MISSION - keeganrs@gmail.com

My blog is about my dream for a world where everyone is allowed to exist and improving the quality of life of the world’s citizens is our priority.

For many reasons I reject the current path of the world.

Rich world insanity, excess and lies. Poor world denial of human rights and food. The destruction of the planet. Our homogenisation into one consuming mass of idiots.

We need to look for new ways. New human interactions at every level. New models of participation or at least rescuing old ones. Things like couchsurfing.com and woolf.org are steps in this direction as are the models of health and education being created and implemented in Venezuela.

We need to stand up and say "Enough!" to the current regimes and look to support all those initiatives for a better world and create our own. 

Saturday 25 August 2007

This debate is not academic! Imperialism must end!

There have been many times in the last few years when I have come to understand exactly why people take up arms for what they believe in. I'm not talking about "soldiers" in Australia or other imperialist nations that chose it as a vocation because of lack of other prospects or some misplaced nationalism; I'm talking about the people who take up arms as the last option when they can no longer take the misery that is being inflicted on them. Travelling through Latin America I heard eye witness accounts of what soldiers did backed and trained by US soldiers in order to keep there own people down. People fighting for nothing more than the right to their land and freedom. Everyone of these accounts has changed something inside me.

I just watched a movie which did the same thing. "Voces de los innocentes" - "Voices of the innocent" is about the civil war in El Salvador. The war went for 12 years and claimed 75000 lives. It was faught over land rights of the people versus of business owners. 1 million people fled the country. Ironically many of them to the US who were training the El Salvadorian soldiers to do the killing. Fortunately it didn't feature in the US mainstream media and most US citizens know nothing about the wars their "democratic" country waged on Central America. This saved awkawrd moments when Pedro came to clean the pool.

The story traces a young boys experience of the war during which his first love and 3 best friends are executed and his village is burnt to the ground. If only this were a hollywood fantasy to bring in big box office receipts.

This war is still being waged. While Central America is now for the most part obediently under control in it's misery and extreme poverty the same cannot be said for Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua. In Nicaragua, the recently reaffirmed black sheep of Central America the Sandinista movement with it's leader Daniel Ortega have recently returned to power. The people of Nicaragua felt the roth of US backed forces in 1979-1990 because of it's ambitions to deliver food water and education to it's people. The Contra war funded by weapons sold to Iran resulted in the loss of around 30000 deaths.

We have seen the same disregard for human life in both action and innaction from the empire which maintains our injust economy in many other countries and instances both before and since these events. For now we can see the lengths Australia, US and UK will go to in Iraq and Afghanistan. And while the rhetoric preparing for masacres continues over Iran my greatest fear is for the people of Venezuela. President Chavez has established his independence from the empire and has the curse of millions of barrels of oil. The attempts to undermine and remove him from within and the empire have so far been unsuccessful. What will come next? We know the US doesn't keep body counts for it's enemies. Will these people I'm living among be the next uncounted "terrorist insurgents" to feel unspeakable pain for daring to reach for dignity?

Watch the movie if you can. Learn the history and decide what world we are living in and what world you want to live in.