Bloggers Unite for Human Rights.

I'm a day late. The international day for this event was 5/15. I'm also not going to pick a specific topic to blog about. I could blog about China's denial of rights, but that would seem to be hitting them when they are down, and their response to the quake has been pretty noteworthy, unlike the military junta in Myanmar whose response HAS been one of the biggest human rights disasters in the world. I could blog about Guantanamo... the country that has created and maintains Guantanamo is not the America I desire to live in, but I'm not ready to leave, either. I would rather stay and help make this country be the country of its best ideals.

The degree and level of human rights abuses all over the world is overwhelming and depressing. Russia seems to be sliding backwards into Stalinism. The abuses in Africa are widespread, especially against women, and that continent seems cursed.

So many of us, I think, looked forward to a new century and a new millenium as a chance to break with the past, to create a new and better world, to take a renewed and peaceful humankind out among the stars. Instead we have lost freedoms, become mired in misunderstood and misguided wars, and face the real possibility that humans may die and never reach the stars.

So much hatred and violence... and yet most of the people I meet are good people. In everyday life you hear of acts of courage and compassion as well as of the acts inimical to human life. Is the crisis we face enough to change the course of human history? It must be.... it must be.