Headline Jan 31, 2016/ ''' FATHERHOOD -FIRESIDE- *FRAGRANCE '''

''' FATHERHOOD -FIRESIDE- *FRAGRANCE '''

ALL MALE STUDENTS or all male readers,  -will never truly know what life and love is  until they guide their children through their formative years.

*It is such a shame that the children never remember it*  Not quiet knowing what to think or do, I turn to a  philosophic sweep to understand this beauty.

There are a number of design glitches in the human frame : the precipitous decision to stand upright instead of trundling on all fours. is something the world still doesn't understand?

But perhaps the worst of all ergonomic glitches was that we were born not knowing how to blow our noses. I don't expect this worries you much because the you probably got nose-blowing covered.

But you weren't born like that. There was a time in your life when the contents of your nose ran free.

I'd forgotten about the magic of  nasal flubber  until my new two both got colds on Christmas Day and one grew a geological outcrop that resemble an inverted  Old Man of Hoy and the other had twin spigots of effluvia that trickled onto her extended tongue.

Neither had any idea of the concept of blowing but they did instantly glean that bogies were edible   -which is an interesting Darwinian footnote. We are obviously born with the pick and chew gene.

The sight of them, blocked and soggy, retained some permanent memories,  -reminding me of something I saw in Africa. 

I was covering the war in Darfur from a refugee camp on the border with Chad in an old tent that passed as Medicins Sans Frontieres waiting room packed with women and their desperately dying children. There was one mother who stood out as strikingly beautiful.  I mean really memorable-looking.  

A face that was strong and implacable   -huge eyes and cheek bones cast in toffee- coloured bronze, framed in a single bright shawl. I signed in Tom the photographer to take her picture. It was an easy opening spread. She regarded him and his camera with her obsidian eyes devoid of emotion, she was as beautifully inscrutable as a sphinx.

As he kept snapping, the child was wrapped in the folds of her shawl, making that soft mewing that is exhausted way of children who are losing the light. Shrivelled with dehydration and malnutrition, her nose was clotted with a huge soggy goitre of snot.

The mother never took her eyes of from Tom's lens, and slowly and deliberately lent down and gently put her mouth  over her child's little nose and sucked, then swallowed. It was properly shocking on so many levels.

First, of course, it was disgusting an act passively aimed at the gaze of strange men from a woman who had probably lost her husband, her family, who had nothing but this little scrap of life in a shawl.

Many of the women in this room had been raped. Her face was a terrible liability. The act was overtly sexual but repellent, but that's not the overriding image or the memory that I carry. It was a profound act of Love.

At the edge of coping, there was very little this woman could do for her child, she had nothing left to give.

No more milk, no more protection, no more security or hope. But she could clean it. And at the margin of life, when all the options are spent, what's important is the simple and practical.

And Love is like that Messy and basic and animal. It isn't romantic or subtle when it's all we have left.     

The first lesson of being a parent, of being a man, is that you have no idea of what love is, or like, or for. I don't know how many times this world love gets mentioned on daily basis. Quiet a lot, I suspect.

Love arrives with fatherhood. Up until then you have just been paddling in love. Nobody ever tell you this, nobody ever explains that you can't feel the bottom, that you drown in the stuff.

Other men never mention that love, which is remiss of us, and our dads never tell us.

You can write  ''Love You''   on a birthday card, whisper love you to a sleeping tousled head,  but to explain to adolescent, a teenager,   -that terrifyingly transcendent fundamental act of nature that is loving your children,     is too difficult and choking.     

But you should know, you should be aware, that you can't be prepared for it,  in fact nothing prepares you for it.

But you shouldn't be surprised. 

The funny and sad thing is that the time when it's easiest to say it, when there is the greatest paternal emotion, when it's most obvious and strong, you never remember.

Those first years when you can't blow your nose,  when your father picked you up and rocked you and watched you sleeplessly as you slept, are blank. 

Later, as you grow up, the relationship is muddied with practicality, with the resentment and the accidents,   -with the dull rigmarole of discipline and bedtimes and homework, inappropriate behaviour, tantrums and tiredness.

And that is what you know of your childhood.

You remember dodging through it. But there were four scant years when you slept in an ocean of love and your father never forgets and it never goes away and it will come to you.

And you realise the greatest design fault of human beings is that they don't remember their childhood and can't recall their first words or first steps  -the first time they tasted chocolate or falling asleep on their father's shoulders in dark kitchens..

You need to know it's coming and you need to know it's already there.

