historical mistakes

Part of the fun of blogs is that u can get personal, i suppose.
Well i made a historical mistake.

For years now i have been thinking syria had no acces to the mediteranean,
but it does. I don't know why i thought that, perhaps because serbia was denied one, irak is hardly left any, and so on. Basically the whole anti russia politics of before was one of denying them harbours and acces to certain seas.

So when recently turkey anounced they would move help into lebanon, i assumed that meant, directly, over land. But i don't know if that is where i got it.

Obviously damascus is situated antiquely, it's not on the better spot for a capital city. So historically, and probably practically still, beirut has indeed been syria's harbour. But what made me think they had no acces to the mediterenean?
perhaps it once was? else i don't know, certainly these coastal states, lebanon palestine, croatia have suggestive shapes and places on the coastlines.

Still it's a huge mistake of mine, i might sympatise with irak over shath el arab or kuweit, i may understand the cultural meaning of dubrovnik for the serb feeling of souvereignety, get faint of admirance for a russia that left all the krim but sebastopol to kiev, romantice wladiwostok, organise trainstrips through african countrys, and vocally support likewise palestinean rail projects to jordan,
but how could i err here?

it does mean that i tend to think that every country that is rudely insulted and attacked up to with military means , has no acces to sea.. i must take care not to admit to that mistake again (darfur kongo somalia anyone..).


Culture (not necessarily of Jordan)

Another historical mistake of mine that strikes me every now and then, is how i completely misjudge my capacity to understand other culture, it is not necessarily in the negative, but especially what i recently read about jordan in a blog:

http://ejectiraqikkk.blogspot.com/, wich i would call my best resource for culture in irak and jordan. I am personally not the kind of person to agree with each and everything, so i just enjoy the attitude and read what it tells me next. It made me think deeply.

This culture is so different from ours.
Actually not because it looks so much different, it's got a few harsh sides, but it is not for looks. It's readily appreciable Jordan would look different from netherlands, it is what i already mentioned, a cultural difference.

Culture is the chemical restproduct of historical mistakes, and it is always easier to point at the mistakes made by an other.

So what touched me from Jordan culture, is that it is so recent. It is alive, old fashioned partly, really circumstantial at matters, but above all it is recent.

There is a deep resource of ancient culture, or perhaps habits, but all the rest is tuned to the needs of the current era. These happen to be not completely sympathic to me in jordan, for example because i hold the antitotalitarian principle and therefore am an antimonarchist. However it is striking that all these recent elements perform pronounced in jordan culture.

Meanwhile it would be pretentious to say we have a grip on our people in jordan.
Here in europe, there is no war around, yes we do fight wars, but we don't admit to it, we call it fighting peaces.

And culture is such that the average person bears it, not knowing what we do around the world. It is not the insider, agent or idealist that bears the culture in any sense. We try to have relations to our cultures, and perhaps contribute positively to them, but the bearer is always the passive. The receiver tells us how they appreciate the symbolics with and around their existence.

So that is a definite about jordan culture as well. Anyhow this is not about jordan. It is about how we cannot get the cultures to work for us. Because i am very sure we have to be carefull with jordan if we want it not to meet horrible times of her own.

What i am saying is: despite that i don't think the usual jordanian would ever perceive things like this, we can still spare them from disaster and violence.

Actually.

Now Jordan isn't very much in the focus of the west fortunately, but the receipe is awfull. Jordans are sunnites, and sunnites are the victim of the day.
What are they supposed to think. If someone starts killing all the flemish, the dutch will not feel extra comfortable.

Ofcourse jordan are very much influenced by the usual al qauida hypes etc. They have either: "the only wrong religion", with evil intends and disturbing geopolitical inhumane qualitys, (wich are actually traits i think all religions share) , or they have innocent victims amongst their brethren.

It's quitte plain, the western mind, about that.
It harbours an exciting fear over an abstract terrorist complex, and seeing anything outside that as culture is almost prohibited. So unfortunately the jordanians had to be introduced to the western paranoia to. It may sound strange, but it is so. Think over it, you need to prepare your populace in unwarranted terms over things that happen around them, when they happen so unwarranted.

And there you have the usual jordanian pov.. so it is not a conspiracy, it is just the natural effect of getting into terms with what happens around you.

I am a very modern person. So i don't like jordan, but it doesn't count, there is hardly a nation i like, that should actually be the subject of my next post.
how this amazing multiplexity of authoritys delivers only crap evrywhere,
named politics, and substantiate each and every of them.

Sympathy against any government

People might think i sympathise with any government, just because i sometimes think the dissidents are crap as well for example. Things are more complex then that.

I sympathise with chavez for shutting up CNN, i dont sympathise with his government for having no better relation with the local yuppys of the private broadcasting companys. Then again, CNN is a very powerfull concept in the mind of many yups in television sets.

Where lies Myanmar? bhutan or some such peculiar small place i would guess.
Isn't it evil, how the UN acknowledges the farce of letting her out of her house once? it's all for tourism or some even worse colonialist trait. Then again,
what does the lady want, what kind of liberty's .. the generals looked very distinguished in their uniform uniforms without bunches of medals.

She got a nobel peace price, and she is shut up and noone cares.
What does it mean? The generals are leftish, and she is expendable. The west can think of a cheaper capitalist president, in the end.(..)

For her personal notion, i would judge they still consider the attention to her person a rewarding source of unrest in her nation. I don't know.., is it such an awfull place? Keeping in mind that i would still write a post about what is against so many of the systems:)? The problem is that even one year of housearrest would turn you into a rather severe case, but from my remote perpective it means auth. didn't hand you over to for example psychiatrics and that you had a western education.

People say she is a true person, although they pray for her.
(part of the next post is how praying isn't a sincere argument at all)

I hope her government gives her freedom or a foreign asylum and the money to live,
if they don't like her and what she can still do.
17 years of (house) arrest is a ridiculous precedent when actually they should be proud that she is a woman (historically).