Monthly Archives: October 2007

Five-time Olympic medal winner, Marion Jones, did the Right thing yesterday.  She pleaded guilty to using performance enhancing drugs in her career as one of the fastest people on Earth.  Her press conference was hard to watch, quite moving actually, as she took responsibility for her actions.

Then there is Senator Larry Craig.  In a press conference earlier this week, he’s come out and said that he’s not resigning and will continue to serve the people Idaho, despite the controversy regarding disorderly conduct in a washroom in the Minneapolis airport.  Larry did the Wrong thing.

Right and Wrong are considered to be absolutes, but they truly are not.  Essentially, we are looking at situational ethics.  Depending on the context, certain actions may be wrong in one context, but right in another context.  Take for instance, lying, the telling of falsehoods.  We are taught from a very early age that we should always tell the truth. 

Did someone ask you today, "How are you?" Did your respond with "Fine, thanks and you?"  Unless your life is utterly fine, all the time, you are a liar. 

Using the judge of absolutes, you should have replied:  "I’m not too good.  My hips hurt, I’ve got an ingrown hair on my shoulderblade.  My kids are lazy, irresponsible bastards.  The boss is a thieving pig who works me like a pit pony. I want to run away to a small tropical island and stay drunk for six weeks while engaging in lewd behavior with a troupe of acrobats.  And I don’t eat enough fibre, so my arse is burning this morning.  Aside from that, Fine, thanks and you?"  Now, that would be telling the truth.  Society would grind to a halt, but it is the Truth (absolute version) 

Killing someone is Wrong, an agreed-upon absolute.  It would make the workday fraught if we could kill without social sanction.  Traffic jams would be a thing of the past, but then there would be gunplay in the local supermarket over the mangoes.  Schools would be battle zones, or, more correctly, more of a battle zone than they are today.  As for organized sports?  Being a spectator would mean being heavily armed, even at Junior Girl’s League Soccer games.

In a military context, killing someone who it trying to kill you, is Right.  Not just Right, but God-Approved, Right.  The Allies in WWII believed that God was on their side.  The German Heer featured a belt-buckle with the initials IHR (Im Himmel Reich) which loosely translates as "God is on the side of the Reich".  It would seem that God was playing the spread, but in either case, killing was accepted as Right, in that context of Global war.  

Which means that what is Right and Wrong are not absolutes. They’re like Pornography or Good Modern Art:  We know it when we see it.  This is not a satisfactory answer either.

I’m proposing an alternative:  Doing the Honourable Thing. 

Marion Jones did the Honourable Thing.  She apologized for lying.  She took responsibility for hurting and affecting a large number of people.  She asked for eventual forgiveness.  She admitted that she screwed up and did something dishonourable.

Larry Craig did the Dishonourable Thing.  He wedged the word "intend" into his resignation so he could have a self-serving escape hatch that he has now wriggled through, staying on as the Senator from Idaho.  Even his own party has said "Larry, go away" but Larry is going to stay.

Honour is a terribly intangible thing that isn’t readily communicated, taught, or performed.  A component of honourable is putting others ahead of yourself. 

If you see someone trying to carry five bags of groceries and wrangling two dogs at the same time, it would be honourable to help them.  Or letting someone go ahead of you in line when they only have a can of coffee to buy and you have enough to fill two shopping carts. 

On a larger scale, like our provincial election here in Ontario, saying that you believe in funding for all religious schools one day, then dumping that platform like a full diaper, when the public says "No damn way!" the next day, is dishonourable.  So is saying "No New Taxes" beforehand, then hosing the taxpayer a few months after the election, is also dishonourable.  

Had the Premier said:  "The Provincial Treasury is a mess.  We had no idea how bad when we promised no new taxes.  This sucks, but we have to put in a new tax, otherwise we’re out of money in six weeks.  I’m sorry to break my promise, but we’ve got no choice, except closing all hospitals and doctor’s offices for the whole summer.  This is what we’ve got to do." 

If Dalton McGuinty (the Premier at the time) actually said something as simple as A New Tax, or No Health Care, then the voters would be angry, but at least understanding.  Admitting you are wrong, then fixing it, is honourable.

Can we do honourable things?  Honourable is very personal.  Marion Jones, by many measures did several dishonourable things, but did one honorable thing that might well make up for all the others.

Larry Craig did several dishonourable things, and continues to wriggle, being dishonourable still.  The honourable thing would be to resign as he knows he has been dishonourable and makes no apologies for it.  He should at least suspend his membership in the Senate until his trial comes up and the appeal gets decided:  That would be somewhat honourable.

As for me: I try to do at least one honourable thing a day.  Somedays I succeed, other days I fail.  Yesterday I bought an Ovarian Cancer leaf, one of those $1 donation things that some stores do.  You write you name on it and they glue it up in the store window to show how many customers have donated. 

I wrote "For Those Who Can’t" on mine and handed it back to the cashier.  I got hit with a half-dozen tears that shot straight out of her eyes.  Which wasn’t what I was expecting.  

