The Negro-Spiritual is a genre in music, created by Black slaves before emancipation, and which has endured. As you know, Frederick Douglass’ textbook was the Bible. The Bible is not easy to read but it offers a “paradise lost,” a very humble saviour who rewards those who are in pain. Such themes are precious to oppressed people. Heaven also offers winged beings: angels. They can fly, which one cannot do if one is in shackles. Uncharitable owners kept their slaves in shackles or punished them by putting them in shackles. It was extremely painful and it could break a person’s body. The word anamnesis is linked to the Negro-Spiritual. One goes back in time and remembers that there is a promised land.
The poor, or those whose life has been broken, know they will be saved. Life eternal awaits them and those who suffer often commit suicide. There is life eternal and they may be reborn. Rebirth is a central theme in world literature and the arts. Nature awakens when Spring arrives. Those who cannot read know that there is a circle and a cycle. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons makes so much sense. The fourth movement contains a restful melody. In Winter, nature rests. The music suggests a form of suspension.
John Milton’s Paradise Lostis also Paradise regained. The desperate poets of 19th-century France looked upon man as remembering paradise. He cannot, therefore, find a comfortable place on earth. Baudelaire’sAlbatroslooks clumsy on the deck of ships. Sailors laugh. In full flight, he is divine. This is a powerful image. Le Souvenir, remembering is an important theme in 19th-century French literature, beginning with Lamartine. Le Lac is an essential poem. Lamartine has lost the woman he loved. She has died, but he asks nature to remember. To be remembered is an option. My favourite line in Lamartine is:
Un seul être vous manque, et tout est dépeuplé ! (L’Isolement) [Only one being is missing, and all is gone!]
Black slaves turned to religion, mixing the music of Western Africa and Christian themes. (See Negro Spiritual, simple English, Wikipedia). It is music one sang while working. The voyageurs of New France sang as the paddled their Amerindian birch bark canoe. One had to be a singer to be hired. The favourite song of voyageurs was À la claire fontaine. It ended with the words I will never forget you: Jamais je ne t’oublierai.
The Blacks also knew French fables based on Reynard the Fox. These are told in Uncle Remus, by Joel Chandler Harris. Such narratives can be seen as African-American, because Br’er Rabbit, brother rabbit, outfoxes the Fox. He is the trickster. Yet, Uncle Remus bears considerable resemblance to Reynard, the trickster. Many Acadians deported in 1755, made their way to Louisiana. They walked through Georgia. They had lost everything. Some walked back to Acadia. However, their land had been settled by the British. I gave a paper on Reynard, in Hull, England, in 2001. I saw the tombs of my husband’s ancestors at Beverley Minster. David died in August 2001.
Black slaves found sustenance in the Bible, and created a repertoire of songs that speak to the soul. The negro-spiritual is one of the United States’ most important legacies. It is unique and expresses both despair and hope.
Covid remains. It is the new reality and it will remain the new reality. Protesters who have taken to the streets are likely to catch the virus and spread it. Moreover, as I wrote in my last post, Mr Trump is seeing the protesters as thugs. He is not seeing them as individuals protesting an unjust death and asking that racial tensions in the United States come to an end.
I wasn’t well yesterday, and could not post anything, but I saw pictures that told a long story. The police was not allowing journalists to cover the events, which is their role. It is therefore difficult to know events precisely. We will not know who is destroying personal property. However, fatigue did not prevent me from reading.
As I feared, protesters had again taken to the streets, where no one is safe. Mr. Trump is a racist. Therefore, he wants the public to see that the protesters are thugs and will not let anyone see otherwise. This is authoritarianism, repression, bigotry and other evils I will not name. Not now. However, yesterday, The Washington Post reported that former defence secretary Jim Mattis has stated that:
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis wrote in a statement published by the Atlantic.
“We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership,” he continued. “We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
Mr Matis is right. This president wants to put protesters in the wrong and has the press pushed away so he is the only witness and divides Americans.
