The Crazy Years
Poems and Posts on the Death of the Republic
Thursday, July 07, 2005
All The Same
The London bombing today is a crime against humanity. Madrid's tragedy last year was a crime against humanity. New York, Washington and Pennsylvania in 2001 were all crimes against humanity. Likewise the ritualized beheadings of captured westerners, the car bombings of civilians, police and military recruits in Baghdad for the last two years, the sanctioned gang-rape of women like Mukhtaran Mai, and the assassination of ambassadors, local leaders and other government functionaries. These are the very height of crime - not against property or even persons. These are crimes that bleed dry the very essence of human meaning and spirit.Without prejudice, shift your attention to the military invasion of sovereign countries, the inevitable killing of civilians that may not be specifically deliberate but is still inexcusable. Count the coups fomented, armed and supported from afar, the use of entire peoples as fodder in proxy wars of national insanity. Mark the death squads created by national policy, the saturation bombing and defoliation of millions of square miles of habitable land. Feast your eyes on the bodies of children shot or burned or vaporized because they stood in the path of the dreams of modern armchair Khans. All these too are crimes against humanity, against all of us, against all our ancestors, against every child yet to be born.Take a hard look at the militarization of all life - the requirement that our youth fight they don't know whom for a cause they can't fathom. Don't turn away from the sight of the weak manipulated into bleeding in service to the strong. See your child's face peering in fear from under the helmet, see his delicate hands cradle the rifle, the fingers you kissed squeeze the trigger. Look without flinching at the lives thrown away like so much garbage tossed into a bonfire, a fire that warms only those who make and sell the matches. This is no less crime than anything we might name done by "the other".It's all the same. We're all doing it. No rhetoric can justify it, no resolution can legalize it, no holy writ can deify it, no excuse can rinse our hands of the stains.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.--J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, pp.51-52Who will be the first to stop?
Name: Marybeth
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2 Comments:
Sadly, this understanding is inimical to the aims of those who are channeling the violence to their own ends. It only gets disseminated in blogs.
By
Harold/AQ, at
7:14 AM
D e a r A Q ,
W o u l d Y o u elaborate further on your thought?
It isn't clear to me what your point is .
N a m a s t e ,
MB
By
majamom, at
9:37 AM
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