Some laws of physics become proverbs to interpret human behaviour. Newton’s “every action has an equal…”, or “water seeks its own level”, for instance. A popular, but less quoted law is the second law of thermodynamics, or the “Law of Entropy”. In essence it states that all physical systems tend to achieve a state of maximum randomness or disorderliness. They remain so in that state till the change in disorder comes by the application or withdrawal of an externally applied “force” or “energy”. A simple example would be the heat and the molecular randomness in a glass of water. It will remain so till it is heated or boiled into steam, or cooled to freeze into ice. Humanity, shows similar periods of quietude followed by sudden upheavals due to seen or unseen forces that build up over time. Over the last century, these upheavals seem to have come between 40- and 60-year intervals, if one was to take World War I as the first in this span.
The world today seems to have attained what man dreamt for ages – “Equality”. Only it is a more equitable distribution of disorder than order. Less monarchs, but more revolutions, few generals but outnumbering mutinies, rich food but relentless breeding, more money but less purchasing power, expansive democracies but weighty coalitions, emerging religiosities but crippling dogmatism, waning mega-terrorism but mushrooming medium terror outfits, unimaginable connectivity but countless spam, development projects but unmentionable scams. The list is endless.
If one was to pick up the thread from the tragic event at the beginning of the millennium, the Iraq war was the next. Much has happened since. The execution of a despotic ruler, but now a country without a stable system of governance. The hunt of the al-Qaida chief went on long enough with elimination and at times revival of terrorist groups. Surprisingly, the sudden demise of the fugitive terrorist after a military operation has not so much opened the question of who is likely to replace him. It has given rise to livid speculation regarding who should lead the intelligence agencies, and give lead to combat operations now onwards. There is a crack in the loyalties of a few allies, even as military, political, diplomatic and fundamental mindsets have begun to screen each other with more suspicion than ever before.
The revolutions sweeping northern Africa and spreading into mieast and partly even to this country add to the change in order. Where it has struck roots, alternative forms of governments are difficult to imagine in the near future. A particular form of government is empowered not so much because it is decidedly the best in ideology. It takes its place due to a particular mindset of the people who so decide. History has shown, that no matter what people call their form of government, it finally is their own recipe with an acceptable name.
Economic morphosis seems to go pari-pasu. The superpower went for a self-bailout and within a year one has seen the economic bailout of three European nations. What are setbacks to the world’s second largest economy due to natural disasters is not directly a derivative of this discussion, but there may be afterthoughts of proliferation of nuclear plants, even if the purpose is purely civil. India’s own discovery of an unprecedented lack of governance and surfeit of graft, which seems to be quite acceptable is startling no less, considering the cultural ideology that gave birth to the nation.
In the end, the few individuals that are attributed to be pivotal to the present change in order could well have been any other. It is a matter of perception to call some “villains” and others “heroes”. In the eternal script these are all “characters”. The spreading “disorder” in which societies, governments and eventually humanity exists appears to be the “order” of the day. Everyone has a stake, either by omission or commission.
The change comes within half a century of what the world concluded was an end of “the forces of evil”. Was there a “fly in the ointment”, or a seeming state of control was visualized, that was not to be or was subject to the “entropy” of all human governing systems, that include belief, dogma, even religious interpretations to an extent. The present turmoil is quite apart from the missions of Lincoln, the Mahatma, King and Mandela. We are in a tower of Babel where the guns do the talking. Where one misunderstanding is answered by creating another more empowering, and where confusion is settled by keeping it confounded.
This one is the periodic drama that humanity undergoes from time to time. It has happened in different scripts in the past. Mythology is full of such stuff. The only scare is that it has perpetrated to the level of every individual life on the planet. It is affecting every mindset. Everyone seems to know, and everyone seems to let it go. The constancy of the right and the wrong is no longer for us to ponder. What matters is what really matters!
Sure, from the present peak one can only see a de-escalation of the disorder. Meaningful, though more “watchful” relationships may emerge between the nations and people. Humanity may just learn that to be able to see each other’s point, one may finally have to draw a line.A rather popular teacher in college would often repeat the story of the ten blind men groping an elephant. I always wondered if there was one who never gave his version, but hurried to the nearest pond and vigorously washed his hands several times. He had a better idea about the systems that run an elephant!
