Too often we participate in the globalization of indifference – Pope Francis 

We first met Joe at a diplomatic reception in Kuala Lumpur. 

In 2013, Archbishop Joseph Marino became the first Papal Nuncio – the Vatican’s Ambassador – to Malaysia. It followed the establishment of diplomatic ties between Malaysia and the Holy See through a 2011 meeting between former Premier Najib Razak and Pope Benedict XVI. 

Strictly speaking, an Archbishop is addressed “Your Grace.” But Joe, an American from Alabama, waved away the formality. 

We grew to become friends and soon began attending Sunday Mass at the chapel adjoining his official residence: it isn’t every day one gets to attend Mass celebrated by an Archbishop. 

Sometime in 2015, Rebecca, then in government, said she had to go to Rome for some meetings. Having never been, I jumped at the chance.

After Mass the following Sunday, we casually informed Joe about our Rome visit. Just as casually, he asked: “Would you like to meet His Holiness?” 

Is the Pope Catholic?

Of course, we said yes but, secretly, we didn’t see it happening. Not really. 

We received the letter two weeks later. The note-paper inside was stiff and felt expensive. It also bore the crest of the Holy See and invited us to celebrate Mass with Pope Francis at the chapel of Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City. 

When Francis became Pope on March 13, 2013, his choice of housing broke with more than a century of Vatican tradition. He chose a simple guesthouse bed over the Vatican’s most luxurious address. 

The Casa Santa Marta (House of Saint Martha, the sister of the resurrected Lazarus) was the Vatican’s guesthouse, a spartan place where visiting cardinals were put up. That ended after Francis made it his home. 

We were  assigned a driver in Rome.  Gabriel was a young and excitable Roman who often ferried Malaysian government officials about in Italy.  

He refused to accept one thing, however.  Gabriel flat-out didn’t believe we’d meet His Holiness. 

He said we might be able to see him on the balcony but even that… he would shrug and wave his hands. 

Too many people wanted to meet il Papa, he explained, it was difficult…and, again, the  expressive shrug, a roll of those eloquent eyes. 

The Mass was at 7.30am so we told the doubting Gabriel to pick us up at 6.00. He argued that the Vatican wasn’t open to visitors at the time, etc. 

We insisted or rather, Becky put her foot down. OK, he grumbled, it’s your funeral (or its Italian equivalent).

Dawn was breaking over Rome as an increasingly incredulous Gabriel drove us to the Casa Santa Marta. He watched, open- mouthed, as the Swiss guards inspected our documents and checked against their list. 

They let us in.  

They saluted.

I looked back to see Gabriel dancing wildly around the car. He’d finally believed. 

The mass was in Italian but a Catholic mass is not unlike McDonalds:  the Mass is the same everywhere. In any case, a kind American sitting behind me gave us a word-for-word translation.

After that,  we – nuns, priests,  visitors, all colours, about 25 of us – were shown into a chamber where he stood to meet us.

The guy before us was so overcome, he fell to his knees before the pontiff. Francis helped him up and hugged him.

In the photo that now takes pride of place in our living room, Pope Francis is smiling gently, Rebecca is beaming while I’m grinning like an idiot. 

We talked a little, in English, inconsequential stuff and he blessed us. It felt surreal but what I felt was unmistakable. 

I had been in the presence of greatness, a palpable sweetness of character that was humbling. 

ENDS

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. – William Shakespeare, Hamlet.    

In Oxford University, there was a wall that permitted graffiti.

 “Panic Calmly” was one. But the standout was this question: “Is there intelligent life on earth?” Below,  someone had scribbled: “Yes, but I’m only visiting.”

For decades, man has wondered if we’re alone in space. To that effect, we’ve sent out prayers, hints, signals, probes, even rocket-ships to find out if there’s anyone else out there.

Our eureka moment finally arrived Monday last. A Cambridge team studying the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b detected signs of molecules that, on Earth, are only produced by living organisms.

It’s the second time chemicals associated with life were detected in the planet’s atmosphere by Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope. 

