2004 is nearly dead, and I say good riddance. Personally, it has been one of the shittest years of my life. Just when I thought nothing more shitty could happen, something did. Right up until last week in fact when for me it all started perking up, just when over 100,000 people were killed by one of the worst natural disasters for many years. As shocking as that figure is, may I please remind people of some of the man made achievements that make this massive number look pretty small:
- Nanjing Massacre saw between 100,000 and 200,000 chinese killed by the Japanese in 1937
- 160,000 killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
- 800,000 killed in Rwanda – Almost no UK/Europe/US aid.
- over 3.5 million killed in Cambodia between 1970-1987
- 4-5 million Jews murdered by the nazis during the holocaust
- 20 million Russian civilians killed in WW2 – Russia became the enemy after WW2
Not to mention the massacres that are “only” in the tens of thousands such as Iraq. The numbers stop meaning anything after you get to about 10. And I’m not suggesting that we discount the current tragedy – quite the opposite. I just wish people would care about stuff like this more often…you get a bigger crowd at the average football match than you do at most of the protest rallies.
Our gracious Government is sending a pisspoor amount of the national budget over to asia as I type. Meanwhile they are helping to kill even more people in Iraq…damn I wish there was a point to this.
Maybe there is. Maybe it’s time for some New Year Triteness. So how about this for trite: count your blessings every day. Every day! I’ve been trying to do this recently and it has the interesting side effect of making me feel a lot happier. That wasn’t the intention. Really!
So get stuffed 2004 with your wars, murders, torture, nob operations, suicides, evictions, and systems crashes.
Love.
