Wednesday 23rd August 2006 | Start The Revolution Forum
Original article entitled "Protester Shot with Rubber Bullets. With Video"

Yeah, it's a provocative statement, and it is meant so, as well as also meant constructively. I watched the video, read the comments, and I'm more than a wee bit ticked off. I quote:

"This will make you angry or it should. This is whats coming people...Cops shooting PEACEFUL protestors. How is that protecting and serving the people???? The worst bit is the inhumane repsonse of the police after this, laughing, joking, lack of empathy. They should be ashamed of themselves."

In particular "This is whats coming people...". Totally Wrong. This is not what's coming, it's partly that idea that keeps us asleep. The reality I think people are having trouble adjusting to is THIS IS WHAT IS HERE RIGHT NOW! What's coming is far, far worse. If we don't stop it.

I can't say it enough times and haven't figured out a way to communicate it more forcefully, but every time and every day events like this ARE happening - and it's long past the time to keep thinking "I'd like to know what he thought", "I'd like to know how he could do this" (and keep his job), "How could they?", "It's obscene...", etc.

These are words of deep denial. And as understandable as that is, the reality is people do not usually open their umbrellas while they are still thinking "It's going to rain, I can see the signs." (Corollary: People who think they are free do not struggle for freedom). They usually wait until rain actually begins to drop. Well, it's really simple, THAT video (and yes I am quietly and coldly perturbed (how's that for suppression?)) is another bucketful of rain. So why aren't the umbrellas flying open?

I can only imagine. Maybe it's the "Linus" (of cartoon fame) syndrome at work, and we just don't want to give up our various security blankets of "They wouldn't", and hope all will return to normal after the summer holidays, or by "Christmas", or in the next election cycle. No chance. The wolves have been loosed, and, as the video shows, with updated accents, high-tech weapons, and jack-boot attitudes ("..winning team.." crap) they look awfully familiar, circa Germany, 1939 and thereon.

Outrage in the face of such evidence is natural and healthy, and can be a powerful energy when harnessed for change, but it is a fuel that only the absolutely scared, selfish, amnesiac, fools and/or malcontents waste into only "How could theys..." of all shades - while missing or ignoring the rapidly massing shadows of all too familiar faces, stories, and unifroms gathering in the front yard of our lives - whilst then going home for some shut eye and quality time with the kid or loved one. Darn it, it's showtime, and we're out of "Another '5 minutes' dear before we get ready and go" time.

So what can YOU do? Everything you can. Sign the online petitions; get up, get out and vote, and take a voting friend with you; actively and meaningfully protest the HUGE voting machine scandal robbing you blind; stop buying your stuff from those parties intent on your economic and political extinction (e.g. Wal-Mart, or new US cars with event data recorders on board), even if it means driving further (I know, higher fuel costs) or buying something different.

Give up the ego and peer-2-peer pressure and get a cheaper whatever - while you still have a chance to get your economic life back under YOUR control (or didn't you get the news about Gov. Pataki of New York vetoing a voted-by-and-for-the people bill that would have put a ceiling on what credit cards could charge you (now 30%-35% - even when you pay on time? He vetoed it. No state has stopped this yet, and, heck, even a mosquito doesn't impose such a blood tax when it feeds on you. If they did there'd be no mosquitos alive today!)

More than anything else, find out about the nasties oozing expensively (your tax dollars) and hungrily out of your various government bodies and TELL everyone, 'cause the slime is, if you've noticed, horribly toxic, and its release is becoming 'normal'. There's more, and for your life, I'm sure you can think about and identify what to do for your own sake and safety, if for no one elses. So get selfish! 'Cause on present observation you/we appear to be too afraid or too controlled to do even that for ourselves - or maybe all those mostly American TV ads, Television shows, and Movies have programmed us to wait passively for a hero.

All I'm really trying to say is that the way the media, commentators, and all who describe what's going on do so, do so as if what is happening on a larger and larger scale is an aberration, a mistake, an accident, an error of judgement, or bad apples, or correctable with apologies (Ritter on video), or just plain horrible etc. It is as if no one quite believes that the same folks who practise "Guantanamo", "American Gulag", and Rendition are going to bring that sh*! home. But they have.

This is a wildly optimistic view (as I see it), that is truly deep in ostrich country, and a suicidal example of the kind of amnesiac, "no I don't do current-events-never-mind-history" logic that will have a person waking up surprised and angry in a detention center or concentration camp for malcontents.

To visualize it, having my a** stuck in the air while I'm deaf, dumb, and blind, but can feel the approaching vibrations of some giant agricultural harvesting machine that has mistaken my sky-pointing rear-end for some ripe-for-the plucking fruit, (or, as I am now increasingly aware, has decided so) does not seem to me to be a life-prolonging way to interpret what the f*&! is going on right now.

Why don't I wake up and pull what remains for brains out of the ground and, if nothing else, run or fight for my life? Why don't you?

THAT video is another bloody bathful of water out of the sky. Is it enough to wake YOU up? 'Cause I'm UP. And there's an awful lot to do out here to stop that F6 hurricane history has been brewing making it to your neighbourhood.

Only Love heals.