WHY DID LEMMINGS DO IT?

We celebrate with great fanfare past wars, we celebrate the lives of those lost in past wars. Why oh why do we not celebrate peace? 

Having followed our political masters' instructions to top up fuel tanks and in some instances taken some to spare, thus creating a shortage in many places for a fear suggested rather than an actual fact, we have demonstrated that as a nation, masses of people are able to be manipulated. How will that knowledge and ability now be used?

A BEAUTIFUL PLACE OF PEACE

I knew my mother-in-law for a large chunk of my adult life. She was a wonderful grandmother to her grandchildren. They absolutely adored her. I have visited her grave a few times and felt at peace with her. As other members of hubby's family, who I knew, are buried nearby, I have paid my respects to them too. One whole generation has now passed on.

I knew my mother all of my life. But, because we moved large distances away from where she lived, she did not have as much opportunity to spend time with her grandchildren as they grew up. There are so many events that she would have enjoyed. I regret she is not still here to share in the developments and in the lives of her grandchildren thus far. I also regret being so far away from her place of rest. I have not been there since the rose tree was planted, very many years ago. It must be solid and mature by now. I feel a need to visit, to quietly commune with my mother in her beautiful place of peace, and I shall.

WEIRD WESTERN EXPECTATIONS FOR AFGHANISTAN'S ELECTIONS

• Who honestly and truly expected there to be a free and fair [ and democratic] vote in Afghanistan? 

• On what levels of expectation were these weird Western ideas developed and set?  

• Surely those who are there in official roles were never that naive?
  

Sure, there has been an election campaign with  two main contenders.  That's a start; quite a big one I would say.  It has got to be better than a bloody coup together with all those various insurgents vying to take power in their inimitable ways.

It's a bit like a blog space.  I can hear the current players saying, this my site, I blasted well do what I like and in my way.  If you don't like it, you know what you can do.......etc,etc, etc. However, one contender has already got the bigger stage and all the trappings that go with it.  He is intent on holding onto it. If he is doing it by peaceful means, that is, stuffing ballot boxes in his favour, or at least getting others to do so on his behalf, in my book that is preferable in the present environment of Afghanistan, than stirring up any additional malicious and dirty warring behaviours.  There are others already there, who will stir up fear soon enough.

No doubt, Dr Abdullah will hold his counsel just now, with the encouragement of the senior Western advisers. We hear of fiery meetings in back rooms to broker some globally acceptable game playing like a second round of voting. There are high stakes here, walking on egg shells would be firmer.
I am not in favour of much of what I hear and see, but I do not live in the country; I have not had, as a woman, the misfortune by accident of birth to be there.  Compromises, however unpalatable are going to have to be sought to develop a manageable 'peace'.