Look back at this over the last 18 months, and it's pretty obvious that the things I think most important are Climate Change, Iraq and my family. As my family's mostly private, that tends sometimes to lead to a bit of a two-toned theme to this blog.
I'm not bothered with that. If I look back on this in 10 years time, that shouldn't surprise me. If I and the net were around to look back on it in 50 years time, the perspective would be somewhat different.
Probably one of the most important things happening in the world now is the deaths of tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people every year trying to get to the West, or being deported back to another country and murdered there. That this is not a "story" is because of the reasons that drive people to try and migrate here: the devastating consequences of neo-colonialisation. Thousands more die every day as a conseqquence of the starvation and warfare that are a result of this neo-colonialisation.
And it's not in the news. It's not discussed. Conservatives or liberals or revolutionaries - nobody in the West is discussing it. Because we are collaborators in an act of genocide. Like the Polish peasant in 'The Sorrow and the Pity' who would claim that he didn't know what was going on at Auschwitz, we'll tell the future that we didn't know.
Not that this should come as any surprise to an Englishman. After all, we've had an empire intent on genocidal acts for the best part of a millenium.
So I thought I'd write this quick note on the net. And then at least it's out there. We did know. We do know.
And we're doing nothing.
