Searching for Change: Thoughts and Actions!

Friends,

Time for some conclusions and a statement of intent.

My trip has a little less than 3 weeks remaining. I have been to 21 countries in Europe and Latin America with only Chile remaining. I left home looking for a clearer path and a better understanding of the world I live in. I wanted to speak another language and know another life. For the most part I feel that I have achieved these goals, some thoughts of which I have shared with my mailing list and those who've been to my blog ( http://www.searchingforchange.blogspot.com/). With so little time remaining and almost a year passed I do feel like I have gained a lot from my trip.

I left a confused man with a fire smouldering inside me about something I couldn't put into words. I didn't share my thoughts about with many people but now I´m ready to return. I have learnt to share these thoughts and with them in the open air they have been able to transform into a fire. For what do I burn?

I want a better world.
That´s clear and a thought that I´m sure everybody has at some time in there life whether it's: as a child learning that there are children starving in Africa in a world with an overproduction of food; as a teen unhappy with the prospect of becoming a slave to a wage and a mortgage; as a college student seeing people young and old dying in war all over the world for a needless greed or a tyrannical leader; or as an old man on a park bench wondering why a life's work hasn't left him with enough to live on cursing the corruption of politics and the history they have lived to see repeated. I want a better world.

So what does it mean?
Everybody knows that governments have the power and young people are idealists who will sooner or later fall to the system and into silence. So I guess that leaves me with some weeks, months or years of idealism before I´m muzzled by my own quest for a house and car.. ..

What am I complaining about?

This child was a victim of the 2003 bombing in Iraq.

1. War (Blanket bombing as a war tactic) - The cost of war is increasingly paid by citizens innocent of whatever crimes there government may have invoked war (in Iraq its 80% civilian deaths, Vietnam was more than 50%, WW1 was 20%). The threat of more war the means used and nuclear proliferation are all a call to action!

2. Misinformation by media and use of propaganda to manufacture consent (more people have been in the street to protest the Iraq war in the US than went to the streets against Vietnam but still the media debates fringe arguments neither of which condemn an illegal war.)
stop bush stencil

3. "Democracy" - It´s the catchphrase of the US government used to justify war and sabotage of every movement which threatens the western model of capitalism. Strong words such as "fascist" and "dictatorship" have been used sometimes with and sometimes without justification to describe the governments of all that opposed modern day capitalism, in Russia, Vietnam, Latin America and other third world nations. In the rich world this prized word disgraces us all if the world that we are running is democratic. We cannot separate ourselves from our government if we believe that we live in democracy. If we don´t live in democracy what do we live in? If we want democracy what are we doing about it?

Democracy is really the issue . .
*If we have a democracy in Australia what kind of people are we going to war with Iraq killing more than a million of their citizens.
*Why are we opting out of the Kyoto protocol which would have allowed us to continue as the most polluting country per capita?!
*Why do we have a sub-population of Australian's, who have been persecuted in a way that should be condemned all over the world and is by those who know about it, continuing with a life expectancy of 20 years less than their non-indigenous country men.
*If we are so free what are we doing with this freedom
*How can we even debate about whether the wars waged are just or not when none of us live through this in our own country?

Throughout my trip I have had people telling me that people are bad. There are bad people everywhere that I need to be scared of robbing me stabbing me or kidnapping me. I acknowledge this is a possibility but where does the blame for this lie? To me it's clear that desperate people do desperate things. I would steal if I was hungry without food. I would probably steal if I grew up in a broken home in a bad neighbourhood and I wanted drugs or a new phone or a gold chain! I believe that it is the social environment that we live in that creates these "bad people. "

The German citizens supported the Nazi's just as the US government had majority support from its citizens in polls at the beginning of its wars in Vietnam and Iraq. (Not all US citizens can see that there government has been willing to go to any length to maintain its economic status but when you learn about them testing chemical weapons on their own citizens and soldiers its not hard to see how they could torture in Guantanamo or train in the art of torture at the School of the Americas.) Does this mean that people in the US or Nazi Germany are bad people? I don´t believe it is so. I think these people were born or educated into a way of thinking which allowed there governments to carry out acts which they themselves would describe as inhumane in a different time or from a different point of view!

