Spring blues

In many of my conversations this last week with various people, we’ve discussed hope vs despair, optimism vs pessimism in today’s crazy world. Call me a pessimist, but I’m finding it harder and harder to have cause for hope at the moment. Human rights laws are being violated worldwide, with the US leading by bad example with the brazen illegality of Guantanamo and Abu Graib. Blair may call them anomalies, but most people recognize them for what they are, illegal holding camps for kidnapped prisoners held indefinitely outside of any legal process. Despite millions marching worldwide against a war in Iraq which the UN would not support, the US government went ahead and bombed the country anyway, as it did Afghanistan, and as looks increasingly likely, to do in Iran. The US continues its devastating re-shaping of the Middle East, supported by the British government and the apathy of the mainstream media. The hypocrisy, lies and continued disregard for the environment, treaties on nuclear disarmament, the majority world, human rights and world peace, are endemic in the US regime. On the plus side, the peace movement has never been so popular, with the internet providing education through alternative news media.

I’ve been feeling the need for some positive input and found it in an interview with the ever inspiring Tony Benn :

“For the first time in human history, the human race has the capacity to destroy itself with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, but also for the first time in human history, we have the technology and the knowledge to solve the problems of the human race, and a fraction of the cost of the war in Iraq would have given everyone in Africa with AIDS free drugs. That is the choice..”

“I spoke in Trafalgar Square, a big center in London, in support of a very well known terrorist in 1964, and I was denounced in the tabloids. The next time I met him, he had a Nobel Peace Prize; it was the president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, and if you look at history, I mean, how did the environmental movement become important? How did the third world movement become? Because people went on working at it.”