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!
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