Depressed Utopian Blithering

Violence and paranoia and nationalism and power. I find that I have very little to say about the Israel situation. Who started it? Who cares. If people would just learn that hurting others to achieve your ends is wrong the world would be a perfect place to live. Obviously. But I'm no hippy, I know this is impossible. You can't teach people to respect human life. You'd have to force them to. And it wouldn't work in any case. There will always be bad people, but how can we stop them from getting into positions of power? There are some interesting and workable ideas pertaining to global democracy in George Monbiot's book "The Age of Consent". Read it. It's the only practical solution.
I'm starting to think that it's going to take another world war before we really start to work together. Terrible thought. Of course it's not worth the risk. One of the most notable things about international solidarity is how quickly it falls to pieces as nationalism reasserts itself. I will leave you with this thought: the world will be a smoking ruin before we all learn to get along.