An excerpt from War Game by Michael Foreman:
Later he saw a pale ball of gold in the misty sky. 'There's a ball in Heaven,' he thought. 'Thank God. We'll all have a game when this nightmare's over.'
At home when he had a bad dream he knew that if he opened his eyes, the bad dream would end. But here his eyes were already open.
Perhaps if he closed them, the nightmare would end.
He closed his eyes.
Hello! I've been sitting on this blog for a couple of days, but my studies have just got in the way and I haven't had time to write it - until now! Anyway, as everyone knows, this year marks the centenary of World War I. In the past I haven't thought a huge amount about this war - I have learned more about the Second World War, and I confess to not being quite as knowledgable about this one as I possibly should be. However, recently this subject has begun to interest me more and more, quite possibly because it is being talked about so much this year. I was born in 1993, and it has hit home to me that were I born 100 years earlier, I would most likely have been caught up in it. If it happened in this day and age, I would probably declare myself a conscientious objector or even an absolutist (which is a step up from being a conscientious objector, where you don't do anything to assist the war effort in any way). However, I don't think I would have grasped that concept was I alive at that time, so I think it extremely likely that I would have been among the countless young men who lost their lives at that time, which is a very sobering thought indeed.
Now, it is my belief (whether or not I am proven correct) that this year is focussing on something contrary to what I think it should be focussing on. I feel that the intentions are not to remember the sacrifices made by the people of the day, but more to justify the reasons that we went to war, therefore giving the public more faith in warfare and making it more likely that they will support the wars that we are taking part in today. There are many reasons that I feel this way, but one of the key ones is the fact that there are plans to release a new £2 coin featuring an image of the then Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, saying 'Your country needs you!' the way that he did on recruitment posters at the time. I find this pretty immoral actually. At the time, it was not known by those young men what this form of war would be like, and I believe that many of them expected it to be an adventure as such. These posters were designed to encourage and entice new blood into taking part, and as a result countless numbers lost their lives. It is not that I have any objection to a commemorative coin, but I feel that having this particular image gives the wrong impression of the war.
I saw a petition recently for an alternative WWI coin which I thought was a fantastic idea, and I wanted to share it with my readers. The idea is to have a coin which features Edith Cavell instead of Lord Kitchener. Edith Cavell was a nurse in the early stages of the war. What made her notable was that she treated everyone, regardless of which side they were on. Ultimately, she was executed for treason with regards to aiding the enemy in 1915. The person who created the petition feels Edith to be a hero, and I agree. She is certainly more worthy of a coin than Lord Kitchener. So, I have decided to share this petition with you. I really hope that this convinces someone with decision-making power to listen and commemorate someone who deserves to be remembered and recognised, rather than someone who promoted an immoral war.
The petition is here (thanks to Sioned-Mair Richards for starting it):
http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-british-treasury-issue-a-2-coin-with-the-face-of-edith-cavell-on-it
There is another thing that I would like to discuss on this blog. There is a proposed Government Bill being discussed at the moment called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). This is a free-trade agreement between the European Union and the United States, and essentially means that Europe and the United States would be run under a single market. I believe that the idea is to remove the regulatory differences between the USA and European nations. However, with this scheme there is something considerably more sinister at work. There is a mechanism involved called investor-state dispute settlement. I have been researching it over the last couple of days in preparation for writing this blog, and what it essentially entails is that corporations would be able to sue Governments for legislation which affects their profits.
Consider this for a moment. A corporation, acting in its best interests, is able to sue a Government for impacting its profits. This would essentially mean that if a corporation was making money out of harmful or dangerous activities (and as I'm sure you know, there are quite a few that do), our Government would not be able to pass any legislation to prevent them from doing that. It could cause huge sabotage to environmental campaigning in particular. When a company wants to engage in fracking, collecting of fossil fuels or the destruction of the rainforest, it would be very hard for them to be stopped without paying a huge amount of compensation. Similar things have already happened internationally, in countries such as Argentina, El Salvador and Canada. It could also severely scupper the idea of ordering cigarettes to be packaged plainly (this is not a definite plan in the UK as yet, but it is being talked about, and I for one very much hope it goes ahead.)
