President Ahmadinejad of Iran is currently visiting President Chavez of Venezuela. They're doing the usual diplomatic stuff, signing treaties and stuff. It really is a bizarre combination. Now Venezuela and Cuba I can understand, they're both Latin American countries with an antipathy towards the USA. But Venezuela and Iran? Apart from being major oil producers, and opposed to US imperialism, what do they have in common? *
The political set-ups of the new millennium are evolving. The Country as a unit of administration is slowly moving towards the Continental Region as a political/economic structure. China is the oldest by far, followed by Russia, India and the USA. Europe is coalescing fast. Pan-Islamiyya - the uniting of all the countries of the crescent - is as yet a far off dream, but is feasible, given the common languages and religion. A unified Latin America is even more feasible, given the dominance of Spanish (except in Brazil**)
Which brings us back to these two leaders. Imagine the strength of a Pan-Islamiyya/Pan-Latina alliance compared to the present Europe/USA alliance. Serious competition I think.
Anyway, in the wake of the Pope's verbal gaffe, these two leaders at least, are showing that it is possible for Muslims and Catholics to overcome the religious divide and work together. This can only be a good thing, right?
*We may have the beginnings of a Monty Python sketch here.
**But Portuguese is easily translated. Just change all the -cion suffixes to -cao***
***I haven't worked out how to put a squiggle**** over the o. Just pretend it's there.
****The squiggle probably has a name. I can't think of it at the moment.
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2 comments:
Your squiggle's name is tilde:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde
To type an õ just keep the Alt key pressed and type 0245 using the numerical keypad.
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/021806.htm
Tilde! Of course! I knew that I knew it, but I couldn't remember it. I had the word sedilla in my brain, and I know that's the little upside down question mark under a french c to indicate it's pronounced 's'. The problem is, it's difficult to think of another word when you're stuck on another.
Muchas gracias Señor Fridge. (See? I got an 'ñ' by pressing Alt 0241!)
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