The Killing Fields & Gaia

Watched "The Killing Fields" the other night. Not seen it for years - very good. It took me back to those times in the early 70s, late 60s even, when I was protesting against the Vietnam war. It seemed to me that people no longer care like that any more but I'm probably biased! I was too crippled to go on the anti Iraq war protests but friends did.

What is the difference in feeling between then and now? I suspect we had more hope than people in their 20s may have nowadays. There were a lot less of us then - 3.5 billion as opposed to 6.7 billion, that's more than double the population in under 40 years !!! And there's all the concommittant effects including the financial crash, pollution, no space, extincions of species, climate change ... etc, caused by a cancer-like explosion in the human population.

But somehow I still have my otimism, and still care that horror stories like the Vietnam war and its knock-on effects such as Cambodia are told about when they happen. And the reasons for them, including the culpability of the West in all that ... for selfish, economic and political reasons that just never did wash.

I'm also re-reading myself back into James Lovelock - if you've not read him, do so :-). His latest book - that's upset the FOE et al so much - is excellent, as was his original. He doesn't buy inot politically coorect notions that have no sound basis, is willing to say the emperor has no clothes! We desperately need that now, when we are being hiked frompillar to post with weazle words that sound good but are quite devoid of reality.

That's how the vietnam and Cambodian wars got going, and got perpetrated for so long. Let's not go there again ... either with wars against terror or wars against global warming. Neither are winable, we need to find another way ...