Goodnight from Sydney: Still the same

Photo: You may as well try and catch the moon. Taken a few months back.

A friend of mine asked what I think will happen in 2008 - a question I sadly found incredibly easy to answer.

Men and women in fine clothes will attend fine venues and give fine speeches full of words such as, "key" "empower" and "eradicate". Their audience will grin broadly, clap, then later pat them on the back.

I will hear their words and see their posturing, but their people and their subject matter, will not. They will continue to hear the cries of their starving children and see their loved ones laid to a premature rest.

Guns and bombs will kill and maim with weapons so often provided by the same people who uttered such fine words. There will be lots of "road maps" to this, that and the other but the powers that be, will still take the route leading to misery and destruction for others, but power and glory for themselves.

I will be posting articles featuring the same countries, suffering the same problems for the same reasons, as I did in 2005, 2006 and 2007. No doubt they will often contain the same promises from those who reside in concrete and glass castles.

But there is hope.

The new media is becoming a powerful force that can give exposure to issues so often ignored by traditional media. Local issues can have a world-wide audience with information provided by a network of "on-the-ground"contacts who are not afraid to speak; people who refuse to be by bound by the same restrictions that so often apply in a media we are so accustomed to using for their agenda-friendly brand of information.

Hope. Let's hope we still have that in 2008.

Wherever you may be - be safe.