Mr Floyd’s murderer is in custody, and so are his fellow officers. When Mr Floyd said that he could not breathe, fellow officers didn’t pull Derek Chauvin away from George Floyd. I wrote that a heavy foot killed Mr Floyd, but it was a merciless knee and fellow officers did not intervene. They could have prevented George Floyd’s death.
All Officers Arrested
I have now read that all officers had been arrested. As for protesters, Mr Trump will not ever see them as protesters. As noted above, however legitimate the protest, the protesters will be seen as thugs. Moreover, it has also been reported that Mr. Floyd had been infected by Covid-19. Will this be used to explain away a genuine homicide? Mr Floyd died of Covid-19. How convenient! But we know the truth.
I will close by repeating that Donald Trump should not have been elected to the Presidency of the United States. He is not sufficiently educated. A good education is a source of freedom. It broadens the mind. One sees what one had not seen before and one can wrap one’s thoughts in words. But what Mr Trump reads is fake news, and he thinks he is under attack. He has also learned to lie.
In short, Derek Chauvin killed Mr Floyd and President Trump is failing Americans abysmally. There could be new outbreaks of Covid-19 and President Trump is distorting the truth. To this effect, he is not allowing the press from chronicling events. Fortunately, Americans can see.
The protest must be peaceful and Americans must elect to the Presidency of the United States a person who will be accountable and will not divide the United States.
George Floyd had the right to live, despite the color of his skin. His death is murder most foul. It truly saddens me to see that a person who should protect others, a policeman, failed in his duties to protect a citizen of the United States and that fellow officers did not come to Mr. Floyd’s rescue.
I would like to express indignation at the brutal act that deprived Mr. Floyd of his life. A police officer’s first duty is to ensure the safety of others. The murderer and his colleagues failed Mr. Floyd and they failed the people of the United States. I also wish to express heartfelt sympathy to Mr. Floyd’s family, friends, and to his community.
However, in the days of Covid-19, demonstrations are not advisable. Covid-19 is so easily transmitted that demonstrations could infect hundreds of persons. Protective masks fall while buildings are set ablaze. Please remember that in the mind of a racist, a violent and destructive protest will be viewed as vandalism, which it has become. Violent protests could be used to justify Mr. Floyd’s murder. Yes, racism can go that far. Protest peacefully.
Racists walk a crooked path and many are not educated. President Trump is not as well-educated as his predecessor, President Obama. He would not even hear Dr Fauci, an exceptional immunologist who should have guided the President’s actions. President Trump has also severed the United States ties with the World Health Organization, the WHO. Such behavior is inexplicable and it is wrong. How to fight Covid-19 is for experts to determine. Elected officials act on their advice.
Allow me to say to African-Americans facing racism that they are not alone. Whites are also fighting racism. Americans of every creed and color elected Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States.
The American Elections
The electoral campaign is well under way. Therefore, Americans are at liberty to elect a President who will not tolerate racism and prejudices. But for the time being, we are in the midst of a pandemic. Covid-19 is as deadly as the heavy knew of the policeman who choked Mr. Floyd. In fact, it is deadlier. Many of you who have protested may have been infected. We have abused the environment and can expect horrific consequences. Do not engage in demonstrations that will destroy you and harm your cause.
Protest peacefully and be an instrument of change. Elect a good candidate to the Presidency of the United States. At the moment, Mr. Biden leads and he has many supporters. The world is watching, hoping for a change, but only American citizens can vote.
Here is a quotation from a piece Barack Obama published in Medium.
The “bottom line,” he wrote, is that “if we want to bring about real change, then the choice isn’t between protest and politics. We have to do both. We have to mobilize to raise awareness, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform.”
Uprooting racism and other societal ills is everyone’s task. Do not stand alone and stay safe.
I reread my post and made a change. If one returns to work untested and works in a contaminated environment, one’s life is a stake and contagion will continue exponentially.
To liberate…
The Washington Post has stories and pictures that tell the unacceptable. President Trump is smiling as he encourages States to end the lockdown using the word “liberate.” “Liberate?” People may return to work because they have yet to receive money from Washington. What happened to the “stimulus” fund?
If a person has not received an income for two months, he or she may return to work at the cost of his or her life, which is scandalous. Before a person reënters the workplace, that person has to test negative and the workplace must be as safe an environment as possible.