With respectful dedication to all the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society:

''' A Tender Age  '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 30, 2016/ ''' AT BEST : * AN XENOPHOBIC WORLD * ''''

''' AT BEST : 

* AN XENOPHOBIC WORLD * '''

WRITER JG BALLARD  -determinedly un-grand old man of English letters, wrote many masterpieces.

In his brilliant new autobiography, this is how he paints his understanding of the world in 1940s :  A vast cruelty lay over the world, and was all we knew,'' he writes of the war and its effect on him and his generation.

Ballard saw terrible things in China  -killings, bombings,  starvation  and suffered great deprivation himself. Since that time, what exactly has improved? 

This post too, has been researched in great and growing pain..............   

IN APRIL 2010, they were living in Perpignan, in the South of France, new parents of an eight-month old daughter.

They trod carefully in the neighbourhood, because Arab and black youth hung out there, revving their scooters, partying and swearing up a storm.

One night, after they had put the baby to sleep and were watching a movie, the youths started up.

Marc-Henri called down for them to be quiet. They got louder.Frustrated, he got pitcher of water and dumped it down on their heads.

All of a sudden, they had an angry mob at the door, trying to break in. Pieces of plaster broke off around the frame. As her hand fended off hands that stretched through the hole to try to open the door-

Myriam barricaded herself in the bathroom with their daughter and her mobile phone.

While calling for help, she heard she heard shouts that she would be raped and her husband killed. Alerted by police sirens, the youth ran off. But Marc-Henri and Myriam knew they had to move fast.

Soon after, Marc-Henri accepted a job as a mayor's communications director in Montfermeil. The post is part of Lemoine's plan to change Les Bosquets for the better.

''When we came here, people said we were going from the frying pan into the fire,'' says Myriam, now caring for the couple's second child. ''Tensions are high here, and my husband was attacked again a few weeks ago. But there's a real political will in Montfermeil. There's an effort to bring Muslims into the community at large.''  

The attempt also includes razing many of the tenements in Les Bosquets and La Forestiere, the housing project in Clichy-sous-Bois.

The plan is to replace them with low-rise social housing to instill a pride of place. A social centre now offers language programmes, and a new offers language programmes, and a new police station helps build helps trust between people and law enforcement.

As well, there is a team of three people working full-time with families, resolving conflicts when, for example, inhabitants are confronted by drug dealers in and around their housing.

''The overriding goals are to restore these populations' pride and dignity, and to draw and preserve this town's middle class,'' says Lemoine. ''We need positive ways to intervene and make this place a unified community.''

Abdel coca doesn't see much difference so far. 

''I grew up in this dirty place,'' says Coca, a tall, beefy unemployed 22  year-old from Turkey who lives with his parents and two younger siblings in a tiny apartment in Les Bosquests.  ''Look around, it's still dirty.''

Across the English Channel,  Mike Hardy, executive director of the Institute of Community Cohesion at the University of Coventry, speaks about the dreadful riots that took place in England last August.

''Martin Luther King said that riots give a voice to the voiceless,'' says Hardy. ''Being voiceless doesn't have to mean a lack of education or poverty. It just means you feel  that you aren't being heard.''

The past 18 months have brought huge changes: the Arab Spring, the spreading movement to Occupy Wall Street, and international uncertainty about how social policy is developing.

And, what bodes ill, says Hardy, is that many people still don't have jobs and must struggle to make ends meet.

In a world beset by  economic woes  and discontent, Hardy could be speaking about many paces in Europe   -the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Greece to name a few. 

But the fact is, twice so far in this century   -in 2007 and 2005  -it has been France where riots have erupted.

''We have to understand the tensions. We must work on knowing our communities and understanding them better,'' says Hardy.

We have to be a lot more transparent and open. And I think national authorities must be far less righteous and lot more humble.''

This sentiment is echoed by sociologist Didier Lapeyrommie. ''People are tired in general but in the suburbs, they are tired and closed off,'' he says.

''They want to be the masters of their own existence but they can't. This leads to a highly charged political climate,  complete with misunderstandings and pressures.

While the solution is probably political, I don't have much hope.'' 

With respectful dedication to the Leaders of Europe. See Ya all Your Excellencies on !WOW!   -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' Taking On Challenges '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 29, 2016/ ''' THE DROWNING WORLD '''

''' THE DROWNING WORLD '''

[2012-THEN] ELSEWHERE, LEADERS LIKE  UK Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have declared multiculturalism a failure-

While in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, parties that were once considered far right fringe have entered their respective parliaments, Dutch leader Geert Wilders openly compares the Holy Quran to Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Indeed, Anders Behring Breivik, the self-styled   ''perfect knight''  who killed more than  75  people in Norway one July, some years ago, as a part of what he saw as a necessary crusade against Islam,  cited Wilders in a 1500-page manifesto-

Along with other authors who have warned of the dangers of Islam in the wake of  9/11.

