The power of direct action.

 Subject: The power of direct action.

Listening to advocates of direct action especially if they represent an ideology you don't agree with, or in fact fear, one is struck by the conflict of ‘humanitarian issues’ versus ‘the power of the status quo’.

In the conflict between the Palestinian and the Israeli, the Russians and the Lithuanians, the Uyghurs in China, the Rohingya in Myanmar each has a common denominator, the populist uprisings  against local oppression or a cohesive outside force wishing to represent an ideology or religious group.

Who's side do ‘we’ pick when we see state force used against civilians trying to go about their daily lives. Our humanitarian principles (if we have any) cry out at the spectre of a lack of human compassion with strikes to kill, amongst others, innocent children.Part of the optic of course is the result of not acting in the past when the threats were embryonic and listening to each side one is struck by the reasoning, each laced with hypocrisy making it very difficult to get to the truth.

This question of seeking the truth as if the truth had some sort of arbitrary value available to all sides in a conflict is plain silly. One can hear chapter and verse from any side in a conflict as to their particular verification since we are all guilty of hubris. The arrogance of the Israeli politician, the pious self righteous belief from the religious leaders in Iran, the hasty distain of outside criticism the Chinese adopt towards opposition to their grab for power, particularly in Taiwan, the pomposity of Vladimir Putin as he seeks to resurrect the USSR. Speak to any Russian patriot and he has his backing, speak too a member of the Chinese Comintern and the island of Taiwan is Chinese, the fundamentalist religious confirmation of Islam by the Ayatollah as the true word of god and therefore inviolate as conversely the historical sanctity of Israel is worth dying for.

We in Britain have lost these 'sureties', so overwhelmed have we become in the minutiae of the individual. There are no Churchill's guarding our land or language, we have succumbed to the experiment of 'universality' where nations, given the chance, will see things our way and if not, we are at a loss what to do.

Our parliamentarians are plagued by only following what the pollsters say and seem to have lost any conviction of their own, in fact conviction is extinguished by the party whip in their desire for party conformity.  

We now stand alone having escaped the economic safety blanket of the EU and having been rebuffed by the Americans from whom we expected trade concessions, we tinker with the idea cosying up to India but that comes at a price of unfettered Indian migration. Some encouragement  in the conclusion if a small deal with Australia and an even smaller one with New Zealand is all that’s come from the proud claim that having been released from the stranglehold of EU bureaucracy we would be out winning orders from all points of the compass the truth is a bitter pill to swallow, we are well past our best and have little to offer other than or fast diminishing purchasing power for goods we can no longer manufacture ourself.

We still have compassion in droves for the poor, uneducated people in who wish to come and live here and direct action amplified by the media platforms has never been so strong but it reminds me of the pitiful sound of a caged animal before it goes mad.