Africa-Press – Eswatini. Just world? Or just the world? I doubt there is anyone in their right mind who would support the first choice there. The second is far more realistic. We are in a beautiful world of wonderfully spectacular and interesting scenery, flora and fauna. And don’t forget the majority of the people in it, honest and caring. And we remain thoroughly awestruck by the awesome (forgive the overuse of favourite word of the century) statistics about how many billions of stars and even galaxies that exist in our world. But, on this planet, despite the unrivalled pomp and dignitatum of the law courts of 190-plus countries, justice for all is a long, long way off.
Meanings
In Mbabane, we live in the clouds. Given the two possible meanings it is left to the reader to decide on preference. My own is for the literal meaning. Day after day we see the clouds looking down on us, then laughing their heads off as they descend to place the capital city in a maze of drizzle with a ray of sunshine only occasionally drizzable… sorry, I meant visible. Though it is certainly preferable to the drought officially predicted a few months ago.
And, as the pattern of weather behaviour across the world becomes increasingly erratic, so does the political situation. We are indeed in an imperfect world. Little did we realise back in the 1960s, as we considered the arrival of the new culture of free love, that the world, after dealing with a second devastating world war, was never going to learn from that experience.
At the beginning of 2024 we have two areas of substantial size, where killing people is simply continuing at a ruthless rate, as if the innocent human beings were vermin, to be decimated within the power drive by the aggressors. Politics dominates. Justice fails miserably.
There was no justification whatsoever for Hamas carrying out the October killings across the border in Israel. Killing is bad enough, but their massacres were utterly horrible. Israeli forces are fully entitled to wipe out Hamas but the public statements by Israel’s leaders are contaminated by the threats of a long war. That’s not the right way to approach the problem. It does change daily, but meanwhile, many innocent Palestinians in Gaza are being killed or rendered homeless.
Robbed
The world is divided in terms of support. There is strong backing for the Palestinians as having been robbed of their own land. Too many hypocrites there. Just look at how many people groups are sitting comfortably in, and controlling, land previously occupied by another group. Indigenous ‘don’t mean nuffin’ no maw’. The Israelis, on the other hand, are hugely supported by the global grief over the Holocaust, and by the powerful Jewish lobby within America. But every outsider would now like the Israelis to get out of their tanks and go the table. With Hamas and its dirty work to be universally denounced and criminalised. But all we see is tension building daily across the Middle East.
Not far away you have the second anniversary of Russia’s entirely unwarranted invasion of Ukraine in January 2021. The alleged Nazi culture and threat of a Ukrainian invasion of Russia were pure fiction. Who in their right mind would believe any country would be planning an invasion of Russia? Russia had been doing so well, becoming part of the broader world again; a reputation now ruined. Every day we read of harrowing accounts of human slaughter.
And now, neither side looks like advancing on the current front-line positions. A massive increase in Western aid would be needed to move the Russians back – very unlikely given the mood in the USA. It looks like the only solution is an agreed partition, formalising the ownership of the 22 per cent of Ukraine that Russia has invaded. The Ukrainians would not be happy, though the residents of those provinces might disagree. And it would be another major step towards the reincarnation of the Soviet empire; the earlier misfit having disintegrated 34 years ago.
Promoting
The sight of Vladimir Putin gaining self-righteous confidence daily is quite nauseating. They’ll soon be digging up and promoting that old photo of him astride a horse and bare-chested – Putin not the horse – for all having to face the outcome of his 15 press-ups before breakfast. And sight of it before breakfast would be even worse. The question that must surely come up in every thinking person’s mind has to be; ‘Will there ever be a time in this world when international violence has come to an end; and in a sustained way?’
The answer is no. That is, of course, an expression of opinion rather than a statement of fact, or even a prediction based on solid indicative material. It’s perhaps best justified by the good or bad old Yorkshire saying: “There’s nowt so queer as folk.” Which I will hastily clarify as meaning; there’s nothing as odd as human beings. The sight of new year celebrations suggests the rest of the world has become quite skilful in burying its head in the sand, breathing a sigh of relief for their own status. But beware of Russia’s global destabilising fantasies.
times
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