Being a nit-picking breed, however, the scientists stressed that

more data was needed for an outright Yahoo.

According to its lead researcher, Prof Nikku Madhusudhan,

“This is the strongest evidence yet that there’s possibly life out there.” 

K2-18b is over twice the size of Earth and is 700 trillion miles, or 124 light years, away. It’s a distance far beyond what any human can travel in a lifetime – barring, of course, new discoveries like “warp-speed” of Star Trek fame.  

You’d need something like that to explore the Milky Way, let alone the universe. 

K2-18b is in the Milky Way galaxy which is our home as well. English astrophysicist Brian Cox, however, believes Earth has the only  “civilisation” in the neighbourhood, the one “island of meaning” in the galaxy.

But it’s a meaning according to us, man.  Couldn’t there be some other meaning, a “universal” one if you like? That would be bringing in God, which, apparently,  clouds everything. 

“We operate as if we are it and there‘s nothing else,” asserts the God-denying Mr Cox cheerfully. No lightning bolt has struck him yet. Who’s to say he’s wrong?

Who’s to say he’s right either?

Who the hell knows? 

Scientists like Cox think we’re alone in our galaxy because of the so-called Fermi Paradox – an advanced civilisation would have surely written their presence across the skies for the “idiots”(us) to recognise by now. 

It’s a debatable point.

There are human tribes in North Sentinel Island off India, for example, who are so cut off from modern civilisation that we let them be. Similarly, there could be advanced ETs out there who are so appalled by our behaviour – wars, pollution, crime, stupidity, Trump, etc – that they give us a wide berth but watch us anyway to protect us from ourselves. 

The sheer numbers in the heavens make ETs statistically plausible. There are an estimated 100 billion stars in the Milky Way alone. So, assuming each star has at least one “Earth” in its orbit, there could be at least a billion Earths out there. 

Given those numbers, the thought that we’re the only smarties in the galaxy seems strange. 

And the Milky Way is only one galaxy. Even Cox concedes that   civilisations are likely to exist in other galaxies. 

How many galaxies there are in the universe is unknown but US astrophysicist Michio Kaku estimates there could be at least 100 billion.

And those estimates are courtesy of the James Webb telescope. Which means it’s an underestimate because the instrument reaches only so far. 

The math, the statistics almost surely suggest one thing.

They are out there, they are watching us, and ET’s phoned home many times. 

ENDS

“All the lights on the world’s economic system are flashing yellow.” – Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman

It is said that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a lot of ignorance is much worse.  

There is a guy in the White House who’s convinced, for example, that a country that’s tariffed pays it and that’s how to punish it. It seems to be the Donald’s way of conducting international trade. 

It’s why Paul Krugman, who wrote the primer on international trade, is sounding the alarm on the world economy: he thinks it may be on the brink of a 2008 or a 2020 crash. 

The difference is that the first was caused by the bursting of a US housing bubble and the second, by a global pandemic. There is no reason for a third. If it occurs, it will be entirely self-induced, a Trump-cession if you like. 

Mr Trump inherited a strong economy when he took office a mere two months ago. During the period, the Disruptor-In-Chief sent global markets reeling last Wednesday by blasting it with more tariffs than Messrs Smoot and Hawley ever envisaged. The duo were responsible for the 1930 Tariff Act which exacerbated the Great Depression. 

Having practically bombed the markets into submission, he “paused” the move, a week later, for 90 days. 

Even so, there is now a blanket 10% tariff on all exports to the US. Separately, Mr Trump singled out China as the US’ main threat: he slapped a 145% tariff on all Chinese imports. Beijing retaliated with an 84% tax of its own. 

It’s heightened risk: US bond  yields have risen making it more expensive for the US to borrow money. And it’s ushered in a period of what Mr Krugman describes as “destructive uncertainty.”  

The Economist was briefer: it was just “bonkers.”

