The Panda Bear on the Lure of Helping Foreign Countries

The Panda Bear wants to apologize to her readers.   She finds it hard to stick to her schedule of blog topics.   The Panda Bear believes that  blog entries should be short and that when people are reading blogs they generally want limited pieces of information.   Therefore, she needs to break up her longer topics.   However, during the course of the week new events come up that the Panda Bear wishes to discuss on her blog.   Therefore, she has been obliged to postpone further examination of some topics.   However, the Panda Bear does plan to continue to post about school bullying and the pleasures(ahem!!) of home chores.   She also plans to start doing short pieces of creative writing.

However, today the Panda Bear wishes to discuss her hypothesis that it is very easy for US presidents to get seduced into the helping foreign countries and/or conducting foreign wars that are not in the best interests for the US.   Political theorists from the Ancient Greeks to the moderns often has stated that heads of government like to go to war because it can distract the population from problems at home.   The Panda Bear is not accusing Obama deliberately increasing the US war effort to distract Americans from domestic issues but he may on some unconscious level feel that is easier to deal with the Middle East than the bad US economy(Also, the Panda Bear remembers the economic  theory that was popular in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties that war was good for the economy).

Actually, the Panda Bear thinks when historians examine the motivations of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson for the Vietnam War, George Bush for the nation building in Iraq and Obama for expanding military assistance to  Libya, they might find them to be benevolent even if they were misguided and of questionable value to US interests.   The Panda Bear believes that US presidents find something appealing  and alluring in helping foreign countries.

This behavior is most notable in foreign aid much of which gets stolen.   Herbert Hoover was known as being an outstanding humanitarian abroad but indifferent to Americans suffering during the depression.   What made Herbert Hoover famous was that before he was president, he helped Russians who were starving after the Russian revolution.   However, he appears to have been indifferent to helping Americans who were hungry because of the Great Depression.   The Panda Bear remembers a similar double under George H. Bush.  George H. Bush was all for helping starving Somalis but he also believed it hurt the US fiscally to help Americans hurt by the 1992 recession.

The Panda Bear believes that recent presidents of both political parties have recently been guilty of this double standard-it is good to help foreign countries but too difficult to help Americans in need.   Why is there the discrepancy?   One reason is that helping foreigners does not threaten the American  internal power structure.   When  US leaders help foreign countries in need, the Panda Bear believes that leaders feel like benevolent monarchs helping  the highly appreciative populace, while helping people in their own country means stepping on the toes of some its citizenry.

Therefore, the Panda Bear thinks that common people need to be wary when their leaders want to help foreign countries.   She thinks leaders can easily can get a certain high from help foreign countries that they don't from helping their own people.

The Panda Bear on Whitey Bulger and Catherine Greig

As many people know the FBI's most wanted man who was local to Boston.   He was caught last week after being on the run for sixteen years.  They found him with the girlfriend he ran away with Catherine Greig.

What amazes the Panda Bear is that they are still together after sixteen years.   Neither of them seem to be stable in terms of relationships yet they remained together.    While the news has been focusing on Whitey Bulger, the Panda Bear is curious about Catherine Greig.  What is it like to live in a two bedroom apartment with a man who has killed so many people?   The Panda Bear and her husband live in a small apartment and it is very easy to get on each other's nerves-at least Mr. Panda does not have a history of violence.  

The Panda Bear realizes that many women are attracted to "bad men" because they find them exciting.     However, to be attracted to a man who is known to be one of the most violent men in the country seems extreme.   Many people, including the Panda Bear are disappointed that Catherine Greig  right now will only be charged at aiding a fugitive which has a maximum jail sentence of five years.  

Many of the times one  thinks of both of mob girlfriends and people who aid fugitives of being victims of circumstance and not having a full knowledge of the mobsters crime.  This does not seem to be true of Catherine Grieg.   She appears to have had full knowledge of Whitey's crime and was glad to run away with him.   She aided a fugitive from murder consistently for over sixteen years.    Perhaps, if Whitey Bulger committed any crimes while he in hiding , she can be charged for being an accessory to his crimes.

If she has the courage to tell the truth, Catherine Greig's story might be interesting one.

The Panda Bear on the War and Poor Leadership

The Panda Bear apologizes to her readers. She said she would deal with bullying on today's post. However, her heart is not into writing about bullying this week.

The Panda Bear is very distressed at the level of US involvement in Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. She is tired of hearing of US soldiers getting hurt and killed and of US families suffering because of these wars. She read this interesting post on www.thenation.com by John Nichols where he states:
"Indeed, even by the most optimistic timeline proposed by Obama, the US occupation force will at the end of Obama’s first term be much larger than the US force that was there when Bush and Cheney left the White House in 2009."

Some Change!!!! The Panda Bear used joke when Obama ran and he promised change, that change could be for the worse. In terms of the quest for peace the Panda Bear turned out to be correct.  . The US just seems to be getting involved in more and more wars. Whatever happened to the idea that using war to solve the world's problems should only be done as the very last resort?

Also the Panda Bear does not like that Obama does not seem to be making any personal sacrifices as he pushes more conflict She is tired of hearing about Obama playing golf while he increases the US war effort.

However, Obama is not the only leader in the US who seems not to believe in leading by example. The Panda Bear hears of "experts" who tell others to take extreme measures to stop climate change while living in big houses and take private planes (in other words they waste lots of energy).   The Panda Bear is tired of hearing of CEOs who make large salaries and big bonuses regardless of whether the company succeeds or fails.  The Panda Bear is tired of hearing of heads of nonprofits that are supposed to be helping poor people who get millions of dollars in bonuses while the organization needs money to help its clients (an example of this would be Elaine Ullian of Boston Medical Center-the Panda Bear thinks she should have set an example by donating some of her bonus money to people who needed health care).  

The Panda Bear is anxious for leaders who practice what they preach and are willing to make sacrifices for their ideas.

The Panda Bear on Emotional Intelligience

The Panda Bear just wanted to share this excellent article on emotional intelligence.   Too often, in this busy world of ours,  people skills and simple courtesy are often ignored.   The Panda Bear believes that ignoring people's feelings and emotions while saving some initial effort is costly in the long run.  

As the Panda Bear observed in a previous post, humans like to think of themselves as being machines and totally rational.  However, really human being are highly intelligent animals and be driven to a large extent by instinct and emotion.

The Panda Bear will explore more on this topics in later posts.