Beautiful Hard Miserable Respect

I finished my last day of school this Thursday, wrapping up the consultations and presentations until I return for a few more weeks in April, prior to graduating with a Public Relations diploma. I have now been in school for almost eighteen years straight! My six-week leave to go on job placement starts on Monday and I am excited to be starting as media relations assistant!

In the meantime, I'm applying for other positions like Tourism Counselor, Community Relations, Events Assistant and others. This morning I participated in an "open house" to learn about a receptionist/PR position in a chiropractic clinic with a similar philosophy to this one. The chiropractor talked about how the Canadian health system is failing, and made the doomsday statement that it will be bankrupt by 2020. He made it real by telling us that one third of us will die of heart-related problems, cancer, or directly from infections acquired in hospitals or as a result of medical treatment error. Thanks doc!

I was eligible for the position, but I believe the employer wanted to see how we reacted to the process as a group before selecting individuals for one-on-one interviews. We introduced ourselves then went through a Powerpoint presentation. Three people were selected for interviews right away, but I was sent home with six others, who will "hopefully" have an opportunity to discuss their skills further at some undisclosed future date.

In other news, I got a completely incoherent email this morning from "Olinda Lancey" which reads as follows:

"studied profession social. Disappoint yours servants news we anything. is he sugar here beautiful prison.
friends am my side. beautiful prison edge profession bad.
he reply raise tying pride, off drew immediate is pretty.
back corner beautiful hard miserable respect. appearance make back force? happened turning why tying.
steps drew reading we across. development already purpose nothing respect?"

I would like to know the answer to "is he sugar here beautiful prison" as I can only guess it is perhaps the grammatically incorrect question: is he sugar here in this beautiful prison? It is a beautiful prison isn't it? I wonder if my "appearance" made such "back force" that one of my outgoing messages was intercepted and somehow recoded into this garbled mess. Some of us live contentedly as drones. Others are trying to claw our way out of the prison, but why? It's so beautiful. We might as well enjoy our surroundings before we go searching for something outside, which we can never predict. "Democracy is a prison without walls" my World Issues prof once said.

Speaking of democracy, in Haiti, they found that the democratic process for the recent elections mired by possible conspiracy. It is such a poor country that were thousands of ballots thrown into a landfill site elsewhere, they might not be noticed, but in Haiti where a garbage dump is the closest thing poor people can visit for something of use, they are. Beloved by many of the region's poor, Mr. Preval will apparently serve as officially elected President, although he will remain concerned about vote-rigging and fraud for good reasons. Some suggest that all the unanswered questions and election ambiguity might stem from the US and France opposing Preval's victory because he was a supporter of ousted leader Aristide.

A stunned Israel is trying to work out their relations since Hamas was elected as the new Palestinian government. It appears that the Hamas might reform itself from the terrorist organization that it is regarded by many to be, but Israel is considering the political pressure it can wage against it by imposing sanctions and blocking trade, which is essential for Palestinians economic survival; they depend on Israeli ports to export their products. When poverty strikes, it is malnourished women and children who often suffer most. The alternative of support from Israel for the Palestinian government may be a more dangerous kind of support from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose anti-Israeli statements and questionable nuclear practices have brought him to the height of UN attention. Palestinians are in the position to accept help from anyone they can, including the Russians, so if it's not the US and Israel reaching out their hand, it will be someone else.
As this article suggests, isolating the Hamas government won't help the peace process between Israel and Palestine -the peace process that so many hoped Sharon would see to the end.

Well, maybe this is a beautiful prison simply because it never ceases to be captivating in its confusion. If the world were a body that needed chiropractic treatment, it would be because it doesn't communicate openly with itself. Nerves and organs have been choked off like truth because of deception in and by leaders and the media. For example, the US and allies recently didn't want to disclose allegations of another abuse scandal in Iraq by British soldiers on children in Basra because it could further threaten their troops and fuel more anti-western sentiment. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad criticized them about it, they deflected the blame saying he is just trying to deflect attention himself from his questionable nuclear programs. So who's the hypocrite?

We're now seeing a whirlwind of offensive and reactionary political publications, innuendos and outright lies. I hope I won't be put on any death lists for mine. A banner held by one of the protesters of the political cartoons depicting Mohammed read: "only the sons of [the] devil can disgrace our holy prophet" which, although it might encapsulate frustrated sentiments, simply isn't true. Every human has the potential to disgrace G-d, otherwise I would have written His name without including the dash. I'm sure I have enough artistic ability to draw Anne Frank and Hitler in bed together, or Iranians wearing bombs at the World Cup or Mohammed in a silly costume if I really wanted to (which I don't).

My father might be a devil, but he's not the devil and using sensationalist words like that is ironic considering the war on terror, and Islamophobia started to a large degree after September 11, when Bush branded certain countries as being part of the "axis of evil". "Evil" doesn't mean anything anymore. It's less coherent of a word than the above email is. All the negative depictions and slander threaten Coalition forces as well, but Danish and other newspapers have no trouble publishing them then apologizing later.

It is as if to wage successful war, propaganda and psychological warfare are necessary. Rumsfeld has recently pledged more resources for psychological warfare in the Pentagon budget. Regardless of the purpose, people will say whatever they want to say. Censoring or arresting them for doing it won't solve the problem. Deception though, is affecting the psychological health of everyone. If we want peace, people have to be both more tolerable and tolerating. It's about time we start talking about it, instead of engaging in war.

Filed under Politics