There is enough money in the United States to keep people secure for a few more weeks. At the moment, returning to work is unsafe. Moreover, some people will have suffered emotionally and mentally. They require help.
“Trump didn't cause the pandemic. What he did was squander America's only advantage—a lag time during which to prepare for the crisis—thus encouraging the spread of the disease when it might have been contained. He has, in real and material ways, made this crisis worse.” pic.twitter.com/dpfEqH02uI
I have been in self-isolation for more than a week. I’ve never smoked. Yet, a little over a year ago, I lost my voice and I was then diagnosed with advanced emphysema. If I can remain in self-isolation, I may be safe, but how long can one be in self-isolation?
In theory, I should not see anyone, but tomorrow, a plumber will come to my apartment and replace the kitchen faucet. It burst apart. I spoke with the manager who told me it had to be replaced immediately, while there was still time.
Sherbrooke has testing facilities and treatment facilities. But distancing is the rule. In fact, authorities have asked people to refrain from going to testing facilities. One must phone and make an appointment. Symptoms must be very clear.
President Trump
Mr Trump tells us that he knew about the impending pandemic. Did he? As you know, with Mr Trump, first, the news is “fake news.” Second, he is not accountable. Yet, Americans will get paid sick leave, etc. They will be helped and they will have an income.
Ironically, on 16 March, Canadian Prime Ministre Justin Trudeau addressed Canadians. However, he did not close the border separating Canada from the United States. He may have feared a negative reaction from our neighbours to the South. But Mr Trump did not hesitate. The border is closed to non-essential traffic. In the days of novel coronavirus, distancing is necessary, but it is a form of togetherness. We need one another perhaps more than ever before.
Canada may have a small advantage. Most Canadians do what their experts tell them to do. Not that they are blinded by what authorities advise, but that they dare not be foolhardy. However, we lack supplies.
I would urge you to provide an income to all American employees whose benefits do not include paid sick leave. Would that I could say, help them when they fall ill, but such advice would make no sense. They must leave the workplace now. People who stay in the workplace will catch the virus and transmit it. The number of victims will then grow at an exponential rate.
One may be tempted to say that the economy will be hurt. Not necessarily. Pandemics are an industry. So much has to be manufactured: respirators, ventilators, the best masks, testing facilities, treatment facilities … It’s like a war effort and the United States has fought wars and thrived.
Make sure that the people working in the Pandemic industry are protected from head to toe.
I’ve listened to many videos and heard about measures taken in various countries. Containment is essential. There is no better strategy than containment. But one must eat.
Let us listen to what our experts have to say. They are the authorities. They can organise the war on Covid-19. We also have economists, experts. They can keep the boat afloat as the battle rages and wipe up the mess when it subsides.
Accountability
By ensuring that drastic measures are taken to stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus you will reassure the markets. It’s the responsible choice. This choice will also comfort the people of the United States and the world.
I am posting this article, but the situation has already started to change, for the better. People must leave the workplace.
No country should allow the spread of a potentially deadly virus, which will happen if the little guy cannot get away from the working place. Not only would he or she be in the line of fire, but the virus would not be contained and the state would be accountable.
WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 04: U.S. President Barack Obama meets with a group of ‘DREAMers’ who have received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in the Oval Office of the White House February 4, 2015 in Washington, DC. ‘DREAMers’ are children who were brought into the U.S. illegally and were then granted temporary relief under Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Dred Scott. Oil on canvas by Louis Schultze, 1888. Acc. # 1897.9.1. Missouri Historical Society Museum Collections. Photograph by David Schultz, 1999. NS 23864. Photograph and scan (c) 1999-2006, Missouri Historical Society.
If one reads the Declaration of Independence, quoted above, without taking its historical context into consideration, one cannot reconcile the phrase “all men are created equal,” with enslavement. Matters are all the more puzzling since, as Minister to France (1784 -1789), Thomas Jefferson helped the Marquis de Lafayette draft the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789), a monument to social justice drawing from the American Declaration of Independence. La Fayette had fought in the American Revolutionary War. Could it be that the Founding Fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson, were hypocrites? I have pondered this question and it would be my opinion that, in their eyes, black slaves were not fully developed men. The Founding Fathers: George Washington, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison wished to create a union of white men. George Washington, the 1st President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, was a Mason and a slave owner, but did he know that blacks were human beings to the same extent as whites?
