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For every injustice that happens in the world, there's at least one person who'd rather not
know about it. An alarming number of people live under the impression that their first world luxurious existence is
just 'so fucking stressful already', without having to deal with what's going on in the real
world. If they did it may force them to change their lives as a result, which would clearly
cut into important TV watching time. Some people are willing to find out about issues (or
rather listen when they are presented to their face),
but those who then don't do anything about them are little more than sympathisers. It's all
very nice saying that sweatshop labour is wrong whilst wearing a GAP Tshirt, or saying
that animal testing for cosmetics is sick and not boycotting the majority of mainstream brands
in the UK that practice it. Activism is what
happens when a person is not only willing to learn the facts surrounding an issue and make
an ethical decision about it (based on what *they* think, not what they've been brought up to
or told by popular media to think), but then go out and actually something about the root of the
problem, not just sit in the pub or in front of the TV and grumble about it.
In this day and age with news media piped direct to our homes it's forgivable to think that
anything seriously wrong with the world will be beamed to our living rooms via the 9 o'clock news or
the front page of the paper, complete with glossy pictures, exciting video clips and celebrity endorsement. Sadly however there's many
stories which go totally unreported - not because they
aren't of importance, but because of political, social and economic reasons. There's
also a lot of really sick and for want of a better word 'fucked up' things happening in this
country today, right at the moment, which continue legally out of the public eye because they
are supposedly 'good for the economy'. The arms trade is a good example -
weapons are the UK's and US's biggest exports, selling arms (including torture equipment) to
countries that a few years later we go to war with is one of the ways that we make our money.
The catalogue of sales and export loopholes is truly disturbing, for instance the
fact that it was the US sold Saddam anthrax in the first place (whilst he was on their
happy dictator list).
The state of animal rights too in this country is truly sickening, and public awareness of the
state of it even more worrying. I remember learning about
the holocaust at school and wondering how a nation of people could ever let something like that
happen and government propaganda brainwash them, but the UK treats its animals no better than
the Nazis the Jews. The 'nation of animal lovers' quote that people like to real out to describe Britain's
really is nothing more than a hypocritical sick joke.
Over time it's inevitable for activists to become very disheartened with and withdrawn from society,
however I still truly believe that the average meat eating Gap wearing UK citizen is more
ignorant to the facts than inherently evil. I
myself ate meat till the age of 18, (before I took the time to find out where it was coming from) and
I'm not evil (honest!).
The information is however not only out there, but you really don't need to scratch very far
bellow the surface to find it. If you like to view yourself as an open minded person then i
implore you to spend a few hours one afternoon reading up on the facts behind certain issues
raised in this section of the site.
When you read arguments and facts from a clearly biased point of view such as mine it's easy
to dismiss it as non sensical bollocks, but when you start to read the same facts (albeit
slightly played down) from official (ie government) and well respected (major charities/NGOs)
sources then things start to get a bit more serious. I'm confident enough therefore to
encourage you to completely ignore my views and pass me off as a flaky hippy wannabe stoner.
If you do some proper research on the matters I'm sure you will find the same things written
time and time again.
I guess that activists can be grouped into 4 main categories: First is your tourist, someone whose heart
is in the right place, but will only do the bare minimum, and only to make themselves feel
better. Then there's your gran'archists, coffee morning and meeting type people - they do
good work, but they don't often get outside and make themselves heard, other than the odd
low impact stall. Then there is die hard campaigners, who day in day out, week in week out,
year in year out fight for what they believe in, irrelevant of whether it's easy or not.
Finally there's your wannabes, people who take themselves extremely seriously and think they
are Che Guevara. They think they are going to change the world with their ego
problem/revolutionary (or unrevolutionary as the case may be) views and that their poxy
small campaigns (which they do because they enjoy it more than anything) are of world
importance......I've certainly met a fair share of them!
I don't underestimate the importance of any type, all are far better than someone who does
nothing, but clearly the first and last are a bit crap in the grand scheme of things. Before
I came to university I got to know quite a few people in the animal and human rights scene
and for a few years was attending demos and involved in Hunt Saboteuring at least once a
week. I young, full of energy and believed whole heatedly that I could make a change.
I looked forward to university because having watched too many Disney movies I lived under
the misapprehension that they were full of culturally diverse and passionate people. Sadly
since my being here I've met a lot of FCUK wearing fast food junkies and very few activists.
Of those there are, most are the first and
last types. There's a few studying postgraduate Human Rights Law who are the 2nd type, a
couple of the 3rd, but they all seem to be on holiday from it whilst here and have too much
study to be interested in any grassroots campaigning/direct action.
Now, using the excuse of having no one around me to go to demos etc with is a pretty crap
one, but over time I've just become more and more disheartened and apathetic. Thus now I'm
more like the 2nd type (coffee morning). I'm vegan; I have been for years and will be the
rest of my life. I run the Amnesty International group here and organise human rights
speakers, but it's not much really. It's certainly been a while since I've been chased through
fields in the rain by police.
I am still passionate about my beliefs and I hope that in this temporary phase of apathy I'm
going through I am at least not doing any harm. Hopefully in time my motivation will pick up
and I can do something about the discontentment I feel with the state of the world around me.
At the end of the day everything I do in this area is unaffected by social pressure, the only
person judging me is myself. I guess I just need to think back a bit, to the person I used to
be, who would probably be slapping myself in the face right now, telling me to shut the fuck
up and get on with it :-)
Anyway, this section of the site contains some information about my reasoning behind my beliefs
and lifestyle changes I have made as a result.
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