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Imagining Peace with John Lennon
[This message comes from an e-mail from Cindy Sheehan.]
Imagine Peace
Cindy Sheehan
Imagine all the people, living life in peace.
John Winston Ono Lennon
October 9, 1940-December 8, 1980
A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.
Yoko Ono Lennon
On October 9th, on
what would have been John Lennon's 67th
birthday, his widow, Yoko Ono is dedicating a peace tower in
Reykjavik,
Iceland in the memory of her husband. There will also be almost a half
a million peace wishes buried in capsules around the tower which is a
blue tower of light extending up to the sky above us.
I received the link
to the Imagine Peace
website while I was on a layover in the airport in Las Vegas, Nv. Still
reeling from the reports of hundreds, if not thousands of Burmese monks
and other humans being slaughtered for protesting against their
oppressive government, it was hard for me to watch all the people
sitting hypnotized at the slot machines, pulling the handles or pushing
the buttons as if the world is not going to hell in George's hand
basket. The dichotomy of business as usual in America compared with
genocides in Darfur and Iraq while I am still and always will be
mourning my son makes me dizzy sometimes.
So,
I made myself close my eyes for a few minutes between planes
and tried
to shut out the bells and whistles of the slots and "imagined" peace.
What would a world at peace look like? What would a world at peace be
like to live in? I have a great imagination but I knew this exercise
would be challenging.
John Lennon called
his song Imagine an "anti-religious, anti-nationalism,
anti-conventional, anti-capitalist" sort of a "Communist manifesto." It
is for sure a utopian vision of a perfect society that unfortunately
can not be achieved by imagining, and probably not at all---but
how
close can we get to this world and how much sacrifice will a world at
peace take from each and everyone of us?
First
of all, imagine a world with no religion. A world where sick and evil
people could not manipulate the masses into believing that the set of
myths and beliefs that they profess are more important or powerful
than
the other's set of myths or beliefs. Israelis could not (with the help
of Christian extremists) tell Palestinians that it is okay to occupy
them or kill them so that the Jews could claim their "Promised Land."
Land promised to whom by whom? Muslims could not proclaim "jihad"
against infidels. There would have been no Nazi holocaust
against Jews;
no Crusades; no holocaust against our own native population; no
black
slavery justified by the Christian scriptures; no George Bush saying
that his Christian God is like a mob-boss ordering him to "hit" the
world. Imagine that!
Secondly,
imagine no countries. No jingoistic worship of banners made of mere
cloth (not spun gold) or arrogant nationalism that gives leaders the
right to kill other human beings just because they do not happen to
live within the same false borders that were artificially drawn many
years ago by empires that have long ago fallen. In this
homeland-istic
fervor it is especially correct to kill those other people if they are
not the same religion as the religion of your state (and don't kid
yourself that the US does not have a state sanctioned religion).
Imagine no armies that in reality kill and get killed for the
imperialistic neo-liberalism that has crept around our globe like a
flesh eating bacteria since the Reagan years. Imagine that.
Imagine
no possessions: This is the crux of our problem. Going back to my
brothers and sisters at the slot machines in Vegas, pulling almost
catatonically on the lever of the One Armed Bandit, for what? To win
the "jackpot" of course! How nice is it of the State of Nevada
to allow
gambling machines in their airports, so we can perchance live the
American dream of buying higher stacks of stuff! On a day that George
vetoed the health of over six-million children here in America, 16,000 children
around the world died of starvation. In a week that we saw murder on a
horrendous scale in Burma, more Iraqis were killed or forced from their
homes by violence: to wander in the desert, or probably off to Syria
where their daughters may be forced into prostitution to help support
the family which should be able to live in peace and relative
prosperity in their own country. Imagine that.
It was
hard for me to imagine or envision peace when I am
terrified because
BushCo is contemplating even more slaughter in the Middle East in Iran
and when Congress, Inc is busy supporting a murderous status quo
that
hurts humans within all borders, even our own.
Peace
will only happen when every member of humanity is guaranteed
prosperity, health and security which will not happen when we here in
the US can't even get off our asses to protest a war that is four and a
half years and hundreds of thousands of bodies old, now.
We
can imagine peace all we want but until each and everyone of us is
willing to sacrifice some of our prosperity (because we have already
had our security robbed from us by the rotten Republicans and complicit
corporate Democrats) true peace---not just the absence of war---will be
as elusive as a morsel of truth or modicum of courage coming out of
Washington, DC.
Voluntary sacrifice
is truly a revolutionary concept here in the United States of America.
So you say you want
a revolution? Imagine that.
For more information:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/tra...
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