- "The great tragedy of like is not that men perish,
but that they cease to love." --W. Somerset Maugham
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- The state of man and his indifference-hardness of heart-and
disconnect with humanity does not have to be thought of as those ill-bred,
illiterate savages out there somewhere; so unlike ourselves! No, the barbarism,
callous disregard, and cavalier bantering and joking of others deprivations
and impoverished state of being, exists right in the line of peace protestors
you march with this day. War and Peace march together, therefore canceling
each other out. Simple deduction.
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- For example; the essence of peace that we march for,
drum for, chant for, scream for etc., in the numerous events we run off
to attend with our groups of intimate acquaintances; appears in many instances
(certainly not all) moments or weekends of revelry, camaraderie, and the
rush of new experiences; with a disconnect as to the seriousness of the
times and the reasons or meanings of what peace really means? I sincerely
believe that the women holding forth their vigil in Washington today are
probably closer to the message than any.
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- I was asked to join a peace vigil today and would not.
The person doing the inviting had just a few short days before called my
home with the most rabid and vindictive of language towards others in the
community. Local ineptness, lack of commitment had him on a rampage of
planned revenge. Now why would I put myself in the company of such hatred
and hypocrisy in shouting forth peace? No, in my mind, the calling forth
of peace, if not first addressing those perverse actions of injustice,
deprivation, illegalities, corruption, and sufferings of one's own community,
is a rather futile, feel good exercise for oneself and own self-aggrandizement.
Empty-nothingness. Recreation.
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- Three different instances, these past few days, showed
the disregard and boredom for the less exciting, less visible, less recognized
events of speaking peace to situations of importance; in the lackluster
of stifled, predictable meetings of appointed and elected officials,
making, or rather not making, life enhancing decisions for the betterment
of their constituents. This continues because of the apathy, passivity,
and lack of persevering commitment of informed citizens. These same citizens
think nothing of leaving in the dead of night for an event hundreds of
miles away that promises an emotional fix, an ego-trip, with little demands
on an individual level. Like voyeuristic, events groupies, they experience
vicariously, through the work of others, a sense of accomplishment and
involvement. They do not communicate, inform, or educate their communities
upon their return, of information or knowledge gained from such participations,
but like junkies look anxiously for their next fix.
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- A city council meeting, all male, had a local woman running
a soup kitchen begging for funds, refused. A legislative committee meeting,
mostly male, went unchallenged by concerned citizens, as legislators protected
the moneyed interests of industry. And lastly, an appointed all male
board, in a cavernous steel trussed dreary room, had bloated, satiated,
leering, egocentric, out-of-town and out-of-state officials, having free
reign in making decisions for industry, which would not only result in
financial but health impacting decisions for the local community. The one
citizen in attendance was certainly not a threat or hindrance. Someday,
citizens will lament, "Who let this happen?"
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- Whether on the local, state or domestic level, decision
making is left to mostly all male boards or committees, the results being
disastrous. Even when a few women happen to be given token appointments,
it makes little difference, in that the power structure overwhelms, and
despite their best intentions, they end up taking on masculine attributes,
rather than introducing the alien thought that perhaps the whole structure
needs to be transformed to accommodate the concerns and needs of the people
rather than corporate interests!! What a novel idea!
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- The men in these various venues are focused only on the
bottom-line, the business at hand, profits over people. This is not a feminist
rant but a matter of science. I do not belong to, or adhere to fanatical
movements, but am secure enough in my own person to advance the feminine
without a group forming my thoughts. Women are needed in all these decisions,
as they are creatures of emotion (heart persons) while men are creatures
of thinking. NO, this does not mean that men are the intellects, but that
women have a natural gift of "feeling more deeply than men".
Men tend to rigidly 'reason' things out and do not easily feel like women
do.
