Resentment is nurtured

I like to think of myself as a fairly non-judgemental person (and while I use the word “fairly” I don't think I am even that though – I can be pretty judgemental even when I don't want to be).

I feel a true non-judgemental persona is defeated because of resentment deep within. I am a honest person, not honest as in I never lie or anything, but honest because I am fair... to myself.

While that may sound a bit selfish at the start, it really isn't. I have no double standards, I don't cheat when I think no one is looking or pretend to be something I am not. Let the perception die here... I am NOT incorrigible; I have been known to make mistakes on occasion(even though no one would believe I do).

Far from being selfish, in my opinion, being fair to oneself is the first step to being fair to others. I generally don't run a red light or cut in queue, I do that because I think it is fair (to everyone concerned). Problem arises because suddenly I expect that others should also “ generally not run a red light or cut in queue” - but some do and what that does is build resentment (mainly because, sadly, I am not an aggressive person, rather more of an arm-chair retrospection grouch).

In today's dog-eat-dog world, nice guys generally don't finish first... but neither do they finish last (despite the popular notion that they do). In my experience nice guys sleep better at night and never have to watch their back.

But its fair warning that it could at times result in built up resentment for those who don't play by the rules!

The one thing that reminds to try and stop being judgemental is that it is unfair to judge anyone without full understanding the motives behind their actions – while it is true the motive could be pure selfish interest, but it is also true that people sometimes do things they would not normally do when they are at their wits end. Imagine rushing an injured child to the hospital, who stops for a red light then?

I read that good judgement comes from experience and experience from bad judgement.

End game? Judgemental, smudgemental, sometimes such things could make you just mental!

When coincidental coincidences coincide...

Do you believe in coincidences? There seems plenty of it in my news radar this morning.

Yesterday in my post I put up a news snippet about a Illinois man who was pulled over by the police officer, who was behind him in line at a McDonald's drive-thru. The officer had smelt marijuana and noticed the smoke coming out from the car in front of him; the man was casually smoked a joint while waiting for his food.

What I did not report was that the man from Elgin Illinois.

Now it appears that Elgin has its share of kooks. Paul Guiterrez, of Elgin, Illinois, has declared to give half his annual income for one year (about US$ 10,000 to US$ 20,000) for anyone who can find him a wife.

Guiterrez has even suggested that if that was not enough he would donate to the charity of the person's choice, or “walk across the country in a wedding dress to raise money for a charitable cause.”

The story is that the man has not had much luck with dating, and confesses that the only time he thought that he was in a relationship was “that is until her boyfriend showed up.”

In his list he points out that he is an unmitigated optimist, kind-hearted and loves animals, he doesn't drink, smoke or do drugs. Also that me may have been convicted for s few misdemeanours he has never conducted a felony.

In Guiterrez's blog (www.handsomepaul.blogspot.com) he lists 38 reasons why single women should love him... but don't. The list is filled with sometimes brutally honest self-assessments and confessions – all packed with a healthy dose of self-deprication and humour.

A self-proclaimed 'ugly' man, Guiterrez in reason #34 states that he is not picky and that the good news was “all women between the ages of 18 and 49 years old, regardless of their physical appearance or past transgressions, are eligible to become my wife.”

The Bad News? He admits that he “may have set (his) standards to high.”

The list evokes his reminiscences of his compassion for other people and the extent he went through to spare people of the olfactory stimuli when he was “suddenly overcome with an unbearable, geyser-like pressure stirring within,” while at a fast food restaurant. He warns people to continue to read at their own peril. A very candid description of events follow.

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Now how's this for coincidence. In a completely unrelated story a 53 year old Texan man died while raping a 77-year old woman. Where is the coincidence? Well the Texan's name was Isabel Chavelo, wait for it, Guiterrez!

Another Guiterrez (no relation to the first, I am guessing) makes the news for a desperate act at companionship in the same week!

The story goes that the man broke into the woman's rural home and attacked her. In the midst of his defilement of the elderly woman, he complained that he wasn't feeling too well and stopped because he needed to rest.

According to the news report “Guiterrez, a registered sex offender, continued to fondle her, then rolled over and died.” The woman, thinking he passed out from too much alcohol (he was reeking of it) quickly ran out to her daughter's home and called the police.

Police believe that Guiterrez had a heart attack after riding his bicycle 3.2 km to the woman's house on a hot day

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I don't usually believe in coincidences, but I think I could be convinced otherwise now.