Malika Saada Saar has spent her entire life around strong women.
When she was 12, her mother went back to college. By the time Malika was 15, her mother had graduated with a degree in social work.”We’d go to the library together and study,” Malika said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “I witnessed her struggle to stay in school as a single mother and woman in her later years. It wasn’t easy.”
But her grandmother was the “rock of her existence,” Malika said, and thanks to her the family was able to live a somewhat stable life considering the circumstances.
Her mother’s determination and her grandmother’s commitment to the lives of others inspired Malika from an early age. That inspiration has paid off — not just for Malika, but for women across in the U.S. Since the Rebecca Project a decade ago, Malika has become a leading advocate for women’s rights, fighting human trafficking and the inhumane treatment of incarcerated women and empowering girls to become strong women like her mother and grandmother.
After graduating from Brown University, Malika headed out west to Stanford to study education and got a job teaching at a high school in a wealthy suburb of San Francisco. But she quickly formed an aversion to the confinements of the public school system, which she felt unequipped to handle at the young age of 22.
“I was working at a school under court ordered desegregation,” she said, recalling how overwhelmed she felt by the situation. “They were shipping students of color in from East Palo Alto to this wealthy neighborhood in Menlo-Atherton. So all the wealthy students were white and the students of color were poor. There was no middle class. There were 16 year old kids who couldn’t read or write. What could I do with that?”
But during her time at the school, Malika developed a passion for women’s rights. “I started working with pregnant girls at the school,” she said. “There were no additional support services for them and they had nowhere else to go.”
So after graduating from Stanford, Malika moved to San Francisco, and soon forged the Family Rights and Dignity program, an initiative that focused on homeless women and families in the Bay Area. It was difficult task, she says, considering that there was only one shelter for families in all of San Francisco at the time.
“I met a lot of mothers who were at risk of losing their children to child welfare because they had to live out of their cars,” she said. “Other women were being kicked out of public housing and sleeping on the streets with their kids.”
Malika headed back to the East Coast, to Georgetown, to obtain a law degree. When she graduated, she immediately jumped right back into advocacy work. With a generous grant from the Ford Foundation, Malika founded the Rebecca Project, which stands today as one of the most powerful and influential organizations serving vulnerable women and families in the United States.
Since its inception in 2001, the Project has successfully eliminated the practice of shackling incarcerated women during childbirth in American prisons, raised tens of millions of dollars for welfare reform practices and, in the past few years, dedicated countless hours toward ending the practice of domestic human trafficking.
Almost 300,000 girls in this country, Malika says, are at risk for commercial exploitation. The average age of these girls is 12-14. “The internet has opened up a whole new arena for this. You can do things on the internet you couldn’t do if a child was just standing on a street corner. It’s less risky and more profitable to sell a child for sex than it is to sell crack or meth, and its mostly anonymous.”
Malika hopes to make this issue a political priority in the coming years despite the fact that it’s still a taboo subject (as major celebrities like Ashton Kutcher have recently tried to address, to the disdain of some critics).
“We have to talk about the comfort with which we sexualize very young girls,” Malika says. “You know, I have to work very hard to find an outfit for my own 7-year-old daughter. Thongs for tweens is a multi-million dollar industry.”
Not to be outdone, Malika and her team have created an astounding laundry list of other programs and allies under the Rebecca Project umbrella, including “Sacred Authority,” a national leadership network of parents in recovery from substance abuse and violence, and “Crossing the River,” which facilitates creative workshops for incarcerated mothers and fathers.
Check out the comprehensive Rebecca Project website for more information.
THE LIST OF UMNO BASTARDS AGAINST THE 1MALAYSIA CONCEPT BY NAJIS!! SHAME ON NAJIS TUN RAZAK!
Obviously the UMNO bastards from the Muhyddin YAshit till Kerismuddin Tun Hussein are not supporting the 1Malaysia concept but pretend to support it! They knew too well that this is all propaganda by the Isreali controlled APCO to shit the people in MAlaysia…be it Malays, Chinese, Indian as well as the brainless Iban and natives from Sabah and Sarawak!
Here is a list of the UMNO bastards!
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