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Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2005

THE WORLD is in a truly astonishing state -- benighted, and somehow, if I really use my imagination, awakening to its condition and to the potential we have. We have gone through a long, long phase of apathy; that is the word. I've always been annoyed by this word, but if you break it down to its roots, it means not feeling.

Four news stories from yesterday reflected the shape of reality in the dark sense of the word, three of them involving Iraq. To me it seems like the real stories reflecting what you might call the light side are happening on the individual level. And it is true that a lot of people have now become involved in solutions -- purely through getting involved in rescue and rebuilding efforts in troubled areas, from New Orleans to Kashmir.

And kudos to everyone brewing biodiesel in their backyard.

Seeing protests yesterday in the UK over China's occupation of Tibet, timed with the official state visit of President Ho, was like watching a hole in the illusion open up. Her Majesty prancing around with the leader of a country that executes 10,000 people a year. It was good to finally see real rage being vented over Tibet. T-shirts don't quite make the point.

Then there was seeing the video footage of the wreckage of the car where two of the lawyers for one of Saddam Hussein's co-defendants were caught in an assassination attempt; one was killed and the other injured. There is no way they're going to have a trial for this man; who would testify? How will the jury even survive? At the end of this, Saddam is going to be beatified; he is being made into a martyr. That is dark irony. I suggest they move the trial to California and make the movie at the same time they do the real thing; the film will come out faster and they'll save a lot on the budget doing them at the same time.

The third pertained to birth defects in Iraq since the war began. I don't even have the strength to watch the video documentary on http://truthout.org at this point. But it's linked from the cover of that site if you want to see it. I know it's a stretch for people to care about birth defects in Iraq because it's a challenge to get them to move out of a college dormitory that contains chemicals that cause the same problems (i.e., SUNY New Paltz). Nothing has made me feel like more of an ass than explaining to a college woman that her dorm contains dioxin, having her cheerfully say, "Thanks!" and walking back inside.

The last involved the revelation on Italian television that the United States is using white phosphorous bombs, which burn people alive, on civilians in Iraq (that story is below, via BBC). By any reasonable definition, these are chemical weapons, and they are being used on a civilian population. Honestly, I thought I had read about the last of these in all those Allan Ginsberg anti-Vietnam poems.

I guess we really do have to go through this twice. Warning, it may be inconvenient.

Someone who corresponds with me regularly, Pat Bishop, wrote in tonight, expressing my feelings better than I could.

"I'm sitting here with stunned, deepening grief for the unspeakable crimes and torment we have caused these innocent people, who happened to be standing over oil. No, we didn't just kill them, we destroyed them hideously with the deepest evil and cruelty ever witnessed in this world."
 
Of the people who fraudulently created the war -- familiar names, top US government officials, all of whom are now being criminally investigated -- she said, "Now that the lid is off and they're exposed it's OUR karma" if we do not act.

PS, the most brilliant idea ever -- sending White House officials to ETHICS CLASS! That's like sending the rioters in Clichy-sous-Bous to fire prevention training. Hey, maybe that's not such a bad idea.

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/11/08/bush.ap/index.html