They come in three

Three revelations from the news makes me conclude that pot, excess booze and escalating petrol prices really do make some people stupid.

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No Happy Meal here!

In one case a Illinois man was gainfully smoking cannabis in his car while waiting for his meal at the drive-thru of a local McDonald’s. Had it been any other day or any other restaurant he might have gotten away.

Or maybe if he checked his rear mirror often... because on the particular day the car that was directly behind him in line at the drive-thru was a police cruiser.

The officer was able to smell the burning marijuana and saw the smoke coming out of the passenger window of the car in front.

He stopped the car for a traffic violation and found a tupperware container filled with pot in the car. The offender was duly charged with possession.

You can be sure it wasn't a Happy Meal.

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In another case, a Warsaw man attempted to woo his sweetheart by riding chest naked into her house on horseback. Needless to say, he had been drinking at the local watering hole and thought it was a grandiose enough gesture to sweep her off her feet.

Chivalry died in the hands of the uncouth...

However, when he smashed his way through the front door and into her living room, while she was home watching TV with her daughter, she called the police.

The shaken divorcee only had did to say: “I never fancied him before and certainly don't now.”

Ouch!

The poor lovelorn man, and divorced father of seven, now faces five years behind bars for aggravated breaking and entry.

No news to the state of the horse though.

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And finally, to perhaps finally prove that escalating petrol prices were making loons of us all, two Kazakhstan men decided to save on trailer costs (and petrol) by shipping the Mazda 626 they had bought by transporting it back home in their van.

The German police pulled over the heavily laden white van on the highway (after they saw it lurching from side to side) - and were stunned when they found a car packed on its side in the back!

What happened was that when the car wouldn't fit in the van the proper way up - the two men decided to think out of the box. They called a few pals and loaded the silver Mazda in on its side – carefully putting a mattress underneath to stop the doors from getting scratched.

When pulled over though the men couldn't see a problem with their solution, the car did fit in the van after all.

Well, if it fits...

The Germans, however, couldn't quite see it the same way. A German police spokesman said the van and the car were confiscated and the men ordered to return with a proper transporter for the car before they would be allowed to continue the journey.

Social mis-etiquette on social network

Facebook is almost ubiquitous with social networking these days. It would seem that you aren't really connected unless you are connected through Facebook.

Too bad that Facebook has such seemingly low standards that it'll allow anyone with half a brain to enlist (and in some cases, people with the intellectual wattage of a broken night light).

Naturally the latter kind of people 'walk into it' and find infamy in the United States more than anywhere else in the world. My theory is because the US is so cyber connected and egalitarian that getting an internet connection is as easy as literally signing an 'X' on the dotted line (which MUST be the case in the example below).

Last May 23 a particular Philly woman updated her facebook status with the following text: “I will pay somebody a stack to kill my baby (sic) father.”

And because like attracts like, the alleged first response was from another possibly equally 'challenged' person who responded that he would be up to the task, agreeing to carry out the hit provided he was paid up front.

All this on a public-access network!

The authorities were alerted after the intended victim's mother saw the message and contacted her son. Which really also means that this Philly woman had her prospective mother-in-law as a 'friend' and someone who would be updated of her status.

You'd think I could make something like this up. Whoever said that truth is stranger than fiction hit the nail bang on the head!

The 20-year old woman has been picked up and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and is being held on US$ 250,000 bail. Her 18-year old knight in (with) dented armour (or is it dented head?) has been charged with attempted murder and a weapons charge. He is currently being held on US$350,000 bail.

Needless to say, (and I am guessing) they are probably not allowed access to facebook in their cells. Even if it is America, their 'rights' probably don't extend that far.

Pity.

One will now have to second guess how much she would offer to someone on facebook to spring her out of jail.

(Maybe, the police could add her as friend so that they can be updated when she does.)

Amina: lost in transference

“Look, but don't touch” is good advice anyway you look(?) at it, and may be the only bit of advice, I find, that is best heeded most of the time. Then there is also believing what wants to believe even when the odds are stacked to the contrary.

Online plea to 'Free Amina'

News is hot on the online media about the Syrian gay girl in Damascus blogging on the situation in Syria, as being a hoax.