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- Women feel or express greater and prolonged compassion
for people, especially children, the sick, the handicapped, the suffering
and elderly. Women feel and sense what men do not. A women wounded by
cavalier, insensitive, contemptible, cruelty stays wounded and remembering
forever! Women can easily detect the motives of men, and discern very
quickly when they are lying, pretending, or not to be trusted. Women are
made to be special "sensing beings" behind men to warn them of
impending dangers, deceptions, subterfuge, empty rhetoric. The reasoning
and many times pride of men, cause hidden traps to elude them, and even
blatant ones!!! The, "I don't need your advice or silly prattle"
arrogant attitude, coupled with a 'King of the hill' mentality of men,
can blind them from seeing dangerous pitfalls! It must be noted that some
women have similar characters!
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- A women will remark, "I know that I know. I don't
have the details and can't explain the exactness of the wheeling and dealing
but this is wrong, this is a scam, this is a joke". Men, used to black
and white reasoning it out, dismiss what they identify as hysteria, hormonal
or emotional yammering, much to their detriment I might add. Because
men see such communications as "non-rational" and therefore unintelligent
they can lead groups, communities into dire straits. On a national scale
this arrogance can lead to unthinkable war!!
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- The left side of our brains is more for functions that
relate to language-based skills, mathematical calculation, decision making,
writing and speech. The right side of the brain analyzes sensory information
and relates the body to the sensory environment. Interpretative centers
in this right side permit the identification of familiar object by touch,
smell, taste or feeling' it is also concerned with spatial visualization
and analysis. Women are more controlled by the right side of their brains
than the left. However, the two hemispheres are not independent of each
other. It's a matter of common sense then, that whether it be in a relationship,
group, committee, political body or security council the whole of humanity
is best served when equal gifts, insights, and intellect are shared! Little
wonder, because this is not practiced, that the world is in such chaos,
mayhem and violence!
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- The body politic, the corporate world, the military-industrial
complex and world leadership, is for the most part male dominated. Not
good. With emotions, feelings, compassion and discernment missing, is it
any wonder that money and conquest rules the day? The result is that war
is reasoned as the solution to any crisis. Despite the mimed tsk, tsk,
of caring for people, liberation, humanitarian needs etc., please, it's
about plunder, profit and power. The feeble sound bytes of freedom, liberty,
flag, apple pie, and democracy, is the fast food fare for the ignorant
masses. That's why intelligent women aren't buying it!!
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- There's no woman or group of informed-studied-women,
who are sitting around inventing micro-wave weapons, vaporizing fire bombs,
cluster shrapnel that shreds children like coconut, or napalm to melt the
skin of drenched children!! No women decided it was a great idea to drop
food packets, the same size and color of cluster bombs on civilians! It's
not women who are being trained in the School of the Americas (Georgia)
to go back to their homelands and brutalize, rape, torture and savage their
own people!! It's not women who are beating clubs on shields, gassing and
stomping peaceful protestors to the ground! It's not women who slaughtered
the students in China demonstrating for democracy! It's not women torturing
human beings in the most sadistic manners imagined! It's not women who
drench their communities with toxins, chemicals, heavy metals and call
it "acceptable". It wasn't a female sharpshooter who shot off
the head of Vicki Weaver holding her baby or a woman that shot little Sammy
Weaver in the back. The examples are numerous.
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- It's not women who salivate over maps in bunker war-rooms,
planning the annihilation and genocide of millions of innocent civilians.
It's not women who went, "Aha, let us use radiated depleted uranium
that cuts through metal like butter! Who gives a damn that we poison the
troops, the civilians and the environment forever. It'll be fun and it's
a good way to get rid of the stockpiles of nuclear waste! "
- No, it's the left side of the brain that plans war,
the left side that's become warped, sickened and perverted! War is organized
violence between large groups of people. War is armed strife, the purpose
of which is to kill, maim, poison and slaughter other HUMAN BEINGS and
destroy their land and property. War is the worship of death.
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- War is spending in two hours (left brain-sick thinking)
on armaments what it does in a whole year on children. War, "Shock
and Awe", plans to fire 31 missiles per hour in a two day period,
on a trapped, innocent population to LIBERATE them!! This is a left brained
group that needs to be institutionalized! War is pre-emptive strikes and
mutual assured destruction. The world now contains in excess of more than
50,000 nuclear weapons. There is no defense against nuclear weapons! Even
the evangelicals and huckster TV evangelists have hopped on the Armageddon
bandwagon thinking they are part of a crusade to fulfill Revelations-chapter
16. The deluded fools! Wolves in sheeps clothing. They're afraid they
won't be in on the gravy train of unconstitutional "Faith-Based"
money handouts!
