MARAVILLA DEATH AND 9/11
In my home we often speak about harsh realities, killing, death, war, 9/11, the barrio. My eldest son attended a funeral a few weeks ago in East Los Angeles. The body of a 23-year old lay in a coffin. It had been riddled with 9 or 10 bullets. He was a soldier with no uniform, no gun, well read, innocent, not guilty, a warrior, and a martyr for good. Like so many before him and those that never know who is next, I want to blame someone, something, for their murder.
President George Bush is telling the people of Iraq that ending the violence in the street is in their hands. They must assist the American soldiers in capturing those guilty of terrorism in their country. But the question Bush and all of us should be asking and answering is, from where does this violence originate? The people of Iraq were not killing, or bombing anything; it was the government of Saddam Hussein that set the example of how to murder the innocent.
We must ask ourselves, where did our children learn to kill the innocent? Timothy McVeigh learned when he saw federal troops kill men, women and children at Waco. In East Los Angeles, killing the innocent is sanitized by the glorification of war in high schools by military recruiters. “Oh sometimes innocent people die when we drop bombs, sorry.” Governments teach us all that killing the innocent is just the way we do things. It has become a way of life.
What do most mothers tell their children at home? Do not kill. Emma Goldman’s words from June 14, 1917, in a “Speech Against Conscription and War,” still hold true today:
“Prisons have never solved any problems. Guns and bayonets have never solved any problems. Bloodshed has never solved a problem. Never on earth, men and women, have such methods of violence, concentrated and organized violence ever solved a single problem. Nothing but the human mind, nothing but human emotion, nothing but an intense passion for a great ideal, nothing but perseverance and devotion and strength of character—nothing else ever solved any problem.”
So as parents, like those in the streets of Baghdad, here in East Los Angeles we must teach our children ideals greater than war, greater than terrorism, greater than governments.
They must use peace to attain democracy, democracy to maintain peace and change to insure there is a peaceful democracy for all. Violence, revenge and vengeance belong to the animal kingdom where the brain is small and simple, which is what must separate us from the beast. The most brilliant minds of humankind must step forward to seek solutions to hunger, disease, and illiteracy and end the search for profit, greed and violent domination. It must stop on the streets of Baghdad, it must stop on the street corners of East Los Angeles, and it must stop in the minds of all of us who pass a coffin of a young body riddled with bullets. Robert Bracamontes 9/11/03 braco8@msn.com

I enjoyed your little flight into outer space. Must sound great over a bomg.

meanwhile in the real world we have to deal with scumbags like Saddam, Hitler, Chomsky, Stalin, Pol Pot, Arafat and Kim II.

Half those men are dead. The rest aren't anywhere near you.

In the real "real world" we all make decisions about, and affected by violence. Laws intersect with lives, and result in prolonged violence and pain.

Armchair generals and antagonists like Barney should do some self-imposed community service before they sit their pustular asses down in front of the computer and spout off.

I know they're dead, silly. The writer is making the general point that the world should be full of peace and love.

Would that vibe have worked on these men??/

Figure it out.

If the vibe of peace were more widespread, there would be less war, and (excepting Chomsky, who is just a thinker) those men would be fewer in number.

Pacifism isn't an attitude as much as it is a global human project to reduce the amount of war that happens on the planet.

Pacifism's inherently populist, and always finds its strength when people refuse to go to war on behalf of a king, prime minister, president, or corporation.

The enemies of peace, and the friend of war, is the desire for war, a seed of aggression that takes root in national leaders.

Peace through force is almost as bad as war, because it's oppressive. Someone is suffering so that someone else can enjoy peace. It can only last so long, and then war will break out as people strive to liberate themselves from their oppressors.

Pacifism isn't just for peace, but for the destruction of the conditions that create war. That article above revealed the way war is replicated at home, like a fractal that looks similar close up and far away. Pacifism is the counter-fractal, the inversion of the process of war. Pacifism is peace studies, the opposite of military science.

Pacifism isn't just a Buddhist monk who self-immolates, or a flower shoved into the barrel of a gun; both images are repeated like a breakbeat from the 1960s. Pacifism is the study and implementation of conflict resolution. Pacifism happens in conflicts. The site of war, is also the site of peace. Where there's confict, there's opportunity for peace. And just as there are war-hawks at Fox News, there are pacifists in the military.

You don't get a Peace Prize for remaining calm in a yoga pose, or feeling safe with a gun in your hand. You get it when bombs are going off around you, when the police are kidnapping your associates, when the power of the state is being used against your people. You get it when you take the potential to make war, and make peace.

A madman is coming at you with a machete. You've already seen him kill your parents (you being a pacifist allowed him to).

Now he's coming for you saying "I'm going to kill you".

You have a loaded gun in your hand. What do you do?

Animals rarely practice vengeance; they use violence to obtain food, protect their territory, drive away rivals and potential rivals, and to defend themselves from preditors. And they rarely kill members of their own species. They don't seem to have any desire to, and in any case don't usually have the means to kill another animal of similar size and strength because they don't have weapons like guns or bombs.
As for Barney, he's never been threatened by any of the people he mentioned; he just wants a moral justification for his love of violence and death. And it is not likely that anyone has ever chased after him with a machete, unless it was a spouse or parent enraged beyond human endurance by his creepy behavior.

Barney, shut up! Bush is a liar, thief, druggie, alcholic, murder, deserting, punk. And we will see him and his group all taken away in cuffs or maybe if were all really good it will be like Shawshank Redemtion or Marie Antionette with off with her head...just like Bush.

Who cares what you have to say...life is too short to listen to pathetic little men who's names are "BARNEY" for crying out loud...Barney? M.o.u.s.e.

It reaffirms all my prejudices about "Activists".

Thank you all very much!!

I'm so glad we have free speech in this country so I don't have to "shut up" as the Stalinist in the previous comment suggested.