Powerful face few checks
Idon’t know exactly what happened to Jamal Khashoggi and neither do you. The Turks seem to know, but I don’t trust the Turkish president. Turkey is nominally a democracy but President Erdogan is a tyrant in the making. He imprisons political enemies. He seeks to extend his own powers. He appeals to crude religious patriotism. The world has seen his type a thousand times and continues to see it: Putin, Xi, Maduro and a hundred others, bastards all, and thriving now as they have always thrived.
The people who definitely know what happened to Mr Khashoggi are the Saudis. They know because they killed him. But for two weeks they denied it. They lied more obviously than any schoolboy.
In the end they had to admit it, but they’ve now said he died in a brawl. It’s another obvious lie. By the time this column is published they will have told more lies. It’s what dictatorships do.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a theocracy. There’s nothing new in that. Kings and priests have held hands throughout history.
The House of Saud espouses a puritan form of Islam. There’s no being gay in Saudi Arabia, nor is there any drinking. Unless of course you are a royal – and there are thousands of royals. If you are interested you might look up the story of the Saudi princeling who beat his gay sex slave to death in a London hotel while drinking champagne cocktails.
Mr Khashoggi had criticised the Saudi royal family, which is why they had him killed. Again it’s what dictatorships do. Stalin silenced his enemies, Putin, Xi and Kim Jong Un silence theirs, and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia has now silenced one of his.
Power brings wealth and impunity, which is why people like it. The powerful get away with everything up to and including theft and murder. The poor get away with nothing.
Shakespeare summed it up 400 years ago:
Plate sin with gold
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks. Arm it in rags a pygmy’s straw doth pierce it. (King Lear, Act 4)
The world hasn’t changed much since then. But it has changed a bit. There are a few places now where the poor and the powerless can hope to get justice. Places where you cannot just kill a journalist. You and I live in one.
Such places are far from perfect but they are a huge advance on any dictatorship. Together they form what is known as the free world. The leader of the free world is the United States, and the leader of the United States is Trump. Yet Trump instinctively and invariably sides with the thieves, the liars and the murderers.
As the parent, I know I have to be careful to avoid steering my children too far down a path that is one that I want for them, rather than their own.
His first act when Mr Khashoggi’s death became undeniable was to send an emissary to, where else, Saudi Arabia. He encouraged the Saudis to investigate a crime for which they are the obvious and only suspect. He floated the idea of ‘rogue killers’. If Congress doesn’t stop him, and I doubt it will, Trump will let the crown prince of Saudi Arabia get away with murder.
And that, in the end, is why Trump is so vile, so dangerous, such a cancer on the world. It isn’t his lying or his limitless vanity or his hair. It’s that he’s a moral throwback. He reverses one of the few steps forward our species has taken.
To side with Trump is to favour money over justice, the oppressor over the oppressed, the bully over the victim and the lie over the truth.
To side with Trump is to get into bed with tyranny.
When you are a sport-mad, competitive family, spawned from sport-mad families, the pressure to create tiny humans who also carry the sport gene is immense. From the moment the pregnancy test came up positive, there were dreams of Saturdays spent shivering on the sideline of whatever winter sports our kids decided to take up. We saw Olympic medals, world championships, and bookcases full of medals, ribbons and trophies.
It’s not that winning is everything – it isn’t, of course – but success through sport can mean so much more in living a healthy life, showing determination and passion, meeting friends and having fun.
We love sport, so as parents it’s our hope that our kids will also share our passion.
As they have grown into toddlers and preschoolers, we have tried to include them in our sport watching – ‘‘Do a haka for Pop on video, kids’’ – and worked on their ball catching and learning to take turns.
At daycare they have special visitors come and teach them certain sporting skills and again they’re exposed to the world of team sport and competition; the joy of nailing something, the sadness at coming last – it’s all part of it.
So last week the little ones had their first taste of athletics through the Palmerston North Athletic and Harriers Club based at Massey University. The programme – Run, Jump, Throw – caters to tiny tots and gives them their first taste of the track.
When I picked them up from care, their teachers were excited for them as they had been raving about how they were ‘‘going to athletics’’ in the afternoon. When I quizzed them on what athletics actually was, blank faces stared back.
It was great to see they had such enthusiasm, even if they had no idea what it was for.
My son is a little pocket rocket, small in stature but lightning fast, so as we were waiting for the event to start, he took off around the 400-metre track by himself, completing the loop and barely stopping to catch his breath on the way.
I likened him to a Forrest Gump with a running action not dissimilar to Mr Bean. Through the laughter of watching his adventure, I damn near teared up crying at the same time.
I don’t know why but seeing the kids take on these new activities makes me all emotional. You get to see them in a new light and I was surprised to see how differently they reacted to all the different activities.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to see your offspring compete on a national stage, in anything for that matter, not just sport.
The tears almost made their return when I witnessed my almost 3-year-old girl knocking hurdles over one after the other but having a great time. I’ll be a mess once her skills get to a level where she can clear them and the sense of achievement she’ll feel.
But back to the very novice runners: Due to the nature of basically anything involving little ones, the scene was chaotic. There were kids of all sizes running around, eager to take part in the hurdling, running races and practise shot put.
As you can imagine, there were plenty of stressed-looking parents stumbling around in their 9-to-5 work clothes trying to rein their kids in.
It’s a tough ask when many of the kids are scratchy and hangry after a long day, but overall I think they enjoyed themselves, so we’ll be back for as long as they’re having fun and asking to go.
Next up will be all the other extra-curricular activities the kids – and OK, us as parents – want to get involved in … swimming, dance classes, winter sports.
As the parent, I know I have to be careful to avoid steering my children too far down a path that is one that I want for them, rather than their own.
I absolutely detest watching netball, always have, and played one season of it before my dad rightly suggested I should go back to soccer.
I could probably bet a lazy $10 that my girl will want to play netball, and I know a bit of me on the inside will wish she had chosen something I was more interested in. But that pretty much sums up parenthood in a lot of ways – you can only do so much and, at the end of the day, these little creatures will do what pleases them.
And no matter what, I will always be there on the sidelines with my cut oranges and shouty ‘‘encouraging’’ mum voice.