What I´m getting at here is where I get my hope from. I think that people have innate traits of compassion, empathy and solidarity. This can be seen in all groups of people who identify with each other whether it be a team, rural community or family. I believe in the human ability to survive through terrible events to achieve great things. I believe in the human ability to create and innovate and one day that this will be for the good of man rather than for the dollar. (Even medical research is made obscured by the inability for us deliver drinkable water and food to all the people of the world or affordable AIDS drugs to the parts of the world most effected). All the barriers that we have to a peaceful livable world such as nuclear proliferation and capitalist materialist consumer driven pollution can be overcome.

The root of the problem?
I see a world where most government driven conflict and suffering comes from economic roots whether for mineral or oil rich lands or to maintain a global the global system of exploitation known as the global free market economy. I see a world were most local crime is driven by bad social circumstances and lack of education. People are scrambling to survive and feed real and imaginary needs by any means.

Conclusions?
I believe we need a global system of co-operation not competition. As demonstrated by the European union, where countries are economically working together war becomes unthinkable. (The probability of a French - German war while the EU exists in zero! Nobody thought that was possible 100 years ago). We need a new system of mutual interest internationally to work the same way that the nation-state has ended intra-country regional wars in the developed world.

Locally we need money for education, we need children to be supported by parents, we need sick people to be able to see doctors. When we end the fear of hunger and sleeping on the streets crime will fall! When we concede that drug addicts are citizens that need help not jail crime rates will fall! When we stop teaching about bad people, just wars and that killing is cool, crime rates will fall!

Why don´t we have the environmental reforms and peace agreements that all citizens fundamentally want ?(Air, food and water that won´t poison them and security they are not going to be shot or blow-up.)
I think the best explanations I have come across are from "The Corporation" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y http://www.thecorporation.com/) which explains the why and Noam Chomsky´s "Understanding Power" ( www.amazon.com/Understanding-Power-Indispensable-Chomsky-Noam/dp/1565847032) which explains everything! If I was to put it in 2 sentences. Business goals have come to influence media and government in such a way the both people and government are acting in ways which don't represent their purpose. People are educated that they must live in a way that meets the needs of business and governments are not representing what their populations really want because they need financial backing and media support to retain power. Nowhere is this more clear than the US who´s reforms are spreading across the developed world causing a scramble for third world lands and labour to exploit to stay ahead in the competition of economy. The drive for lower prices is the same thing that drives worse working conditions, worse pay, fewer environmental controls, lower corporate taxes, higher personal taxes, less money for welfare etc. The means the US has been willing to go to in order to enforce this system is best explained by Bill Blum´s, Rogue State - A guide to the world's only superpower.

What can I do?
1. Become more informed through formal and informal study.
2. Join organisations (such as Standup.org.au , Greenpeace and whichever others fit with that I'm thinking)
3. Try to meet other people that think about things like I do that are involved in actions that meet with the change I want to see
4. Encourage people to take their own journey to be more informed about the wold
5. Encourage people who are not content with the world they live in to take actions to help a transition toward the world they would like to live in.
6. Continue to look for ways to take action

So when I get home this is what I will be dedicating myself to. What I´m hoping for by sending this email is for a small part to tell people what I´m doing but for a much bigger part a call for support. I would love to hear not only about which ideas you support and disagree with but about where you see the future, what advice you have for me, what you are doing . . .

This is a call please give me something!

With love,
Keegan Smith
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c4Cc09aETU

(Me with Fernando my crack addict friend in Colombia http://searchingforchange.blogspot.com/2007/01/fernando-can-you-hear-him.html.)
We need to end the war on drugs. It´s killing people all over the world for the secret economy that has grown every year without impediment. It turns our brothers and friends into criminals for something which hasn't harmed anyone but themselves. It puts addicts on the streets, on the edge of society making them a danger to themselves with unsafe practices and to the rest of society with their need to get money without a job to feed their chemical needs.