Personally, I feel that this is not acceptable in any way. What I like about the UK is that we have one of the least corrupt law and justice systems in the world (and I'm not suggesting that it is not corrupt at all - it is far from that as we all know that dirty things go on behind closed doors, but I think that compared to numerous other countries we have a better deal, though it still could use some vast improvements.) I find the idea of a corporation acting in its own interests having more influence than the Government, who may be acting in the interests of its people, pretty sickening actually. There was recently a Bill passed to prevent lobbying of the Government by pressure groups around election time; I disagreed strongly with that as I support numerous pressure groups and I think that anyone should be able to put the Government under pressure if they think that their policies are unfair, but there are positive elements involved with that general idea as well. Corporations should be all means be able to state their viewpoint and how they will be affected by any law, but that is only one of many things that the Government needs to take into account. If the corporations themselves actually had the right to sue for compensation as a result of legislation, that would make our legal system considerably more corrupt than it currently is. I should also note that the bodies making up the arbitration panels which examine the claims will be composed of corporate lawyers, who will be considerably more invested in the interests of the claimants than of the people.
I am strongly against this whole idea, and I would encourage anyone else to be as well. I have summarised it here as best I can; if you'd like to learn more about it, there is a mine of information on the Internet. Whilst researching the subject for this blog, I read a few really good articles by George Monbiot for the Guardian. The Wikipedia article has quite a lot of information, and obviously that can be tracked back to its sources. The one positive thing is that the final decision on this will not be made until the end of 2014, so we have a good few months to work on getting this to stop. I believe that it can happen; these things have been stopped before, such as SOPA and PIPA out in the States. This can be as well; it just requires a lot of people raising a stink. When this started, it was kept very quiet specifically so that that would not happen; the information is getting a bit more public now, so I remain cautiously optimistic. I implore readers to share this information with everyone, look it up online and just watch out for anything that you can do which would help keep our legal system fair. I will update with any petitions or other means of protest tactic that I hear about. We can stop this, but only with the right information and enough people standing up for what is right.
Just before I finish, I'd like to end this blog on a positive note. I am so happy that equal marriage has finally come through! It has been a long time coming, but the right side triumphed, and I wish anyone who is now able to marry their partner the very best in their life and their relationship. I am so satisfied when such things happen; as a political activist, you come across so many campaigns that seem entirely futile. When something like this happens, it restores my faith in humanity.
Will blog again soon! Please share with your friends if you think they'd be interested, it would be great for this blog to get a bit more known.
Sunday, 30 March 2014
Monday, 17 March 2014
The return of this blog, Moazzam Begg and the Future
Hello!
This blog has been falling by the wayside again, hasn't it? I do the best I can to keep it up to date, but numerous things seem to stand in my way. Firstly, I don't have a huge amount of time on account of my being a University student. Secondly, since I moved away from Bristol I find that coming by the information to blog about it harder to come by. Bristol is such a free-thinking city that living there, the ideas about current affairs and such like landed in my lap quite a lot of the time. In Colchester they don't so much. I still hear about things through Facebook and from various exploits of my own, but not as much as I did once. There is less going on here, or appears so anyway. I don't go to many demonstrations or political talks anymore, not because I have lost interest but because there appears to be less of those events for me to attend, so it is a lot harder. Nevertheless, I have had ideas to discuss with you, and in the coming weeks I intend to blog quite a bit more than I have been. my intentions are to write at least a couple of blogs per week, although I realise that this is rather ambitious, and with my life and also my track record on this blog, it is very possible that I won't keep up with that. But I'll try!
My main idea for this blog is a man named Moazzam Begg. Moazzam Begg is a British man, originally from Pakistan, who was once held in Guantanamo Bay for allegedly being involved with Al-Qaeda and reportedly tortured there, along with numerous other detainees. It cannot entirely be clear whether or not he was actually involved with them, but from what I have read, the evidence against him was rather circumstantial, and certain confessions he gave were given under duress. The circumstances were enough for him to be released in 2005, and since then he has vehemently maintained that he was innocent, given numerous talks on the subject and declared that the war against terrorism can and does contribute to Islamophobia. Recently, he has again been arrested on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas. He has pleaded not guilty, and faces a plea hearing on July 14, provisionally followed by a trail at the Old Bailey on October 6 of this year.