Thomas Jefferson is unlikely ever to have whipped his slaves, but I doubt that his attitude towards the blacks was substantially different from the view expressed, a century later, by Confederate General-in-Chief, Robert E. Lee’s (19 January 1807 – 12 October 1870)
“most noted comment, quoted by most Lee’s biographers, occurred in a [sic] 1856 letter to his wife, describing slavery as an evil institution, but one that had more adverse effects on whites than blacks. However, he viewed slavery as a “painful discipline” which elevated blacks from barbarism to civilization while introducing them to Christianity. He felt that the institution would come to an end in God’s good time, but that might not be soon.” (See Robert E. Lee, Wikipedia.)
The White Man’s Burden
In the White Man’s Burden, a poem published as the 19th century drew to an end, in 1899), Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) expressed views that portrayed the inhabitants of colonies as “primitive:”
“The implication, of course, was that the Empire existed not for the benefit — economic or strategic or otherwise — of Britain, itself, but in order that primitive peoples, incapable of self-government, could, with British guidance, eventually become civilized (and Christianized).” (See The White Man’s Burden, Wikipedia.)
The British John Bull and the American Uncle Sam bear The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling), taking the coloured peoples of the world to civilisation. (Victor Gillam, Judgemagazine, 1 April 1899) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Rudyard Kipling is the author of the Jungle Book (1894) and the Just-so stories (1902), classics of children’s literature. As for Lafayette, although he was an abolitionist and a Mason, he fought in the American Revolutionary War and probably realized that George Washington and other Founding Fathers of the United States could not be brought to view their black slaves as altogether human or “men,” but that they were good human beings. The United States Declaration of Independence was worded in the language of John Locke (29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) and also reflected Freemasonry. Equality would be the subject matter of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) Discourse on Inequality (1754) and a main theme in Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762). These documents are “cornerstones in modern political and social thought.”
John Locke by Godfrey Kneller, 1697 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The case of Dred Scott is most revealing. In 1857, Dred Scott, a slave taken to free states by his owners, sued for his freedom and lost. Dred Scott vs Sandford60U.S393 is considered one of the worst mistakes of the Supreme Court of the United States. Its decision was made shortly before the American Civil War (1861-1865) and it proved to be an indirect catalyst for the American Civil War.” (See Dred Scott vs Sandford60U.S.393.)
African-Americans had been taken to the Americas forcibly, yet they were not recognized as citizens of the United States until the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1868, three years after the South surrendered to the Union. As for American Indians, they were not citizens until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924.
The Naturalization Act of 1798, is one of four acts, the Alien and Sedition Acts, signed into law by John Adams, the 2nd American President of the United States and its 1st Vice President. The four laws under John Adam’s Alien and Sedition Acts are the following:
The Naturalization Act of 1798 was repealed by Thomas Jefferson and replaced by the Naturalization Law of 1802, which reduced the residence requirement of immigrants from 14 years to 5 years, as it had been under the terms of the Naturalization Act of 1795. However, the Alien Enemies Act, was used after Pearl Harbor was attacked, on 7 December 1941. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 would allow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt “to imprison Japanese, German, and Italian aliens during World War II.” Canadians followed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and also interned Japanese Canadians. (See Internment of Japanese Canadians.) The Alien Enemies Act was also used by President Harry S. Truman “to continue to imprison, then deport, aliens of the formerly hostile nations.” It has been revised but remains in effect. The Alien Friends’ Act and the Sedition Act went into dormancy. A modified Alien Enemy Act is still in force.
“The Sedition Act resulted in the prosecution and conviction of many Jeffersonian newspaper owners who disagreed with the government.” (See Alien and Sedition Acts, Wikipedia.)