Far from being Amina Abdullah Arraf, the half-Syrian, half- American lesbian caught in rigmarole of Islamic oppression and political tension in Damascus, the true author of a damascusgaygirl.blogspot.com is Tom MacMaster, a 40-year old American man studying in Scotland.

And he is sorry.

He is sorry for leading the western journalists and activists worldwide on a purported (and incredulous) journey of Syrian dissension and political energy as 'Amina' blogged about “her social life and relationships,” in the background of the Syrian uprising against president Bashar al-Assad.

So convincing was MacMaster's entries as Amina that the Associated Press (among other news organisations) had even picked up an interview with her. An AP reporter who had corresponded with 'Amina' at length said that “her e-mails sounded very much like those of a woman in the middle of a violent uprising.”

MacMaster's admission might have gone down better had he not orchestrated Amina's capture by armed men believed to be members of president Assad's Baath party. He even had Amina's cousin pleading through the blog for international help to find out what had happened.

The capture triggered widely reported news internationally with other bloggers and activists launching an online campaign to secure Amina's release.

I am sure MacMaster did not intend all this to happen, he DID lose his nerve to lead people on any further and confessed to his 'deception' shortly afterwards.

Truth be told, his real intention might have been to use the blog to further the uprising in Syria and felt that a Syrian woman's voice (and that too of a lesbian) would be heard louder and be more credible across the western world.

In his defence, he was right. The western media and the sexual rights activists were tuned in to Amina's every word.

In my opinion the anger that surrounds this man now after his revelation is more because he fooled people who are so full of themselves – so much so that they would have probably preferred that Amina was jailed and tortured and her body strewn on the roadside so that her corpse could be used as a symbol of Syrian oppression by one camp and sexual oppression by the other.

Having said that I do not exactly support MacMaster's approach only because he has taken the focus off the main story – all Amina's entries, regardless of how close to the actual ground level experiences they might have been, have been discarded and completely silenced. What's more any potential threats from real bloggers on the scene in Syria have probably been defused in a stroke. President Assad could not have hoped for a better reaction.

Clearly MacMaster could have 'looked' into the Syrian tension but not 'touched' it the way he had. But having done so, in my opinion he has proven that while some truths are ugly, they do not always originate from Middle East and African despots.

Blind hypocrisy is also a western media and 'do-gooder' activist's addiction too.

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There were of course skeptics as well, who were more interested in her views than her true identity. Alia Ibrahim of Al Arabia News, who wrote about Amina before her true identity was uncovered, suggested that Amina might have been a cover name in her piece titled 'Correspondent’s Outtakes: Where is Amina? Who is Amina? Why Amina?' She justified pseudonyms by cyber activists to protect themselves and remain free to propagate their views.

Ibrahim kept finding the “Gay Girl in Damascus” site a few months back when she was researching Arab bloggers. She points out that “A Foreign Policy article entitled “Here’s your reading list, Mr. President” picked her among top Arab Blogs that President Barrack Obama should keep an eye on. She was also often quoted and referred to by international media outlets for her coverage of the demonstrations in Syria.”

Following is an excerpt from her article:

”As I started reading her entries, it became obvious to me that Amina’s blog, and her courage weren’t as much about her sexual orientation as they were about her strong political views.
”I was impressed by her writing and touched by her story which flew like a novel rich with inspiring characters: a “heroic” Syrian father, an American mother, glorious ancestry, uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors all roving across the times around the charming houses of a Jasmin smelling Damascus…



“By narrating what’s allegedly the story of her family, Amina retold Syria’s modern history exposing the hypocrisy and the atrocities of a brutal Baath regime. 



“Her blogs are well researched and are often accompanied by images, videos and sharp commentaries.



Whoever she really is, Amina has found a way to tell the world the story of deserted Quneitera and the Hama massacre and why she is confident what is happening in Syria now, is a people’s quest for freedom, and not the seed of a sectarian war.



“Her name may very well be fake and the title “Gay Girl in Damascus” may have been chosen to attract, but behind Amina there is also a real writer whose sensitivity to and knowledge of the places imply is a young Syrian who really knows the story, and who has used all her skills to get the attention of the widest audience possible, which she undoubtedly managed to.



“For the sake of the writer, who I hope is somewhere safe and sound, I hope Amina is an invention.



“Still then, cynical hoax? 

I don’t think so. I prefer virtual heroine.”

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Now that it is found that Amina is not a Syrian woman, is her reports any less poignant? Who can you trust?