What’s emerged in the wake of Bonkers is a New World Odour: a reek of narcissism so thick, it’s sickening. Mr Trump’s crude and self-absorbed ways were on full display post-pause. He boasted that many countries were pleading with him to renegotiate tariffs: “They are kissing my a##.” 

Just when you think he’s hit rock-bottom, he grabs a shovel and starts digging. 

Such is the distrust of the man that some people actually think the whole episode might have been staged to take financial advantage of the crashing markets. In theory, a person who knows the markets will plummet could make a fortune if he’d short-sold the market beforehand. 

Some Democrats notably Adam Schiff have vowed to find out. But so far there have been no outright accusations. 

Even so, it is no secret that Mr Trump has used his office for personal gain. It’s ranged from the petty – launching his own coins – to the heroic: Forbes, a staunchly Republican publication, estimated that his firms raked in US$2.4 billion during his first term in office. 

Mr Trump did not divest his businesses when he took office, pledging, instead, not to incur any conflicts of interest. He did.  

The man’s grifting ways were also widely reported during his last campaign against Kamala Harris but it did little to damage him. Nothing, it seemed, could faze Uncle Scam.   

His handling of the US economy could prove the turning point. 

ENDS

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese summed it up morosely: “Nowhere on earth is safe.”  

It was an accurate assessment of the wall of tariffs the US erected on Thursday, its steepest in over a century. 

But to claim it was targeted, as the administration did, was codswallop. 

Example: the Heard and McDonald Islands, off the Antarctic were also slapped with a 10% tariff. But both are uninhabited with only ice and absent-minded penguins about.

The penguins were reportedly indifferent to the measures. 

The Donald looked as pleased as a fox in a hen-house when he announced America’s “Day of Liberation” from the “pillage, plunder and looting” it had  been subjected to. To the President’s mind, the rest of the world had taken advantage of US generosity. Now there was a new sheriff in town and it was payback time.

The immediate  reaction, however, was a scramble for the exits: the dollar fell and the S&P 500 companies lost a combined US$2.4 trillion in one day. 

The President claimed victory anyway. “Everything will come back, booming,” he said before jetting off to Florida to play golf. 

“It’s going to be amazing.”  

The President hopes that the sweeping tariffs will increase government revenues so significantly he can cut taxes. It seems unlikely: the flat 10% tariff is only expected to generate around 5% of annual revenue and to expect the other additions to generate a further 95% is outlandish, so much pie in the sky. 

The White House hopes to collect US$700 billion from the tariffs. Economists  disagree. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, for example, was quoted as saying “we’d be lucky if we get US$100-200 billion a year”. 

For context, the US federal government collected US$4.92 trillion in revenue in 2024. 

The tariffs will also mean an immediate spike in consumer prices. It follows that the Federal Reserve is unlikely to cut interest rates any time soon. That will grate on The Donald who not only campaigned on a platform of lowering prices but believes that he knows more about interest rates than anyone on the planet. 

Lest we forget, he’s also claimed the same for The Bible, the economy, women, politics, making money, etc, ad-nauseam.

But we digress. Going forward, expect a Trump showdown with the Federal Reserve sooner rather than later.

Incidentally, the Fed is supposedly independent and free of politics.  Intriguingly, its current chairman, Jerome Powell, was appointed by Trump back in 2018.  

Could history repeat itself?

The last time tariffs were hiked so steeply was over a century ago. In 1930, Congressmen Smoot and Hawley sponsored a Tariff Act that carried their names into infamy. 

Old Smoot didn’t give a hoot for the rest of the world because his  tariffs ultimately collapsed world trade and ushered in 12 years of global depression. Think The Grapes of Wrath, dust covered farmers and soup kitchens. 

It was when the US went into full isolationist mode and other countries reacted to its tariffs with their own. 

The tariffs may also give no satisfaction to some consumers. The US imports all of its Viagra from Ireland. 

Pity the impotent American. By April 9, he’ll need to pay 30% more to stiffen his resolve as it were. 

He’s going to feel pretty hard done by. 

ENDS