"Beginning"

"So this is the beginning for me, I guess, I never thought I'd start my own blog . . . All I could think, every time I wanted to start one was 'but who will read it?' I guess I've got nothing to lose . . . but I'm warning you . . ."

A little bit about myself: I'm female, citizen of the world, and 27.

It is probably wrong to start a blog with the words of someone else. I am doing it anyway. I read "the beginning" post in riverbend's now famous Baghdad blog. Well, actually I did not read the blog as blog but in the form of a book I am reading for a class I will be teaching this summer. It finally DID make me start my own blog after thinking about it for years. Thinking is fine, most of the times. Doing something is a very different matter, though.

Maybe it is even more wrong to start a blog with the words used in a post-war blog. But why not? We are all post or pre war all the time. Right now, the world is facing a nuclear war. Well, it is not THE nuke war IR people have been worried about all the time. It is a nuclear catastrophe in Japan which is now fueling the war of words between pro and anti nuclear power parties around the world. Especially in supposedly "pacifist" post-war Germany, people LIKE this kind of war. Anti nuclear energy demonstrations started right after the news of the power trouble in Fukushima reached Europe. "Great," the adherents of the Green Party and others thought - "finally we have THE DISASTER proving that we should stop using nuclear power." This was when the victims of the earthquake in Japan were still struggling to survive under the ruins of destroyed buildings. "We should not instrumentalize such a human catastrophe for domestics politics" was the reaction of the Germany's foreign secetary. Others agreed - later - too late. The problem is that people acted before thinking about finding a nice excuse for their inexcusable behavior. Well, this is what happens when action antecedes thinking. No reason to be surprised. It happens a lot these days - especially in the field of politics.

Global politics are slowly returning to the Middle East again. Japan is still on the top of the media agenda but Libya is slowly reappearing. Unfortunately, this also means that Ghaddafi is back again. He could take a breath while the world was watching the nuclear power plant in Fukushima. But the world does not forget so quickly. After a few days of human disaster, grief and total destruction, people get bored of the familiar footage. They want to see something more exciting. Shootings in the Arab World, for example. I will not write more about Ghaddafi now. I just hope, he will be gone soon and I do not want him to occupy more space than necessary in my blog. The news are saying that air strikes are expected within hours. This is something that the Germans welcome, at least that is what Angela Merkel announced today. The problem was that this was not a statement but an excuse. She had to find an excuse for Germany's abstention in the U.N. vote today. Germany will not participate in a combat mission in Libya. This is how history affects today's politics...

The news occupying my mind the most today came from Yemen. Yemen, the country where I spent a very moving time in 2008. Now I see people getting killed in the streets of "Arabia Felix." The struggles are getting more and more violent each day, so it seems. I hope the world will pay attention to what is happening there. This will only work if the journalists decide to pay attention. And this will depend on what happens in Japan and in Libya. Well, this is how small the global world is. One BIG EVENT here and the big event THERE shrinks - no chance to get more publicity today - maybe tomorrow. Just wait and see if a couple of hundred more dead people end up in the streets of Sanaa. This might make Yemen climb the ladder of attention on the media agenda. Sad, very sad for the country. However, there is also hope - hope that the casualties are not in vain, that peace and human living conditions are the result.

Hurriiyah for the people in Yemen - this would be a great new beginning for the country. For the moment, however, this was only the beginning of my blog. Thank you, riverbend.