For France, their is no middle ground, warns  Didlier Lapeyronnie, a sociologist who spent  four years  in Parisian suburbs researching his book: Urban Ghetto: Segregation, Violence and Poverty in Today's France.

''We're at the precipice,'' he says. ''We can follow much of the Europe and close ourselves off,  becoming  xenophobic and hostile,  or we can remain open, period. It's up to the politicians.

''Right now, the violence in the suburbs is unorganised and sudden. It turns on itself. Who knows about the future?''

FOR SOME IMMIGRANTS, Life in France is good. Toufik Abdulrachman couldn't find work in Algeria, which is why he came to France 12 years ago. Althought it has been a hard slog, the father of two has a full-time work as a Halal butcher and  is part of community he need never leave.

'' There are no problems here, nothing,'' Abdulrachman says in between serving customers. '' I like it here.''

But for others, life is a misery. In Asnieres-aur-Seine, a stone's throw to the northwest of Paris, the talk on this particular spring morning is all of recent fighting between a local youth gang and one from the neighbouring community Gennevilliers. The toll is heavy:

A 15-year-old from knife wounds to his chest; another adolescent in hospital after being stabbed in the back. Local authorities have placed a curfew on minors.

Around the corner, a man in black jeans stands quietly, a black hoodie pulled down to hide his face. He is observed by Michel Kokoreff, a sociologist at the  Universite Paris-8 in Saint-Denis who spent ten years in Asnieres doing research for a study on the challenges people face to leave the suburbs.

Kukoreff whispers that the man in jeans could be a drug dealer. In the open market, a garlic vendor, on guard for trouble, sees us as strangers and calls out sharply: ''Who are you?''

This is life here: meeting with friends in the local cafe to talk about the growing schism in France and the worry that there will be nothing here for their children. Says Kokoreff: ''For the youth, the future is quite gloomy, for now.''

So it goes in Bondy, northeast of Paris and not far from Montfermeil, where a 41-year-old mother of three worries where to park her car so it won't get broken into, and what her kids will do when they leave school. 

Jobs are scarce. The family is barely making ends meet, even though her husband works for the commuter train service.

Sometimes she feels resentful about migrating: ''My husband was an engineer and wanted to continue his studies here, but after we arrived, he learned that he would have to start at zero,'' she says. ''Each night, we talk about the kids. It's about survival.''

And so it goes in nearby Saint-Denis, directly north of Paris. Mehdi Silmam chats with his cousin, Hocine Gigi, in a crowded pedestrian mall filled with shoppers, children and Romany beggars. Despite a good education, Silmam, 26, who is currently studying Chinese, can't find a job.

Trim of beard and with wire-rimmed glasses, he notes that the politicians and the media focus on things that may have little to do with the everyday lives of Arabs, but that underscores the stereotypes all the same: 

The law that bans face veils for example, when so few women here actually wear them.

Even Gigi, 30, a successful businessman who owns several bakeries in the region, can't imagine staying here  -because he worries about an increasingly divisive political climate will effect his three-year old daughter and his 18-year old son.

''My kids are why we have applied to go to Canada.'' he says. ''It's becoming toxic-here.'' 

Montfermeil residents Marc-Henri and Myriam Picard came to that realisation from different directions.

In April 2010.................. 

The Honour and Serving of the '' State-of-the-world Operational Research'' continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing. And see You all on the following one:

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of France. See Ya all on !WOW!  -and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' Going The Extra Mile '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 28, 2016/ ''' *EUROPE -with below the sea-level- ECHOES* '''

''' *EUROPE -with below the sea-level-

 ECHOES* '''

[ 2012 ]  : ALL OVER EUROPE,   author Lisa Fitterman,  found immigrant areas seething with frustration and anger. But nowhere was it more evident as in Paris.

Xavier Lemoine  leafs through the thin police blotter on his desk. As the mayor of  Montfermeil, a small suburb northeast of Paris, it's one of the first things he does every and each morning.

The night before was rather quiet : a family house fire, a car set ablaze, teenagers driving a stolen vehicle and a brawl between two women. ''Not bad,''   he remarks between sips of coffee.

