Olive Branch Optimism
what a wonderful world...
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
The Rising Discontent
This particular blog will be a long-winded one, but for the first couple of paragraphs I will give a brief over-view of what I am aiming to say in the rest. The problem with doing this is, ideally you need to read the whole article to understand me, but I just don't have time to write one.

The production manager at work is on holiday in Bali for two weeks, and I am filling his position.

This means 2:30am starts, 6 day weeks, and 50+ hours on-top of driving, helping my friends with small projects, reading blogs, seeing friends, writing blogs, organising stuff for the anti-war movement, networking, reading news, debating, reading+writing e-mails(and I read/write a HECK of a lot of e-mail these days, and non of them are funny forwards, most are from Iran/Iraq or the anti-war movement and other various little projects I am involved in), sleeping, eating, toilet, shower and brush-teeth not to mention spending some quality time with my girlfriend Georgia who I love dearly :D


Well here is a rough overview, this is mostly being posted so people don't think I have stopped blogging or fallen off the face of the earth.


---- "The Idea"

A general amount of discontent has been evident around the world since long before September 11, but this is probably where I began to feel it myself.

There are people who hate muslims, there are muslims who hate Saudi's, there are Saudi's who hate American's, there are Australians who hate Indonesians, there are Hindu's who hate Jews, there are X's who hate Y's and Z's who hate C's and 1's who hate 2's and 7's who 8 9's and so on and so forth until I run out of breathe and collapse on the floor.

This is not due to a general fealing of wanten desire to KILL OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, it is due to a general feeling of distrust, caused by the lack of contentness around the world.

In Africa there is constant drought, there is exclusion and no-guidance from the west. There is hungry people and radicals with food. There are followings of militia's who are truely hated by the majority populations, but without these militias thousands would starve to death....

Nobody steps in to help Zimbabwean's, Rwandan's, Kashmiri's, Irani's, Palestinian's, Israeli's, Mexican's, Columbian's, Cuban's whoever the VICTIMS of the day may be, unless it is to their own advantage to remove the OPPRESSOR of the day. This means that the people in each of these opressed populations become very unhappy.

They not only become unhappy with those killing, silencing, betraying, using (whatever) them but with the state of the world in general.


Then there is the Bloggers, and the Activists. Then there are the poor and the few-good-rich (wo)men. Then there are those who care about others, or those who care about the environment.

Then there are the greedy, or those who are strapped for cash 'at-the-moment'.

There are rising petrol prices, there is a deminishing supply. There is changing weather patterns and tornado/tsunami victims. There is technology to prevent much of this carnage, and the ability to implement it.

There are failing crops caused by salinity and land-degredation. There are countries and economies running out of resrouces or out of options.

- in the words of Rage Against The Machine [once again]

[snip]
"Back through the shanties and the cities remains, the same bodies buried hungry but with different last names,

There are voltures robbing everyone and leaving nothing but chains,
pick a point on the globe, the PICTURE'S THE SAME
There’s a field full of slaves, Some corn and some debt
there’s a ditch full of bodies and check for the rent"
[/snip]

[snip]
"There is a Mass without roofs, there is a prison to fill. There is a countries soul that reads post no bills. There is a strike and a line of cops, outside of the mill, there is a right to obey, and a right to kill"
[/snip]

Ultimately, in many ways, for many reasons people are just NOT HAPPY with what world-leaders are doing to our friends, to each other and to others around the world.

This will be explained further later on in the post [in a few days], but you should get the picture I am painting. Even in America "The land of the free" or Australia the "land of opportunity" there is discontent, even if it is sometimes aimed in the wrong direction.

Using this background unhappiness is a KEY-element in preventing future wars, but also in provoking future wars, so one must be careful when talking about this subject.


In addition to this general feeling of "discontent", there must be what historians/political analysts or whatever call "rising discontent". This means a particular set of occurances since time XYZ has caused discontent to steadily increase, not just the to-and-fro of the usual "discontent". In todays society there are many factors contributing to "rising discontent", on both sides of the ballpark.