The Chinese Exclusion Act of 6 May 1882 is particularly sad, and the United States was not the only country in which the Chinese were viewed as a peril, the Yellow Peril. It was the first American federal law prohibiting the immigration of Chinese laborers. Chinese had first emigrated to the United States during the California gold rush (1848-1855). Later, in the 1860s, they were employed to build the First Transcontinental Railroad from Nebraska to the Pacific Ocean. The Burlingame Treaty, signed in Washington (1868) and ratified in Beijing (1868), granted the Chinese equality with Americans. Yet, on 24 October 1871, 500 rioters entered Los Angeles’ Chinatown “to attack, rob and murder Chinese residents of the city.” Rioters “tortured and then hanged” 17 to 20 Chinese. The Massacre was “racially motivated,” and “it took place on Calle de los Negros (Street of the Negros), also referred to as ‘Nigger Alley.’ “It was the largest mass lynching in American history.” (See Chinese Massacre of 1871, Wikipedia.)
The Yellow Terror in all His Glory (1899) is a rebellious Qing Dynasty Chinese man, armed to the teeth, who stands astride a fallen white woman representing Western European colonialism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
French aristocrat Arthur de Gobineau, the author of the Essai sur l’inégalité des races (The Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, c. 1848), feared the Yellow Peril above all. As we have seen, he developed the theory of the Aryanmaster race, but he was not an anti-Semite.
Darwinism
As biology, botany, ethnology, and related disciplines developed, the matter of racial superiority or inferiority among races started to lose its grip. The findings of English naturalist, geologist and biologistCharles Darwin (12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) were a revolution. According to Darwin’sOn the Origin of Species, published in 1859, two years after the Dred Scott vs Sandford, humans had evolved “through a process of natural selection.” (See Charles Darwin, Wikipedia.) Darwin’s views were controversial. Wasn’t man created by God? There is such a thing as Scientific Racism (see Wikipedia), but Darwin was not a racist.
Lafayette and Washington
Gilbert Motier de Lafayette was a very good friend of George Washington. He named one his sons after the 1st President of the United States. (See Georges Washington de La Fayette, Wikipedia.) Georges Washington de La Fayette, Lafayette’s son went to the United States during the French Revolution. He studied at Harvard and lived at the home of George Washington, and Americans did all they could to save the life of the Lafayette’s during the French Revolution. As for Thomas Jefferson, during his stay in France, just prior to the French Revolution, he was a distinguished guest at Lafayette’s home. Lafayette was an abolitionist and a Mason. He was a member of la Société des amis des Noirs (The Society of Friends of the Blacks). In a letter to George Washington, written in 1783, “he urged the emancipation of slaves and their establishment as tenant farmers.” (See Gilbert Motier de Lafayette, Wikipedia.) He bought land in the French colony of Cayenne to “experiment.” However, there was little he could to do to change the embedded mindset of his American friends. Slavery had long been looked upon as morally acceptable, the slaves were blacks, an inferior race, and one did not have to pay slaves.
By rescinding DACA, President Trump would show that he has little respect for immigrants, especially, but not necessarily, coloured immigrants. DACA beneficiaries arrived in the United States as minors and, at times, alone. The only home they know is the United States. If President Trump deports immigrants who arrived to the United States as minors, and, at times, unaccompanied, America will not be “great again;” it will be cruel and it will be walking back to an age when immigration to the United States was restricted to “free white persons of good character.” Immigration to the United States is currently taking a turn for the worse. DACA beneficiaries featured in the photograph inserted at the top of this post are dark-skinned.
I prefer to think that ethnicity is not a factor in the Trump administration’s decision to deport DACA beneficiaries. But what about immigrants from the Near to Middle East. They may have pale skin, but ethnicity might deprive them of a home.
In a letter to his wife Adrienne, Lafayette wrote:
“The welfare of America is bound closely to the welfare of all humanity. She [America]is to become the honored and safe asylum of liberty! Adieu! Darkness does not suffer me to continue longer. But if my fingers were to follow my heart, I should need no daylight to tell you how I suffer far away from you, and how I love you.” (See Adrienne de La Fayette, Wikipedia.)
