It is so depressing reading about what is going on around the world at the moment it is difficult to know how to react. Part of me wants to just burrow my head under a pillow to stop getting depressed and angry; part of me wants to see what i can do and who and how to help; part of me has now become cynical that anything will make a difference.
When you read of a poet being taken from his home in Manamar by murderous military dictatorship and then his body sent back minus many organs - what can you do?
When the head of Saudi Arabia orders the live dismembering of an honest critical journalist and running a war against other Muslims - but Shia - across the middle East but particularly in Yemen and they use our arms and bombs and airplanes and are at the same time invited to buy mansions in London which remain unoccupied and buy up investments across the UK with out taxation, what can we do. Now squatting is illegal the homeless in London cant even occupy them, what can you do?
When Putin orders the killing and when that did not work imprisonment of his only opposition leader in Russia and gets away with poisoning people in the UK, while his criminal oligarch buddies are enabled to money launder and tax avoid using the UK, while Russian money now props up the Tories and has been used as a sweetener for Boris, what can you do?
When the Goliath of Israel takes on the David of the Palestinians, when you watch forced theft of land and houses from those already with very little, when you see the death tolls on both sides but always disproportionally Palestinians, when you witness the brutality of an occupation and when it carried out by a country and people whose history is also one of suffering and displacement what can you do? If you are against anti semitism but want equal rights for all - Jews and Arabs- and then you see an ultra right government running what the Human Rights Commission calls apartheid. how can you stand up and be counted as a defender of human rights for all?
Ever since 1. 5 million of us marched against Blair and Bush's war against Iraq, which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions displaced and led to the rise of Al Qaeda and ISIS and screamed Not in Our Name and nothing changed and nothing happened except what we warned against, what can you do?