Now, there is a lot of evidence to suggest he is guilty, and a lot to suggest he is innocent, so we cannot at present be certain either way. Personally I believe him to be innocent. Why? Because I have met him. When I was at secondary school he came to give a talk at my school - prior to writing this blog I thought that it was when I was in Year 11, but whilst researching it I discovered that he went on tour to talk about his experience in early 2009, when I was in Year 10, so it could have been then - I can't be entirely sure. I cannot remember a huge amount of what he actually said, but I did find his talk to be hugely inspiring to me. It was not long after that - just under two years at most - that I started this blog and started the work that I do on social change and political activism. I think that Begg's talk played a part in me realising that there is much wrong with the world that needs to be put to rights. I can't prove his innocence, or even be entirely sure of it in my mind, and if new evidence comes to light that shows beyond doubt that he is guilty I will of course admit to having been wrong. But as it is, I consider myself to be a pretty good judge of character, and the evidence appears circumstantial enough to believe his innocence. Any further developments in this case will come to light in time.
The other thing I want to discuss in this blog is the Future. Now, in my introduction (and just then) I have used a capital F with this word, and this is because it's about the future of our species, and of the planet. This is something that I have been reading and thinking about a lot of late. There is evidence from scientists to suggest that we as a species may only survive another 100 years or so, because we continue to make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves. I have thoughts on this which I will express below, and I confess that they stem from the logic of my understanding of human nature and my own spiritual beliefs rather than the actual science behind it. I'm not an expert, and I can't blog based purely on the science because I don't even understand it if I do read it, and that's not really what this blog is for anyway. But these are my thoughts, both on the future of the planet and on the future of us as a species, because they are two entirely different things.
I'll start with the planet. I believe that Planet Earth is tougher than we think, and is able to survive most things. I think of it as being an entity - it looks out for its own survival, its inhabitants are there and are given life by it, but Earth will always do what it needs to in order to protect itself. I'm not sure that it is possible for humans to destroy the Earth. We can certainly make it so that we cannot live on the Earth, but the Earth needs to protect itself, and my personal belief is that the Earth will wipe us out before we are able to destroy it. In the past, whatever harm humankind has inflicted on itself, nature has shown that it can go one further. For example, thousands of people died in the First World War, but not as many as in the 'flu epidemic that arrived shortly afterwards. I am not religious, but I am very spiritual, and recently I have taken to talking and praying to the planet, almost as a goddess-like figure (I say 'goddess' because I very much view the Earth as being female - I learned about the idea of Mother Earth when I was a child, and I think that it represents the ideals of birth and life-giving, which are very much represented by the female form.) I'm not entirely sure that I believe in God, but I have to believe in the planet because there is no doubt that it exists, and you cannot disagree with the fact that it breathes life into all of us.
Now, the future of our species. I don't think that there is any doubt that we will become extinct at some point; that is what science says, this is what has happened to the vast, vast majority of species within history, and I don't think that there is any species that can avoid extinction indefinitely actually. There is evidence to suggest that this could happen very soon - within the next 100 years. Will this happen? Well, I don't know. There is evidence pointing one way, and evidence pointing another way. Certainly, the more harm we do to our planet, the less inhabitable it becomes, especially with rising population numbers. I actually think that the human instinct for survival is very great, and the only reason that we continue to harm Mother Earth so much is because we haven't realised how grave we are making the situation for ourselves. I think that once it becomes obvious that we need the Earth to survive and that we are threatened with extinction sooner rather than later, there may well be a huge global move to clean up the Earth and sort things out - this would require a great deal of scientific knowledge (which we have already) and motivation from the vast majority of people (which we don't currently have, and that's the problem.) I think that the Earth will ultimately heal itself - whether that happens before or after human extinction remains to be seen - I like to think before, but who knows? I'll be honest about the fact that the idea of being part of the final generation of human beings very much frightens me, probably more than most other things that have occurred in my life to date. I want to leave some kind of legacy when I die for future generations to aspire to, and it very much concerns me that there might not really be any future generations to take anything from that. But, there is a part of me that is secure in the trust that the planet will do whatever is right in order to protect itself, and in the meantime I will do whatever I can in order to assist in that. I feel that we have to assist in the preservation of our planet, because there is nothing else to live for really. The planet does not belong to us, we belong to it. I suppose in a way, the best thing to happen would be for a great deal of the world's population to die off somehow, and for the remaining humans to start again. It would be a way of protecting both the planet and our species without resulting in our extinction. But who knows?