When Lafayette was in United States, it was a country in the making, a project. And it is still a project. It took a long time to accept African-Americans as citizens of America. As for DACA, Mr Trump might change his mind and not deport them. President Trump wants to reverse every decision made by the Obama administration. The Affordable Care Act is his main target.
In all likelihood the Founding Fathers believed that “all men were created equal,” but they lived in an age when humans looked upon the blacks and American Indians as inferior to white men. Matters have changed. The United States is now or should be “the honored and safe asylum of liberty!”
I missed July 4th, Independence Day for the citizens of the United States, but wish to send special greetings to my neighbours. I spent several holidays at my grandfather’s house in Massachusetts. I grew to love his home and his land. The year is young, so greetings to everyone.
Life has not been easy for many of you since Mr Trump was elected to the presidency of the United States. You have had to rely on courts to block some Executive Orders. These are your courts and they represent you, your vision, your values. Many Americans would keep law-abiding “dreamers,” rather than deport them.
The children of undocumented immigrants may be safe. Their parents, however, are being returned to an uncertain future and some may be executed because they have stood against a tyrant. Iraqi Christians are being deported. Yes, there are Christians in the Middle East, but fewer and fewer. As for Muslims, the majority are good persons who deserve respect and love.
A Strange Illness
A large number of nations are home to refugees whom they may deport. Countries have a right to limit immigration. However, one should consider the plight of immigrants and refugees and that of persons who may be deported to their native land. In Sweden, upon learning that they their family would be deported, the children of Russian refugees have fallen ill. It’s a strange disease. They do not die, but enter into a state of resignation so complete that they are neither dead nor alive. They lose consciousness. Such phenomena are difficult to explain, but these children may have felt, or feel, they were, and are, not worthy of living.
Uppgivenhetssyndrom, or resignation syndrome, is said to exist only in Sweden, and only among refugees. The patients seem to have lost the will to live. “They are like Snow White,” a doctor said. “They just fall away from the world.” Photograph by Magnus Wennman for The New Yorker
Canada and “Illegal” Immigrants
Certain immigrants and asylum-seekers were not allowed to stay in the United States under former President Obama’s administration. But they were deported at a slower rate and in smaller numbers. We did not see “dreamers” cross the border and the cost of frozen limbs. No one can enter Canada illegally, but recent asylum seekers who arrived during winter months, were helped by the police and then arrested, but not in a brutal manner. Canada has to protect its citizens. It has immigration laws and it may deport would-be Canadians, rightly or wrongly.
Refugees
Christians
The Plight of Immigrants
Canada’s Armenian community sponsored at least one flight of threatened Armenians. These refugees were Christians as are Iraqis being deported from the United States. One may think the Armenians who were on that one flight to Canada were “lucky.” To a certain extent, they were. Members of Canada’s Armenian community felt relief and newly-arrived Armenians were greeted to this country. They had nevertheless lost their home and, perhaps, children and relatives. It has often been said, in France and Canada, that “nous sommes tous du pays de notre enfance.” We all belong to the country of our childhood. Immigrants lose their native land and some remember circumstances that were better in the country of their birth. History or destiny are not always kind to people. Most immigrants have to learn a new language and they may be underemployed in their new country, which may constitute a profound loss.
President Trump’s Islamophobia
In this regard, we have learned that President Trump’s Islamophobia is selective. It does not include Saudi Arabia.
He could also be that he does not realize that there may be tragic consequences to his Islamophobia. For one thing, he may be cultivating terrorism. How long will Muslim migrants accept being looked upon as would-be terrorists on the basis of their religion? Think, moreover, of the copycat phenomenon. Think also that there is a degree of diversity in the Middle East. Although most citizens are Muslims, certain minorities were not “Arabised” in the 7th century CE. Some did not convert to Islam. For instance, there are Buddhists in Saudi Arabia. (See Buddhism in Saudi Arabia, Wikipedia.) Finally, deporting people who have grown roots in a country other than their native country may lead to an illness resembling the fate of those children in Sweden who have given up: uppgivenhetssyndrom.
War and terrorism have caused a large number of innocent people to walk away from their homes in the Middle East. It’s a crisis and such crises have happened before. We have to manage them.
