Published on Tuesday, March 2, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
This Plague of Fear: A Thought by a Writer
by Magie Dominic
Wars are fueled by fear.
We have all known the ghost of war and felt its effect. It collapses
into the pillow with us and invades our dreams at night. It wakes with
us in the morning, and follows us to work. It creeps into our music,
our thoughts, our conversations. It marches silently into our future.
We are living a lifetime filled with violent and unforgettable images
and a country suffering from a collective post traumatic stress
disorder. We are being spoken to and guided by an administration which
has successfully capitalized on those fears in the past and continues
to capitalize on them in the present.
The new escalating and costly war on terrorism is becoming a war in
the mind, a tool eroding civil liberties. The ultimate war is control
of the mind.
We have all seen the ghosts of war. World War I, World War II and
Korea. We’ve witnessed Vietnam, and bloody body bags carried across
television screens nightly. Seen the broken hearts and broken minds.
Vietnam requires no adjectives - or it needs a thousand. It doesn’t
need a date to define it. Vietnam was the sixties. Iraq was the
nineties. And is now the next century. Everything else fell in
between.
Today people watch war on television and the Internet - watch actual
bombs fall in actual time. We see guided smart bombs hitting their
marks, or missing, as the case may be.
***** Cheney, as Secretary of Defense, said in a statement before the
Senate Armed Forces Committee in 1991, “We are the only nation on this
earth that could assemble the forces of peace”.
***** Cheney is manipulating our very vocabulary. Force and peace may
as well be opposites. Peace can’t be forced. It can’t be owned by one
side. Peace steps outside the parameters of language as we know it. It
is borderless, un-claimable; the same everywhere; only the flags are
different.
In 2002 President Bush signed a bill called The Enhanced Border
Security and Reform Act designed to shut the borders to terrorists
worldwide. A move dictated by law and order. But international
writers, musicians and filmmakers have been shut out as well or
unfairly harassed. Havana-based film director Humberto Solas was
prevented from attending a tribute to his own work. Kayhan Kalhor, the
Canadian-Iranian instrumentalist, was fingerprinted, photographed and
searched. The writer, Margaret Atwood, was denied entrance, had to
leave the airport and obtain additional documentation, then missed her
flight to the United States. The director of a small Michigan music
festival said he would no longer consider non-American acts because
the financial risk caused by cancellations was too great. We have all
become prisoners, those forbidden to speak and those forbidden to
listen.
Fear of terrorism invades the air. It invades the air in Lower
Manhattan where a permanent wrought iron fence surrounds The New York
Stock Exchange. Built as a barricade to terrorism it extends about
four feet into the air and down the center of the street. Pedestrians
walk on one side, an armed presence stands on the other. Pick-up
trucks block intersections. On one bitter cold, unforgiving January
morning this year, uniformed guards and police tried to keep warm by
moving from one foot to the other. Weather was the enemy that day.
Along the small winding streets the armed presence resembled something
from old black and white movies, stories of dictatorships in countries
far away. This is how cities are captured. Street by street, block by
block, everything fueled by terror and fear. With every radio
announcement, every television special report, every multi colored
terrorist alert, fear is heightened and the airwaves become filled
with jargon, “weapons of mass destruction related program activities”.
The plague of fear erodes hope and we rush each day past the obvious.
During The Vietnam War there was a shift in family definition. War
does something to families; it does something to its heart, to its
foundation. Two distinct families came into being, the blood family
and a chosen one, and the dynamics of the chosen family often changed
as people aged or moved. Those who moved away were often ostracized by
their blood family and a claim to structure or foundation was removed.
Children born in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and into this set
of dynamics, entered a community-less world at a time when the world
was desperate for structure and coming apart at the seams. Born in the
sixties and seventies and now struggling in the face of a collapsing
economy, AIDS, and laser wars, they are often distanced both
geographically and emotionally from any form of extended family.
We have all entered a surreal state of orphan- hood and are now being
asked to live in a state of government induced fear because it’s for
our own good. The government will be our new family. We are asked to
surrender our civil rights without question, and to be loyal to an
administration which is questionable at best.
The wrought iron fence at Wall Street is a deterrent, yes, but not
only to a person on a suicide mission. It is also a deterrent to hope,
hope for the future, a fortress to fear of the other. If “fear of the
other” continues to fester we will be waging war with each other,
citizen against citizen, state against state.
