Lebanese
Abbas Wehbeh shouts while holding his
10 day-old niece Waad, 08 August, 2006
The above picture
says it all.
Can you feel his
choking rage and grief, the sting of the tears streaming down? The dislocation
of one reality into another?
Perhaps
we remember a time when our grief consumed us to the point we were barely
able to function; our arms were trembling, we could not see for the tears
that obscured our vision, we could not think because all we wanted was our
loved one back in our arms or to release the fire of revenge; when all we
wanted was to vent our rage on the evil who took away our reason for living.
Or perhaps we are those who would feel a dull numbness from the shock-wave
that takes away all semblance of meaning, all the joy of what makes u human.
There is the kind loss
that empties you of your sensibilities and rational thoughts, just tosses
your identity away so that you are a husk of what you once were. Maybe you
have experienced this acidic pain that flays your heart and hangs it from
a sharp hook, raw and bloody. If so, then your reality is changed, your
reality can also be shared in silent communion whatever the ideology and
the nation. Pain is understood
by some and the gnawing loss is known across the ridiculous need of boarder
mentalities and cultural divides.
The Israeli government,
its military and other pathocratic governments linked by the same will to
deceive and destroy are scraping out the insides of those who can empathise
with their fellow man. They are dehumanizing all those who can remember
what it is to feel for another across the illusion of distance. They are
destroying piecemeal all those who have the seeds of that humanity within
them. Here now, in the hi-tec false sophistication of the 21st century,
there are people -'leaders' - murdering fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters,
children and their grandparents, in this case, all for the Greater Israel;
all for a violent, false ideology that is predicated on a monumental lie.
Just as those in China
who shot dead the young student activist who had the
temerity to act on her humanity; just as those in the U.S. justify democracy
by genocide in Iraq; and just as Tony Blair has the astonishing audacity
to talk of peace while being instrumental in the modern day success of U.K.
and U.S. colonialism - these are all spawned from the same pathology that
has oh, so cleverly insinuated itself into the heart of nations, that has
distorted the very structures of our societies, until we have taken on their "normality."
For those
of us who cannot ignore conscience, who are jarred into reality
when we see that the world being inexorably shaped into the pathocrat's
image, the time is coming to make a choice as to how best we can transmute
that shared inner suffering that demands to be released.
Propaganda from the mind
dross of Fox News; the terminal lies of the U.S. Government; the habitually
lackluster performance of UN resolutions; to the results of formerly and officially
sanctioned historical genocide for economic and corporate gain - it is as terminal
as it is ubiquitous. The allure of apathy pretends that we have no part in such
crimes. This serves to confirm the arrogance and audacity of those in power
who use innocent human lives as literal fodder for their war games and deluded
visions of totalitarian rule.
Little Waad a
10 day-old baby was a legitimate target for those "machines" that
sit in smug certainty that their psychotic morality will shape the actions
of every one o us. Behind mahogany desks, the shuffling of official documents
and easy, comfortable chairs they direct their brain-dead troops to do their
bidding. This psychopathology is what has led us to our current low point
in what is euphemistically called 'human evolution'. The physical distance
that exists between us and the abject suffering of our fellow human beings
applies a temporary cerebral band-aid to the shock of seeing the truth of
our reality and prevents us from entering fully into our own humanity.
What is happening now in Lebanon and Palestine is not just a repeating
pattern of the same old Middle Eastern turmoil, it is a prelude to a
game-plan that will involve every single person on this planet, and that
includes you.
Every single one of us.
Wherever
we are and whoever we maybe.
How
we react to the horror we see before us will determine all of our futures.
There is
a vacuum being carefully created and we can get sucked into the propaganda
of those who are whipping up the frenzy of conflict for a variety of deluded
ideologies or self-aggrandising missions and visions, or we can simply say
enough is enough and stake our own claim for truth. We stand up and
when confronted with the umpteenth civilian death, innocent people
who were living their lives with the same hopes and dreams as you and I,
we use the fire of indignation and we mold it into our own personal outpost;
our strategic enclosure which houses all the rage and grief, all the empathy
that can so often turn back into itself and do us harm, so that we may then
build such energy into a creative force.
This outpost
resists the fear and the apathy that so often results daily atrocities in
the guise of noble ideals and grounds us in our own humanity. From there
we can re-affirm that we do in fact have a conscience, and that it is
based on a firm foundation of our own making. We are able to express it through
our actions however limited in their scope and perceived effects. We
no longer yield to programs of required conformity that are both subtle
and crude, we do not slip into complacency and compliance
that will ultimately transform us into the living dead searching for their
elusive essence that has long since been buried, extinguished by our own
hand.
Once those who truly fear
the networked ignition of conscience begin to sense its rise, perhaps
hope can be justified. Until then, we can add our own voice to the
chorus of outrage and build our outpost brick by brick, again and again
to keep that faith alive and to emblazen on that wall the image of Waad
and millions of others like her. Perhaps then, we can allow our conscience
to at last taste the true freedom it has been seeking.
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