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Special Update
Voices of Spencer Creek Valley
Reflections on Various Terrorisms
"We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us" by Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo
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Life on the Forty-fifth Parallel
How Many Innocents May Be Saved?
by Ryan Ramon
The sky above Spencer Creek Valley is
silent, bright blue with delicate white clouds. The last two days are filled with
peace and quiet. Songs of thrushes and the frogs waiting for the rains, come on strong.
The cows on the hillside meadow moo to one another. What are they complaining about?
Except for the sounds of light traffic on the highway into Eugene, it is as if we
live a time-warp. It is like early Sunday mornings when we can hear what is usually
muted out by the traffic and airplanes all day. Unfortunately, this blessing of country
calm is not because we have reduced fossil fuel travels or converted to soundless
solar planes but to the fury of dedicated terrorists who struck the East Coast taking
so many innocents with them. Ironically for these terrorists striking at symbols
of USA hegemony, most of the thousands who have died were just working folks. We
will be mourning and thinking of all this for a good long time to come. And that
is as it should be.
Here out in the West, we woke up to the dreadful news. The first human contact I
had after the news of the disaster was meeting Monika on her run in the forest. We
both had our dogs with us. We were surrounded by peace in the golds and greens of
our far away forest, trying to picture what was happening in New York and Washington,
DC. Monika asked, how could such hatred exist for someone to do such a thing? I had
a clue to her question but I could see she needed to run again, so our mutual exchange
of regret ended. But I kept thinking about her question.
People speak of the shock -- but often after when one experiences natural and/or
human-made disasters, or sudden death or diseases, the shock becomes more a déjà
vu -- anything unthinkable is possible. The shock may not be suddenly feeling unsafe
but realizing we continue, no matter how unsafe we feel. The nature of life itself
is the nature of uncertainty and change. My mother always cautioned us to live as
if each hour could be our last. To make each day count, to accept that we are "on
loan" to each other. There is no life without death. It hurts us as a nation
to have our territorial sovereignty violated by such massive attacks but we must
ask several questions to make sense of this tragedy that keeps the skies quiet for
a few days.
Who are the terrorists? Beyond the usual
suspects for this massive attack, I submit that we as a nation have been enduring
terror of many kinds for a long time. If we stop to think of the cumulative loss
of life, it is staggering. Historically, governmental policy was to eliminate the
first settlers of this continent, American Indians. The legacy of genocide and betrayal
are still with us. Many survivors live in some of the most economically depressed
areas of the world, the reservations. Black Americans are still living with the social
and economic legacies of slavery. How many innocents have died?
Also at the top of my list are many of the Fortune 500 corporations of the US --for
example, WR Grace, General Electric, Westinghouse, and Pacific Gas & Electric,
Ford Motor Co., Weyerhaeuser, Firestone Tire Co., just to name a few. Love Canal,
Three Mile Island, dioxin, poisoned wells and rivers, landslides, mass cancer, deathly
defective products and more than we have space here. Think of the pharmaceuticals
with their flawed drug trials, lack of reasonable pricing for AIDS drugs, etc. Think
of Archer-Daniels Midland and its leadership in genetically modified seeds here and
abroad. Most of us have eighty-three measurable toxins in our blood. I am not speaking
of honest mistakes, but of knowledgeable plans of expending hundreds and thousands
of human lives to serve profit then cover up. Is this not a kind of terrorism, also?
How many innocents have died?
Think of the airline industry itself -- United, ValueJet, Alaskan Airlines and so
many others -- often sacrificing passengers to lethal dangers rather than fixing
a known problem. This temporary shut has accomplished what years of our fear of flying
has not done. I hope they are using this down time to overhaul the planes for total
safety upgrades. But somehow I doubt it. How many innocents have died?
Objectively, our own government and its quasi-governmental agencies (IMF, World Bank
and WTO) have been one of the chief terrorists of the world -- "the cop of the
world" has directly and indirectly enforced a long series of military and monetary
policies with tragic consequences in Latin America, Africa, Asia, Middle East, Yugoslavia,
that when examined, give us insight as to why there is such hatred for the USA. Let
us not forget history as we struggle to come to grips with the current national disaster.
How many innocents have died? Here and abroad?
If we "buy" into a spiral of
revenge, this madness will escalate. But what can we do? How do we make a difference?
How do we continue? How do we demand justice? Through international bodies like the
U.N. or the Hague (where we don't have a good track record of compliance...) or
bombs on more innocents? Perhaps, the best way we can ensure all these innocent
victims have not died in vain is to actively work for peace and justice, locally
and internationally, here and now! But how? How do we build a peace on top
of the rubble of buildings, dreams, disastrous policies? How do we as a country and
as a society alter the crash course of our past history? That is the challenge. Stand
up to the media and governmental elite and say, "No more war. A just society
is a peaceful society." How do we make peace and justice?
Write West By Northwest.org and tell us what you are doing to work for peace
and justice. Are you raising your voice against war? Are you teaching a child? Are
you going to demonstrate for unionization at your place of work? Supporting farmers
and workers abroad? Are you supporting a piece of just legislation? Helping a citizens
organization stop sprawl or cell towers? Please share with other readers your experiences
in making each day count. How may innocents may be saved?
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