It may be time for vigilance, yes, - but not only for enemies from
outside the border. It may be time to be aware of ourselves - of a
military like presence creeping into our cities. To watch what we are
told to think and allowed to believe. To be aware of how often the
word terror is used on the airwaves. And if that word is changing how
we think and how we speak. To be aware of which countries have excess
and which are impoverished – to question the very wealthy for not
helping the destitute. If we truthfully are all part of the same world
what does this mean now in the face of famine and war?
There are hundreds of computers inside The New York Stock Exchange and
these computers are hooked up to hundreds of other computers
worldwide. A biological or chemical weapon isn’t needed to paralyze
the system, if this should ever become someone’s intention. It could
possibly be paralyzed with the flick of a switch. Despite the costly
military like presence on the streets of lower Manhattan, the
computers and money are not secure. Only the military presence is.
In the words of ***** Cheney, "DOD (Department of Defense) is
eliminating unnecessary management levels, limiting unneeded reporting
requirements, reducing burdensome regulations”. He went on to say,
“Our military presence will remain a key factor in our national
defense strategy. Presence can take many forms”. “We are at the dawn
of a new era”. We are at the dawn of a new era indeed.
We are in an era where our national interests, as they apply to Iraq,
are more accurately defined as a permanent and total control over
another country’s natural resources.
The outcome of war is unpredictable. It cannot be planned in advance.
The outcome for either side can’t be foreseen. Anarchy, riots, civil
wars, and chaos are some of its probable conclusions. This being the
case it seems a logical motive for not waging a war in the first
place.
The outcome of war is an uncertain and gross expenditure of a
countries financial resources, robbing money from its hospitals,
schools and the poor. The statistics on homelessness vary from report
to report but one fact remains true. The number of homeless in New
York City has reached its highest point in the city’s history. This
reality, in such a rich country, is something to be afraid of. Wars
are fueled by fear, hatred, rhetoric and indoctrination. Once fears
are ignited, they are difficult to extinguish -this is something to
fear.
Magie Dominic is author of 'The Queen of Peace Room', nominated Book
of the Year, Foreword Magazine; The Judy Grahn Award for best
non-fiction; and for the CWSA Award. (Wilfrid Laurier University
Press).
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| User: "Leigh_Bee" |
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| Title: Re: The Plague of Fear |
04 Mar 2004 04:15:36 PM |
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DaarkSyde <DaarkSyde@everywhere.com> wrote in message news:<gjee409amddagdlaee07k3oqsokvfllkq8@4ax.com>...
Published on Tuesday, March 2, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
This Plague of Fear: A Thought by a Writer
by Magie Dominic
Wars are fueled by fear.
We have all known the ghost of war and felt its effect. It collapses
into the pillow with us and invades our dreams at night. It wakes with
us in the morning, and follows us to work. It creeps into our music,
our thoughts, our conversations. It marches silently into our future.
SNIP>
The outcome of war is an uncertain and gross expenditure of a
countries financial resources, robbing money from its hospitals,
schools and the poor. The statistics on homelessness vary from report
to report but one fact remains true. The number of homeless in New
York City has reached its highest point in the city’s history. This
reality, in such a rich country, is something to be afraid of. Wars
are fueled by fear, hatred, rhetoric and indoctrination. Once fears
are ignited, they are difficult to extinguish -this is something to
fear.
Magie Dominic is author of 'The Queen of Peace Room', nominated Book
of the Year, Foreword Magazine; The Judy Grahn Award for best
non-fiction; and for the CWSA Award. (Wilfrid Laurier University
Press).
###
But like the seasons war is cyclic, so folk born in peace, learn to
harden their views, and justify their actions by religious cloaks.
But the cull has not started yet, but is being prepared.
LB
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| User: "Saint Isidore of Laytonville" |
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| Title: Re: The Plague of Fear |
04 Mar 2004 03:52:48 PM |
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Run, run, run... we're all gonna die!
The Psychedelick Pope
Saint Isidore of Laytonville
^^ Patron Saint of the Internet ^^
^^
http://apple2.org.za/gswv/me
AOXOMOXOA and ENESSA QUA ONNICA
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