Have you noticed the World seems heavy today?

Have you noticed how the world seems ‘heavy’ lately? Heavy as in full of woe, of troubles – there is not a great deal of joy around at the moment. And what gets me is that much of it is of our own making.

So many of the problems that currently beset the world are present because we, that is all of us collectively, have allowed them to happen. We are greedy; we are avaricious; we appear to lack compassion and worst of all we seem to have a very strange concept of justice. I am no legal expert but to me justice is more than a slavish adherence to the letter of the law. Anything, anything that constrains a person’s right to the fundamentals of life – education, health, sufficient food and water, adequate accommodation, the ability to exchange ideas and to move freely around the countryside, is unjust. Whatever ‘spin’ is put on it by the authorities such constraints are unjust. I have railed against this before and I will continue to do so to my dying day.

Injustice is the major cause of the World’s problems.

The Americans are now complaining that about forty-five former Guantanamo Bay inmates, subsequently released, have re-entered the terrorist ‘circle’. As if this is an excuse for not releasing them! I strongly suspect that if they had been better treated; treated as human beings; treated with at least a modicum of dignity, then they may well have thought twice about committing further acts. Treat someone unjustly and they never forget. Should they have been imprisoned at Gitmo in the first place? If they were released then presumably no charges were laid against them. But they were still treated badly and they will not forget.

The Israelis have lost in Gaza. No matter what they do they have lost. They know it and that is why they are fighting so hard to ‘justify’ holding on to something that is not theirs – Palestinian land. That is the injustice – holding on to land that is not theirs. That is the root of the problem; that is their dilemma. Flatten Hamas (which they won’t) and hold on to the occupied land and the problem remains for other generations of Palestinians to stew over and the Israelis will be no safer than they are now. Withdraw without flattening Hamas and the Palestinians can rightly claim victory – which would be gall and wormwood to the Israelis.

Then there is Africa. Ruanda, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Zimbabwe (and I am sure that I have missed a few) are all failed states and all have huge humanitarian problems, all brought about by greed and injustice. One tribe is ‘better’ than another. Military rulers and refuse to relinquish government because of the privileges they claim. My religion is better than your religion – and so it goes on and on.

There is also Asia and the Middle East. Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Nepal, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Fiji – again I have missed a few – all have problems. All have institutionalized injustice against certain people, because of religious beliefs, racial characteristics and just the downright overall meanness of the various ruling authorities who are desperate to protect positions, their privileges and their egos.

Nothing will be solved until the injustices are corrected.