The G20 Summit
Mr Trump is at the G20 Summit. It would appear he may be compromising the United States’ status as global leader. He is, at any rate, facing opposition. The climate, for instance, is a global issue and there are trading agreement, defence alliances and questions such as migration and various international accidents.
The Weeping Angel of Amiens(Photo Credit: Wikipedia)
Otto Warmbier
The North Koreans did not free Otto Warmbier, they sent home a dying young man. Whatever brutality they inflicted caused his death. When he returned to the United States, nothing could be done for him.
Despite the irreversibility of his fate, I am very thankful to President Trump for securing Otto’s release. He ensured that a dying young man would pass away home, in the United States, and surrounded by his loved ones, his parents in particular, Fred and Cindy Warmbier. Otto’s mother said that her son’s facial expression changed during the last days of his life. He arrived in the United States looking anguished, but died looking serene, at peace.
He will also be given a proper funeral, which will help his parents, his siblings, his friends, and all of us. We were all touched and our thoughts are with his family. Otto Warmbier was the quintessential victim of man’s inhumanity to man.
I would like to offer my deepest condolences to his grieving family and I hope that an angel will be by their side for the rest of their life. They have suffered. They saw videos of their son crying when he was condemned to 15 years of hard labour and looking dejected as guards took him away to serve an unjust sentence.
I have placed above the image of the “Weeping Angel of Amiens,” once again. It is so powerful an image. The soul is immortal. So, no one could take his soul away from Otto.
It may be wise not to look upon President Donald Trump’s defection from the 2015 Paris Agreement(l’Accord de Paris) as a decision dooming our ailing planet. Nor can it be seen as reflecting the will of the citizens of the United States. Climate change remains a major concern for countries around the world, the survival of planet Earth being at stake. If planet Earth dies, we all die. With respect to climate change, action cannot be delayed as we are already seconds before midnight.
Three European Nations React
A mere hour after President Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, Italy, Germany, and France stated jointly that the Paris Agreement could not be renegotiated. (See United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Wikipedia.)
Again, a mere hour after Mr Trump made his decision public, French President Emmanuel Macron offered a refuge in France to American climate scientists. Some of these scientists, and they are numerous and highly skilled, have gone to Washington and warned President Trump of the imminent danger climate change posed, but to no avail. It could well be that the President’s decision is not an American decision, but Donald Trump’s decision. Ironically, President Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, opposed the President’s decision.
But I am also reading that there is considerable resistance in the United States. After listening to former President Obama’s farewell address, I wrote that he probably felt that a democracy was its own corrective or “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” (Abraham Lincoln ‘s Gettysburg Address.)
“Thirty cities, three states, more than 80 university presidents, and more than 100 companies are part of a growing group intending to uphold the Paris Agreement, the climate-change accord that President Donald Trump on Thursday announced the US would be exiting.”
The group is being organized by billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg.
Michael Bloomberg, the UN special envoy for cities and climate change, at the C40 Mayors Summit in Mexico City on December 1. Reuters
Conclusion
After Mr Trump’s visit to Europe, Chancellor Merkel‘s political rivals agreed with her that Europe would have to look after itself. However, it turns out that Mr Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement has unleashed widespread disappointment, in the United States in particular, but also everywhere.
Mr Trump may be a dangerous man, but he is predictable. He announced that he would not allow Muslims to enter the United States and is now planning another travel ban, but Americans will find a way to defeat it. Three men were stabbed and two died protecting Muslim women on a train in Portland, Oregon. The United States has long been a refuge to the oppressed. President Trump’s Islamophobia has not affected all the citizens of the United States. Besides, it is selective. He travelled to Saudi Arabia and signed an arms deal.
President Trump is also trying to take away from Americans what protection they enjoyed under the Affordable Act Care. Law-abiding American citizens pay their taxes and are therefore entitled to the security citizens of other and poorer countries enjoy.
The next link takes the reader to comments by Sir Richard Branson who may be saying that, in a democracy, if a people is threatened, it will rush to its own rescue.
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Micheline Walker