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- Herman Wouk, in writing The Winds of War, asks, "How
is it that men of good will gave and still give their lives to war?"
Why do men (some stupid women) go to war knowing its dangers and its wickedness?
War has always been with us. Only four years in the past 2,000 have been
free of war somewhere on the globe! If we live in what Lawrence Langer
has called "the age of atrocity"; it is because of the scale
of our death-making, life-destroying, earth destroying practices. The
causes of war are to be found in warped human personalities and social
systems run amuck! There are times when psychologically/financially war
is thought easier than peace.
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- Listening to the language of today, the people have been
programmed, conditioned into identifying the horror of 9-11 as directly
connected with Iraq. Makes no difference that 15 of the box-cutting wielding
terrorists were from Saudi Arabia and the other four from Egypt. Tell
a lie often enough, like Hitler said, and the bigger the lie the more believable.
And so we feel a righteous indignation to settle the score! What an exhilarating
feeling, that in identifying the other group as 'evil' we are eradicating,
or so we're told, evil from the world. John Adams, our Second President,
noted that Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond
the comprehension of the weak and that it is doing God's service when it
is violating all His Laws. The temptation of power is to assume that its
power is a sign of virtue and that the world therefore needs its rule and
influence. Iraq to be 'liberated' into McPeace! and McDemocracy. It's
not what is right but who is right?
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- And so thousands upon thousands meeting and planning
and speaking of war. Millions in the meantime, are marching for Peace.
What is this peace people drum for, march for and petition for? Freedom
from war or civil disorder? The absence of armed conflict? Utopia? What?
Peace is first of all wholeness in the sense of integrity. Peace, does
not have to be sought out in the rush of thousands, but comes to an individual
who has unified within him/herself the various dimensions of his/her personality
such that their actions are not rooted in the negation of other life.
The world 'shalom' (peace) has the same root as shalem, whole; it is peace
which confers harmony on beings in one's community and the world.
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- Peace is wholeness, harmony, blending, acceptance of
the self and of others as we are in our scarred and scared realness. Where
there is peace there is freedom so that each individual can develop fully
in ways that persons desires without criticism, mockery or ridicule. Where
there is peace there is humility for no one can claim to know and possess
The Truth. Where there is peace there is forgiving. Conflict and disagreement
are part of the human condition. Peace has us resolve these without violence.
Peace is the presence of Justice. Where there is true peace there is a
true sense of community. Peace requires much more work than war. It requires
the total giving of ourselves, not in penciled moments, but in wisdom.
The wisdom in knowing that no other human being is truly our enemy. Enemies
are those things that threaten life; poverty, disease, hunger, ignorance,
cruelty, and violence.
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- Peace is not a movement of others but a movement within
ourselves. We run hither and yon for this peace, kicking our neighbors
into the gutter in our quest! Who cares if they're hungry or poisoned,
we're about finding peace!!! Peace is not found through vulgar signs, rabid
labeling or hateful bickering between differences of opinion.....paradoxically,
this is warring while one professes peace! Peace is a state of mind-a shared
vision of caring, compassion, kindness, sharing, right where we exist.
It is senseless going out to speak peace if we take war with us!
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- Thycydides, writing some 2,400 years ago, said: "The
politicians on each side were armed with high sounding slogans. Both boasted
that they were servants of the community and both made the community the
prize of the war. the only purpose of their policy was the extermination
of their opponents, and to achieve this they stopped at nothing. Where
no contract or obligation was binding, NOTHING could heal the conflict,
and since security was only to be found in the assumption that NOTHING
was secure, everyone took steps to preserve himself and no one could afford
to TRUST his neighbor." Hmmm....the more things change the more they
remain the same. And so the people cry "Peace Peace and there was
no Peace."
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