I realise that that last paragraph sounds a little bit preachy. It's not how I'm trying to be; it's the way that I see it. And also I feel that we have a whole lot of negatives concerning 'it's already too late' and 'we face death very soon' thrown around; I want to see how we can look at that in a different way, whilst not being unrealistic. And I don't think that I have been, though as I said, it's mostly just based on personal beliefs - albeit ones that I have thought about a great deal, and have strong reasons for believing in.
Well, thanks for reading my blog. I'll do my best to keep it up-to-date - we all know that I don't always succeed in that, but I have ideas to blog about. To be honest, the more I update this the more motivated I feel to carry on updating it. If it falls by the wayside, I feel less and less like doing anything. But I have no intention of stopping blogging any time soon.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
This blog has been falling by the wayside again, hasn't it? I do the best I can to keep it up to date, but numerous things seem to stand in my way. Firstly, I don't have a huge amount of time on account of my being a University student. Secondly, since I moved away from Bristol I find that coming by the information to blog about it harder to come by. Bristol is such a free-thinking city that living there, the ideas about current affairs and such like landed in my lap quite a lot of the time. In Colchester they don't so much. I still hear about things through Facebook and from various exploits of my own, but not as much as I did once. There is less going on here, or appears so anyway. I don't go to many demonstrations or political talks anymore, not because I have lost interest but because there appears to be less of those events for me to attend, so it is a lot harder. Nevertheless, I have had ideas to discuss with you, and in the coming weeks I intend to blog quite a bit more than I have been. my intentions are to write at least a couple of blogs per week, although I realise that this is rather ambitious, and with my life and also my track record on this blog, it is very possible that I won't keep up with that. But I'll try!
My main idea for this blog is a man named Moazzam Begg. Moazzam Begg is a British man, originally from Pakistan, who was once held in Guantanamo Bay for allegedly being involved with Al-Qaeda and reportedly tortured there, along with numerous other detainees. It cannot entirely be clear whether or not he was actually involved with them, but from what I have read, the evidence against him was rather circumstantial, and certain confessions he gave were given under duress. The circumstances were enough for him to be released in 2005, and since then he has vehemently maintained that he was innocent, given numerous talks on the subject and declared that the war against terrorism can and does contribute to Islamophobia. Recently, he has again been arrested on suspicion of attending a terrorist training camp and facilitating terrorism overseas. He has pleaded not guilty, and faces a plea hearing on July 14, provisionally followed by a trail at the Old Bailey on October 6 of this year.
Now, there is a lot of evidence to suggest he is guilty, and a lot to suggest he is innocent, so we cannot at present be certain either way. Personally I believe him to be innocent. Why? Because I have met him. When I was at secondary school he came to give a talk at my school - prior to writing this blog I thought that it was when I was in Year 11, but whilst researching it I discovered that he went on tour to talk about his experience in early 2009, when I was in Year 10, so it could have been then - I can't be entirely sure. I cannot remember a huge amount of what he actually said, but I did find his talk to be hugely inspiring to me. It was not long after that - just under two years at most - that I started this blog and started the work that I do on social change and political activism. I think that Begg's talk played a part in me realising that there is much wrong with the world that needs to be put to rights. I can't prove his innocence, or even be entirely sure of it in my mind, and if new evidence comes to light that shows beyond doubt that he is guilty I will of course admit to having been wrong. But as it is, I consider myself to be a pretty good judge of character, and the evidence appears circumstantial enough to believe his innocence. Any further developments in this case will come to light in time.
