Thursday, April 19, 2007

April 19th - Reflecting on Mass Murder and Cave Man Mentality

My great-great-great-great grandfather was Colonel James Barrett, the head of the militia at Concord, Massachusetts on April 19, 1775. The battles at Lexington and Concord that day were the start of America’s War of Independence. As it happens – and I have confirmed through Daughters of the American Revolution records -- two other great-great-great grandfathers fought at Concord and at Lexington that day as well.
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While part of me wants to crow about my "revolutionary blood," the pacifist in me remembers that these battles actually undercut a very successful non-cooperation movement against trade or other relations with Britain. They gave the British an excuse to raise an army to crush the rebels through murder most foul.
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And more than 100 people, American and British, died on April 19, 1775 itself. Evidently they were all combatants, so does that mean it was not murder? And let's not forget the tens of thousands of indigenous Native American Indian people who had died from outright murder in the almost 300 earlier years of colonization, not to mention the millions who died of starvation and disease.
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But fast forwarding to modern times, April 19 is also the anniversary of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) 1993 assault with CS gas and massive military tanks on the Branch Davidian church and home outside of Waco, Texas. The attack resulted in 76 deaths, mostly of women, children and the elderly. See my book THE DAVIDIAN MASSACRE, a systematic analysis of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) and FBI crimes against the Davidians.
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BATF had come in shooting first, from the ground and from helicopters, murdering six Davidians. They had to keep the rest of the Davidian witnesses to their crimes in there long enough to have an excuse to destroy all evidence of illegal gun fire in order to protect agents from prosecution. And so FBI finally managed to destroy the evidence -- and so many inconvenient witnesses -- 51 days later.
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A disgruntled Gulf War Veteran who had witnessed American tanks bulldozing and burying living Iraqis went insane upon seeing that obviously intentional mass murder on television just two years later. Two years after that that veteran, Timothy McVeigh, blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, murdering 163 people.
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On April 20, 1999, as Bill Clinton mercilessly bombed and murdered civilians in Serbia, two loners at Columbine High School murdered 12 students and a teacher. They did so on the birthday of the third greatest mass murder of the 20th Century, Adolph Hitler. (China's Mao Tse-Tsung and the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin coming in first and second.) Fox News provides a whole list of school shootings in America over the last 10 years! And now an obviously psychotic Cho Seung-Hui has killed another 32.
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And not to let Howard K. Stern off the hook (see entry below), remember FBI killed the Davidians to get rid of witnesses. New reports state Anna Nicole Smith blamed her son Daniel's death on Howard giving him methadone, his very first "hit." And Howard definitely had reasons to want to keep Daniel sedated. After all, the card of the private detective Daniel allegedly was considering hiring to spy on Howard was found on his dead body. Howard must have feared what the grieving, and presumably relatively non-drugged Anna might say, once on the stand at Daniel's inquest. Howard Stern is suing Anna's mother and her attorney for libel and slander for alleging Stern's involvement in both Daniel and Anna's deaths. I have a feeling THAT case will be dropped the second the inquest is completed. Either way, the mother may not be as crazy and evil as Howard would like everyone to think.
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Well, enough pondering the acts of obsessed madmen -- not that the news media will let us do anything else! Fear keeps people tuning in to make sure someone is protecting them - from evils real, imagined and fabricated!
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Of course, as long as the media keep pushing out of the limelight George Bush's attempts to demonize Iran by focusing on private crimes and massacres, we might be tempted to feel safe from war. But then who was the happiest man in the world that 9-11 came along? (Besides Dick Cheney and Ariel Sharon, of course.) Remember Gary Condit? And the constant news stories about the then representative's affair with the missing young Chandra Levy? The speculation that he murdered her to keep her quiet? Those stories immediately disappeared and slipped down the post-9/11 memory hole.
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So despite the hopes of so many, Americans and Iranians, a U.S. military strike on Iran may be near. The U.S. can't keep those three aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf forever. And Israel's leader Ehud Olmert has made it clear that if Bush doesn't attack, Israel will. And then Bush will be forced to come in, at a time perhaps less convenient and more costly to the U.S.
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Nuclear weapons, if not the first day weapon of choice, will be used to crush Iran should it retaliate against an attack - especially if it uses missiles against gulf oil targets, U.S. troops and the Green Zone in Iraq, or Israel. Millions of Iranians could be dead in hours; tens of millions in weeks. And, if the Russians freak out at nuclear weapons exploding just hundreds of miles from their borders, half of humanity could be dead before the summer solstice. (See some scary nuclear war videos here.)
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Last night I was shocked when a news broadcast of the Virginia Tech madman's video rant about mass murder suddenly was interrupted by a Geico add chirping: "So easy, even a cave man can do it!"
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Was universal consciousness trying to send us a not very subtle message: EVOLVE BEYOND VIOLENCE OR DIE! Transcend god and state. Get into consciousness and community.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We may want to stick our heads in the sand because the images and what they represent offend our sensibilities. I understand that many are in excruciating pain from the loss of loved ones and cannot bear the thought of looking at the person who inflicted this heartache. On the surface this appears to be a clear case of a mentally disturbed individual venting his rage on innocent lives and therefore, our habit is to dismiss it in our minds as an abnormality, a deviation from the norm, but in actuality this is indicative of a very complex phenomenon exemplifying the direction we are going in as a country and ultimately, a species. Our modern culture has seen an over abundance of violent TV shows & movies, violent lyrics in music, cruel and angry reality shows, portrayal of mean-ness as the ultimate form of entertainment. There is a preoccupation with body image, physical appearance, money and so on... look at us, we worship the likes of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan whose lives are a series of partying, drugs and sex.... Our children are excessively exposed to these themes, images and messages at a very young age. Psychology 101: Children live what they learn. When the predominance of the information children receive from society is of this nature, it then becomes their sense of reality. They believe that these are the things that constitute our experience and existence as human beings…. where is the over abundance of images depicting love, compassion, kindness? We are creating a generation of superficial, plastic, selfish people where the great search in life is about excess and trying to appease an inexhaustible craving for physical pleasure. Our greatest error is thinking that each thing is separate unto itself. For every action there is a reaction and everything is connected, so we are sadly misguided in thinking that what we portray in the name of entertainment does not have a tremendous impact on our children's psyche and present the foundation of their beliefs..... There is no one thing that causes an individual to reach breaking point, instead it is the culmination of everything he has ever experienced in his life and the impressions left upon his psyche, lest we forget all those children who endure physical, sexual, mental and emotional abuse. These experiences are assimilated and ultimately create a toxic fusion of energies and emotions. Children today are feeling more alienated and dis-jointed than ever, as parents are caught up in the "fight for survival" spending more time and energy at work ultimately leaving less and less time for raising their children in a balanced and harmonious manner. Whilst in the mind of the parent what they are doing is in the best interest of the child as they can provide more material things.... the truth is, a child would much rather a sincere hug and the attention of a parent than the latest barby doll or video game.... Do you not think that the 4-6 hours they spend playing bloody video games or watching television shows that depict screaming, cruel and out of control people are laying the foundation of their belief system? Needless to say, the horse is already out the gate and it will take awareness from the majority to recognize it is heading in the wrong direction. I pray that we wake up before many more are unnecessarily slaughtered by these mostly affected minds who in the midst of their darkness, are screaming for us to heed the call....