I didn’t write that to upset someone, or to grandstand.  Not everybody can afford the $1, or they’ve passed on and I’m doing it for them.  I don’t need to see my name in the window of a drug store on some cardboard leaf to feel like I’m a good person.   

Now, the question:  Was that honourable?  Technically, it made someone cry, which is not a positive reaction or emotion.  Donating $1 to Ovarian Cancer is a positive thing.  Signing it the way I did; I don’t know.  

Honour is something you keep inside, but is also judged very quickly by others.  I have no answer.

Rebranding is something that big businesses do when they’re caught with their fingers in something they shouldn’t be touching.  For example, Phillip Morris Inc.  You and I know it as makers of cigarettes.  Oh no!  It is a division of Altiris Inc. (which also owned Kraft Foods at one time) and has a piece of SABMiller, who makes beer.  Lots of Beer.  And cigarettes.  Which, if you think about it, is a natural pairing.  

The name, Altiris, doesn’t actually tell you this.  General Motors, you get an inkling of what the heck they do.  Altiris is a made up, pleasant combination, of vowels and consonants.

Countries also rebrand.  Yugoslavia was a rebranding of some or all of Serbia, Croatia, Slavonia, Vojvodina, Slovenia, Carniola, Dalmatia, Styria, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina.  A couple of the areas were not much bigger than your living room and had a full monarchy.  Rebranding them made sense.

Ceylon rebranded in 1972.  You know it as Sri Lanka.  What used to be on the map as the Belgian Congo, changed its handle to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960

Then there is Burma.  Having achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1948 they have changed the business cards a few times:  Union of Burma, Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma, back to Union of Burma then in 1989 settled on Union of Myanmar.

Stuck in between Bangladesh, India, China, Tibet, Thailand and Laos, Burma has been a bit of everyone and everything at various times.  The one person you might know from Burma was a former Secretary-General of the United Nations, U Thant.

Politically, the joint has been a mess.  Democracy went out the window in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup d’etat and wobbled over in the direction of the Burmese Way to Socialism.  By 1988 the economy had gone into the porcelain facility and pro-democracy forces staged a bit of an uprising.  This got smacked down hard by General Saw Maung who formed another military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, declared martial law and managed to slaughter a few hundred pro-democracy protestors.

They rebranded as Myanmar in 1989.

By 1990, the government held free elections and, oddly enough, nobody wanted the military junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), as their government.  They voted for the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who scored 392 out of 489 seats.  The SLORC, said "No effing way is that going to happen!" and annulled the election.

The SLORC, rebranded in 1997 as the State Peace and Development Council, (SPDC) hoped that nobody would notice, or count the bodies.  Now, as the SPDC, the current head of Burma is Senior General Than Shwe, who is Chairman of the SPDC. 

According Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the military junta has been doing what they always do:  Terrorize the population.  They use the classic tools:  Forced labour, human trafficking, child labour, systematic rapes by the military, taking women as sex slaves and the usual shoot anyone else who complains, then kill their families.

Burma is also known as being very insular.   Not because the people are insular; the military junta wants and is controlling everything in and out.  The Internet is very closely monitored (much like China) and looking at the ‘wrong’ pages or sites can get your ass beat by the police, if you’re lucky, or you simply disappear, if you’re unlucky. 

Foreign journalists invited in?  Only if they agree to be shot and killed on arrival then have their dismembered bodies buried in an unmarked shallow grave in the jungle.  Even FOXNews won’t go for that one, so there is a shortage of independent data on Burma.    

Today, the Daily Mail is reporting that there might be thousands of bodies of Buddhist monks that have been tossed in the jungle.  Military police have raided several monasteries and invited the monks to go for a truck ride that doesn’t end well for the monks.  Democracy protestors who were, with the monks, agitating for open elections, have also been taken for one-way rides.

According to the Daily Mail, a former Intelligence Officer with the military junta, who dropped tools and ran for the border with Thailand yesterday, several hundred monks and several thousand protestors have disappeared.  20,000 military troops have been called out to ‘prevent demonstrations’ and keep order. 

One report has several hundred monks kept in a sports stadium and  university dorm rooms, under lock and key.  Soldiers take them out for beatings, killings, then a bonfire.  Not a good bonfire.

Which brings us back to rebranding.  The name Myanmar is now tarnished as an insane military junta, where murder by the military is a day at the office.  Beating Buddhist monks until the rivers run red with blood and bodies, is considered just Another Manic Monday.  What name should Myanmar choose next? 

I’m taking my cue from the CSI television series.  As best I can tell, there is a CSI:Someplace for every major city in the US and probably spinoffs in Europe too. However, Baltimore has avoided the CSI: handle.  

I respectfully suggest that the military junta rename their savage little corner of southeast Asia, as Baltimore.  I’m not going to call it Myanmar.  Hell on Earth is more like it.