In the USA there has been rising discontent since the Florida votes scandal, which has only been on a steady increase with the "re-election" of Bush on scandalous Ohio votes exaserbating this since November 2004. To make things worse the rate of US troop deaths in combat both in Iraq and Afghanistan has increased, which means more unhappy families, friends and citizens in general.

This discontent is slowly filtering into action, not just protest. Congress and the Bush Administration itself are beginning to question some of Bush's actions. The media is beginning to distrust Bush and his Republican friends, despite their vested interest in keeping them on-side.

MoveOn.Org and other-such anti-war collectives are penetrating the weak party - the Democrats and strengthening their resolve. No longer are the masses laying down and allowing the two week, rude and right-wing parties to fight over who will destroy the country first.

It will be a long slow tedious process as America's economy demise's and the Democratic people of America regain control of the once-free country.

Other places in the world have already gone down the track of regaining control from imposed dictators and unsupported governments tricking them into voting, or forcing them to vote through threats, violence or other means.

In South America there is a 'self-determination' movement that has been extremely successfull, and a general move away from the USA and towards working together with other nations. In Africa there was slavery, barbaric treatment of blacks, then the infamous "pull-out" of Colonialists and the consequential "forcing out" of (barbaric and not so barbaric) white settlers. The following economic failings of countries lead by inexperienced leaders causes much suffering to this day, but still what is being done?

It is easy to understand the rising discontent in Africa, or in South America, harder to fathom that in Israel/Palestine, even less clear in Lebanon/Syria but highly evident in Iraq and Iran.

In Asia, in China and Japan there is imminent conflict over Taiwan, and tension built up between the USA and China over North Korea and its vision of re-uniting with South Korea. In Russia and Germany the unemployment is climbing, now among the highest in the 'developed' world.

In Indonesia, Thailand and Sri-Lanka there is rising anger at governments for their slow reaction to the Boxing Day Tsunami disaster that claimed and continues to claim lives predicted to amount around 500,000 people. There is "aid" sent in dollars and never delivered in housing. There is no food, no shelter, no clothes and no family.

In Australia we are angry for all of the above reasons, and because of the failure of our government, and the governments of other nations to intervene. The continuing rise of discontent here is fueled by the betrayal of the Australian People by the Howard Government, such as giving the impression that he would Quote "NOT SEND MORE TROOPS TO IRAQ" up until election day, then sending hundreds more weeks later.

In West Australia we are taxed at the same percentage per income as everyone else in Australia, but recieve much less in return for our State Government from the Federal Government, despite our(West Australian) economy and resources being the strongest and most profitable part of the Australian economy.

My personal discontent comes from the death of innocents, the oppression of populations, the productions of weapons and the hurt I have been caused by people judging me as a bad person or a revolutionary or a "tree fucker", or a "dole bludging hippy" on the grounds that I am against war.

Myself, I am not a bad person. I love, I hurt (not intentionally), I care, I help and I think before I speak (usually). I cry when I hear something I can not take, I work harder than (in my boss of over 20yrs experience's words ) "any other 18 year old I have ever worked with". I do not get naked and protest infront of refugee camps or in trees in the forrest. I DO NOT WANT REVOLUTION in AUSTRALIA. WE DONT NEED IT.

I have never bludged and I AM ANGRY about being accused of these things, something that is continually happening and getting more frequent as the days go by.

- My rant probably made little sense, and I HAVE NOT read it over. But I hope you understand now how discontent is rising around the world, in a couple of days when I have time I will go on to explain the IMPORTANCE of both "discontent" and "rising discontent" to the anti-war movement.


---- To those in Perth, don't forget about the Sunday, June 26th YSAW meet/get-to-know-you @ 3:30pm at the Fremantle Esplenade

[/olivebranch]