments forged by nations or groups of humans. An extremely interesting read for the uni-calendarists out there! 😎
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/2012123011581016119.html
And, to conclude our year, I want to wish us, collectively, as Humanity, not too good a sleep tonight.
It so often happens that the last day of the year is swept under the rug, you see! That rug must be slightly bulging from the accumulated debris by now since its regularity makes it more convenient than the natural catastrophe or pop star’s passing which occasionally play the same role.
And as said on Saturday, neither the Gun debate in the USA nor Rape debate should face the broom of oblivion.
So to help you keep a bit of outrage for 2013, let me remind you all about that young woman in India. Not only was the ordeal of the highest order of barbary but … the male friend accompanying her and also brutalized was her fiance. They were to marry before summer. She was the family’s joker; her younger brothers trusted helper; studying to be a doctor. And in a country where women are so easily disregarded, her father had mortgaged the ancestral family home to pay for her tuition. He put their money on a beautiful hope. Now all is lost! They lost their money. They may well lose the house. The kids lost their example. The fiance lost his future and his beloved. But more than all that together, India lost! India lost one of those rare bets on its women! India lost a doctor.
That girl that just died was a symbol when she was alive of the India of tomorrow. That particular symbol is dead. But that girl is now more than a symbol. Through the horror, through the revolt that followed, through the visible state of shock in the Indian nation, her story today and her tomb from now on are embodiments of the bets that India cannot afford to lose anymore.
Her name has been kept secret so far. I do suggest it remains so for now. Until a discussion has taken place. Until measures are proposed and enacted. Until a fund in her honor provides additional money for girls to attend school at high levels or a National Center for Rape is built, until a law forces all hospitals to carry the necessary equipment and trained personnel for answering rape victims.
For then and only then, will it be worth to name any of those and preferably all of them in her honor and thus bypass traditions and shame, to make her shine in remembrance, a victim yes for a few hours but a hero forever.
And in general, rugs of oblivion are not my thing so item 3 on my 2013 wish list is : Gnothi Seauthon and that begins with history!
See you all, next year, Tay; Peace out.
Definitive Lapse of Reason 