Stern, balding and bespectacled, Lemoine points to an aerial photo of Montfermeil on a nearby wall. It portrays a patchwork of houses, parks and strip malls, and right there in the middle, a tiny grey circle that draws the eye.

This is Les Bosquets, a dilapidated apartment building that was the crucible for fiery riots that raged through France in October and November of 2005.

Covering only  3%  of the town's territory, Les Bosqheuets at this time to nearly a third of  Montfermeil's  25,000 residents, many of whom hail from Turkey,  Sub-Saharan Africa and Maghreb  -which consists of Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia and Mauritania   -and who are devout Muslims.

Many are also unemployed, and there is burgeoning underground economy supported by the trafficking of drugs and false papers. ''Whole families are supporting themselves by these different trades,'' says the mayor. ''In 2005, 80% of the town's delinquents came from the area's housing projects.''

According to Lemoine, part of the problem is that the bulk of the people in the housing projects tend to favour their culture of origin over France's secular one, to the point that many of them don't even speak French. This means a community that's closed to the outside world, with its own languages and traditions.

''But France is not a multicultural society,'' says Lemoine. ''We're open. We like couscous. We don't want headscarves or Burqas.''

A few blocks from  Montfermeil's town hall, the flowerbed in the square that serves Les Bosqueta  looks from a distance like a riot of vibrant blooms. Upon closer inspection , it becomes a mound of crumpled cans, cigarette butts, empty bottles and rotting food.

Although Notre Dam Cathedral is just over 15km to the southwest, the square feels  light years   away from the tourists and overpriced bars.

On a late spring morning, the spare is filled with men; older men who have lost their jobs, and younger men who have never worked, period. They slouch in doorways, smoking and watching, suspicious. ''Are you a flic? they ask, using the French slang for  ''cop''.

When they do speak it is of racism, both subtle and not, of fruitless searches for work in a country that  defines them by their names, the colour of their skin, what they wear and where they live. They feel powerless.

''When you say you live in Montfermeil or  [neighbouring]  Clichy-sous-Bois, that's it,''  says Mohammad Gadar,  a  28 year-old father of a one-year old girl who is hanging out with his buddies in the local cafe. He says he's been looking for work for the past  18 months.

''It's hard to overcome the stereotype that we're all shiftless thieves and cons who sell drugs. It doesn't matter that I was born in France and I speak french perfectly.''

The secular  french Republic  prohibits any mention of race or religion for censuses or statistics, but according to a 2011 publication from the Pew Research Centre,  The Future of the Global Muslim Population, the number of Muslims living in the country right now is estimated at about 4.7 million, expected to grow to 6.9 million by 2030.

*And France is not alone. Studies predict that  40 years  from now Muslims will account for more than 20% of the European Union's entire population.*

Growth like this has given rise to far right nationalist movements that reject multiculturalism. From Sweden  to   Hungary to  Italy,  divides fuelled by mistrust, liberal immigration and high unemployment are getting wider.

And it's in places like Les Bosquets, one of  750  communities that throughout France designated as  Zones Urbaines Sensibles  {ZUS}   -urban hot  spots prone to  poverty  and  crime  -that you feel the growing divide between   ''us''   and    ''them''  ; between richer and poorer,  white and not.

There's a perception that these places are rife with voyous   -young unemployed thugs who allegedly hawk drugs, burn cars and occasionally fight each other.

The situation has also given  Marine Le Pen of the National Front  [the right wing anti-immigration party founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen] the opportunity to further the agenda of the party.

Elegant, blonde and straight-talking, she represents a new generation of French citizens who agree when she compares Muslims praying in the Paris streets to an  ''occupation''.

In Response to the rise of the right, and after a debate that divided the French, President Nicolas Sarkozy's government enforced an all-out ban on burqas and niqabs  [face veils],  threatening a  150 euro  ($200)  fine and lessons in French citizenship for those few women who flouted it.

The Honour and Serving of the *State-of-the-World Operational Research* continues. Thank Ya all for reading and sharing.

With respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and  Teachers of Europe. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' Protective Environment '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless

Headline Jan 27, 2016/ *T H E.. A R T.. O F.. L I F E* .---. { THE ART OF WAR }

*T H E.. A R T.. O F.. L I F E* .---. 

{ THE ART OF WAR }

THE ROAD   -to being a better human is long long, and hard,  and lashed with many stones,   -and we all walk it alone!

In Herman Hesse's  Siddhartha, a novel about the spiritual evolution of a young man living in India at the time of Buddha, a young monk has to immerse himself in every experience before he can reach enlightenment.