The other thing I want to discuss in this blog is the Future. Now, in my introduction (and just then) I have used a capital F with this word, and this is because it's about the future of our species, and of the planet. This is something that I have been reading and thinking about a lot of late. There is evidence from scientists to suggest that we as a species may only survive another 100 years or so, because we continue to make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves. I have thoughts on this which I will express below, and I confess that they stem from the logic of my understanding of human nature and my own spiritual beliefs rather than the actual science behind it. I'm not an expert, and I can't blog based purely on the science because I don't even understand it if I do read it, and that's not really what this blog is for anyway. But these are my thoughts, both on the future of the planet and on the future of us as a species, because they are two entirely different things.
I'll start with the planet. I believe that Planet Earth is tougher than we think, and is able to survive most things. I think of it as being an entity - it looks out for its own survival, its inhabitants are there and are given life by it, but Earth will always do what it needs to in order to protect itself. I'm not sure that it is possible for humans to destroy the Earth. We can certainly make it so that we cannot live on the Earth, but the Earth needs to protect itself, and my personal belief is that the Earth will wipe us out before we are able to destroy it. In the past, whatever harm humankind has inflicted on itself, nature has shown that it can go one further. For example, thousands of people died in the First World War, but not as many as in the 'flu epidemic that arrived shortly afterwards. I am not religious, but I am very spiritual, and recently I have taken to talking and praying to the planet, almost as a goddess-like figure (I say 'goddess' because I very much view the Earth as being female - I learned about the idea of Mother Earth when I was a child, and I think that it represents the ideals of birth and life-giving, which are very much represented by the female form.) I'm not entirely sure that I believe in God, but I have to believe in the planet because there is no doubt that it exists, and you cannot disagree with the fact that it breathes life into all of us.
Now, the future of our species. I don't think that there is any doubt that we will become extinct at some point; that is what science says, this is what has happened to the vast, vast majority of species within history, and I don't think that there is any species that can avoid extinction indefinitely actually. There is evidence to suggest that this could happen very soon - within the next 100 years. Will this happen? Well, I don't know. There is evidence pointing one way, and evidence pointing another way. Certainly, the more harm we do to our planet, the less inhabitable it becomes, especially with rising population numbers. I actually think that the human instinct for survival is very great, and the only reason that we continue to harm Mother Earth so much is because we haven't realised how grave we are making the situation for ourselves. I think that once it becomes obvious that we need the Earth to survive and that we are threatened with extinction sooner rather than later, there may well be a huge global move to clean up the Earth and sort things out - this would require a great deal of scientific knowledge (which we have already) and motivation from the vast majority of people (which we don't currently have, and that's the problem.) I think that the Earth will ultimately heal itself - whether that happens before or after human extinction remains to be seen - I like to think before, but who knows? I'll be honest about the fact that the idea of being part of the final generation of human beings very much frightens me, probably more than most other things that have occurred in my life to date. I want to leave some kind of legacy when I die for future generations to aspire to, and it very much concerns me that there might not really be any future generations to take anything from that. But, there is a part of me that is secure in the trust that the planet will do whatever is right in order to protect itself, and in the meantime I will do whatever I can in order to assist in that. I feel that we have to assist in the preservation of our planet, because there is nothing else to live for really. The planet does not belong to us, we belong to it. I suppose in a way, the best thing to happen would be for a great deal of the world's population to die off somehow, and for the remaining humans to start again. It would be a way of protecting both the planet and our species without resulting in our extinction. But who knows?
I realise that that last paragraph sounds a little bit preachy. It's not how I'm trying to be; it's the way that I see it. And also I feel that we have a whole lot of negatives concerning 'it's already too late' and 'we face death very soon' thrown around; I want to see how we can look at that in a different way, whilst not being unrealistic. And I don't think that I have been, though as I said, it's mostly just based on personal beliefs - albeit ones that I have thought about a great deal, and have strong reasons for believing in.
Well, thanks for reading my blog. I'll do my best to keep it up-to-date - we all know that I don't always succeed in that, but I have ideas to blog about. To be honest, the more I update this the more motivated I feel to carry on updating it. If it falls by the wayside, I feel less and less like doing anything. But I have no intention of stopping blogging any time soon.
Thanks for reading, everyone!
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