"Unlimited Kindness" ~ The Best of Humanity...

Ben Macintyre in The Times today writes about John Silbermann, a Jewish boy saved 70 years ago by a British operation called Kindertransport. In the summer of 1939, Silbermann...

"Stepped on a train at a Berlin railway station, waved goodbye to the parents he would never see again and headed for Britain."

Wingnut Nazis inflamed fellow Germans into Kristallnacht, the rampant destruction of Jewish storefronts and assets. Following this, the British decided to admit child refugees. Says Silbermann...

"To its eternal credit the British Government was the only one in the entire world that said "Right we have got to do something about this."

Silbermann and some 10,000 fellow children were saved. But the Nazi Germans would go on to slaughter 1.5 million Jewish children. And more. Silbermann today characterizes his own experience in Britain...

"All I remember is a feeling of unlimited kindness..."

That's awe-inspiring.

But what are we -- humanity today -- doing for the equivalent children worldwide? Whether those kids are in Sudan, or Haiti, or Bangladesh, or the Congo, or they are the kids of in-migrants, or are the poor kids of inner-city USA? These children are no less valuable than young Silbermann and his peers.

This is what kills me about the pograms on the US southern border with Mexico. And the building of despicable barriers between peoples. The US stole the land from the Mexicans and now self-righteous Americans kick out the rightful owners of the land, all of them legitimate Mexican migrants.

Helping Hand for Zimbabwe ~ a Post-Dictator Prosperity Package

The FT today had an excellent comment piece on transforming Zimbabwe entitled A rescue package for the stricken of Zimbabwe written by Michael Holman, the former Financial Times Africa editor. He writes...

If you lack a stick, then use a carrot. As Zimbabweans prepare for a final heave, their bravery needs to be supplemented by hope: hope that stems from evidence that their future will be marked by a rapid improvement in their wretched circumstances.

And Holman then recommends a package of international and humanitarian commitments in the agricultural, tourism, health, transport, education, wildlife, and other key sectors, all poised for execution and delivery to post-dictatorial Zimbabwe. Holman concludes...

This package of measures would be published and made available to every Zimbabwean, telling them what the future holds. Who better to co-ordinate the programme than the Commonwealth...

An excellent idea and one which could be strategically replicated to bring the Helping Hand of Prosperity to other troubled zones, including potentially Burma, North Korea, some of the 'stans, and elsewhere in Africa as well.

From Sustainability to Vitality

Much of my personal historical distaste for the term Sustainability is due to both its all-encompassing nebulousness -- meaning it's been co-opted and used by competing groups to mean opposing things -- as well as its lack of aspiration or glory -- as if in order to be sustainable, we must in some way stagnate and also reign in goals, growth, and other consequences of human achievement.

A much better aspirational word is Vitality.

Regional Economic & Political Blocs

Regional aggregations of nations are one progressive step towards intra-regional free trade, economic cooperation, common currencies, etc...