In  Groundhog Day, the  Bill Murray's character has to be reborn each morning and travel through every variation of despair, nihilism, hedonism, compassion, love and death itself before he can achieve a state of grace.

How long does it take?  Danny Rubin, the writer of Groundhog Day, said he thought his character was reborn every day for ten years   -long enough to learn how to play the piano.''

Harold Ramis, the film's director, said that he thought Bill Murray was reborn for  10,000  years.    

We know in our hearts that it will take a lifetime to  be the humans we want to be. And then some....................

*We crave perfection, enlightenment and an end to all cares  -physical, financial, emotional, spiritual.* 

MACHIAVELLI'S   - The Prince,  the defining text of realpolitik, was written five centuries ago.

SUN TZU'S   -The Art Of War, the most famous book ever written about military tactics,  was first transcribed more than 2,000 years ago.

BUT we do not read  Machiavelli or  Sun Tzu because they wrote wise, gripping narratives about human beings struggling for survival and victory long ago and far away. 

We  read them because we genuinely believe that they have practical things to tell us about our life and work now.

We read Sun Tzu  because we think he will be able to help us when we have a falling out with  Doris  from accounts. We read Machiavelli because we think he has something relevant to say about the man at the next-desk getting promoted ahead of you.

The Art Of War  and  The Prince are artefacts, but they are published, sold and read as lessons in business strategy. 

Sun Tzu became the guru of every middle manager from Sydney to San Francisco when it was revealed that Mike Ovitz, the legendary Hollywood Agent, had a copy of the The Art Of War by the bedside.

But did Sun Tzu ever really help Ovitz?  Maybe. Although when you read a Sun Tzu line such as, -

''With regards to narrow passes, if you can occupy them first, let them be strongly garrisoned and await the advent of the enemy,'' it is difficult to see how much practical help it could have been when Ovitz was negotiating Sharon Stone's residual on Basic Instinct.

*And yet we can't resist the illusion that we might be able to learn what gifted people know. How could I decide that I don't need  How To Be Rich by J Paul Getty? How could I not buy a book  Only Fat People Skip Breakfast.... But at the end, all scholars of self-improvement, ultimately leave me cheated.

Because I do not want the odd helpful tip. Or even lots of unhelpful tips. We all want transformation, revelation and secrets divulged. We want a big bang that changes everything. I want a brand new me.

I want to know how to be much richer, much tougher, much thinner. I want a few tidbits of helpful information then I will buy The Good Food Guide. 

At first glance, the self -improvement industry seems to represent all our basest instincts. It is hard not to contemplate books titles such as  How To Get Rich  and   ''How To Win Dirty''   -and not believe that they are manifestations of all inside us that's greedy, gluttonous and venal.

But perhaps that is too hard, for all we want is to be better humans, and our constant seeking for paths to improvement is a natural, healthy instinct.

It's just that the road to nirvana is paved with many dead ends and wrong turnings. Not to mention books with titles such as  Millionaire Upgrade  me most of have been   how- to books for writers.

The Writer's Journey by Christopher Vogler. The  War Of Art  by Steven Pressfield.  Story by Robert McKee. But I came to them all with a specific problem, or set of problems, when I was stuck mid-book, and they helped me to fix it.

They are instruction booklets. I took only what I needed and had no expectations that they would give me a career. It is the difference between wanting to know how to change a tyre and wanting to know how to change your life.

For there are never easy answers, never quick fixes. 

Whatever the virtues of their books, Sub Tzu and Machiavelli actually can't help you with Doris in accounts. Only Fat People Skip Breakfast will not stop you being a porker if you do not conquer your oral fixation.

Reading  The Richest Man in Babylon by Gerge S Clason will not clear your overdraft. Captain WE Fairbairn was a highly trained killing machine, but reading  Getting Tough  will not do you much good in a pub fight. The road of live is hard, merciless and overwhelming.  

And then, in my heart of heart, I know that I can learn more from one page of Graham Greene than I can from en entire shelf of books promising to make me richer, tougher or thinner.

But I also know that our desire for more than we have is what dragged us from the trees, and what makes us get out of bed every morning,  -and what drives us on every day and what yet may lead us to glory.

We crave richer. We crave  tougher. We crave peace of mind.

And when is it enough?

It's never enough until your heart stops beating.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders of the free world, Parents, Students, Professors, and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!   -the World Students Society and the Ecosystem 2011.

''' Fresh Blood  '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless