So tell me I’m mad

So tell me I’m mad. But if you look at what’s happening around the world there really does seem to be a pattern of fear. No, not just the dastardly fear of losing your home, your loved ones, your life, but the one prevalent in many high places, the fear of losing face and influence.

Let’s start with my own country, Australia. It’s a wonderful country. People are much better off there than in say, Afghanistan. It has natural beauty, a population that is for the most part vibrant, egalitarian, talented. Yeah, Abbott’s gone, but his ghost lives on with a better salesman and a government that has done little to make me feel less ashamed.

But there’s hope. People are coming out in thousands to protest the treatment of asylum seekers, racism. To protest injustice. Australians don’t want to be judged by the actions of their government. But many still cling to the old ways. Out of fear. Fear of losing face in the herd.

Then let’s look at the EU and how members of the sulky “Eastern Bloc”, yes it still exists, although one  could expect them to know better, are cherrypicking. OK, the UK is doing it, too. And the hitherto covered-up underbellies of Scandinavian countries are peeping through their t-shirts that have come out too short in the wash. (Angela Merkel is between a rock and a hard place, but she seems to be the only one around with a bit of humanity.) So what’s more important? Get lots of votes on the fear ticket, or try and be a decent human being. Yes, the refugees. Too many of them. It’s been on the books for a long while. Poverty feeds. Feeds the mad ones. Equality is already there, Virginia, when it comes to wheeling and dealing.

And who’s helping to feed fear? The modern Rasputin with his six-pack. bombing not only peace talks, but places – just so that more refugees stream to the Europe of which he is still jealous? Oh, and there’s the face of the last Czar that he doesn’t want to lose. Did I forget the Chinese? Same story, but concentrated on its own people, at least for the moment. Oh, and Big Brother over the Pond. Any room for some more refugees? Weren’t you all at one point? Such an oxymoron to be feeding the fear while bolstering a lucrative arms industry? Sorry, there’ll all doing the weapons thing, even sweet little Switzerland.

Conspiracy theories, you say? Platitudes? So what? Come to the Cabaret. Munney, Munney, Munney! Remember the song?

And when young people, the old ones we laugh at or ignore, take a stand and ask what it is to be human, see and say that something is wrong. Well, just listen to Chelsea Manning’s moving story. Ed Snowden is hounded. Julian Assange has come out whole from a UN Panel. But they don’t like that in Washington DC, do they? (Is the editor of the Guardian an American? Sorry, just a thought.) The US elections fueled by millions that could have served to solve so many problems afflicting ordinary people will turn out as they will. Anything, of course, is better than a trumpet, but do not pull the woman card on me. So let’s move on to something supra- if not supernatural.

The United Nations are no longer united, it seems. Ugly nationalist and pecuniary interests seem to be running the show. Oh, yes, with great pomp and circumstance, government representatives sign treaties and make promises that they know will not be kept. Because, they do not want to connect the world, they want to own it. They do not want to be united, even against that rabid upstart doing it’s own fear thing in the interest of domination.

But the ideals of the organisation live on. Believe it or not, there are people in the various secretariats who still have ideals. They have it tough, too. Whistleblowers are not protected. But the sound of a whistle at the right DB can travel, it can insinuate itself through the rubbish and sludge, and it can find a place to resonate.

Hallo? Is there any independent media out there? Or are you all in the pockets of Rupert Murdoch? Even here, people can speak out, and they do. They are few, but the few can multiply. Why? Well, I love sheep, but just munching all day and staying in a herd gets awfully boring in the long run, specially when all that awaits is a slaughterhouse of the conscience and the heart.

So tell me I’m mad. But if you’ve read this far, you might hear a sweet sound. Maybe it’s even your own heartbeat.

So on that note, let me leave you with hope, and as always, onwards!