March 30, 2004
babysoft

I am always about this far from going postal, or nuclear, or (use whatever is the latest euphemism for senseless misdirected rage).  Smash the plate.  Break the computer.  Put the coffee cup through the wall.  Hurt myself or my stuff, as if that proves—like an unheard scream into the unsuffered night—that it is all fucking senseless; all the 'justified' violence, the imposed suffering of legions of poor, the necessary aggression of those who possess power against those who lack it.  Unjustifiable.  Senseless. 

Rage is immediately accessible, while it takes patience, work, and tears to access the more significant emotions deep down, closer to our true selves.  Closer to the truth. 

There is a softness in me, a patch of baby-tender flesh perfectly preserved someplace deep within me.  It is the reason I wouldn't bend my knees when I had the rope around my neck.  It is the reason I didn't die during my recent illness.  That exquisitely sensitive place in me, concealed beneath layers of fear and scars of rage, possesses a power greater than any violence I will ever know. 

Learning to trust in that power is the trick.

Posted at 12:34 AM | Comments (1)
March 27, 2004
state secrets
A former FBI wiretap translator [Sibel Edmonds] with top-secret security clearance, who has been called "very credible" by Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has told Salon she recently testified to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States that the FBI had detailed information prior to Sept. 11, 2001, that a terrorist attack involving airplanes was being plotted.

...in October 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to dismiss the Edmonds case, taking the extraordinary step of invoking the rarely used state secrets privilege in order "to protect the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States."

from the Salon article by Eric Boehlert, reprinted at t r u t h o u t.org

Is anyone still surprised?  The State has a legitimate right to secrecy for protecting the interests of the People.  But the interests of the State have diverged from the interests of the People.  This bothers only a few.

We tolerate invalid elections.  We passively support the building of a masive, world-dominating empire.  We forfeit our power to the abusive State, because it is easier than revolution. 

There will be an end to this, and I hope it will be in my lifetime.  The sado-masochist in me hopes that end will be particularly cataclysmic.  But that is just my unresolved rage and frustration, and it's not what I really want, anyway.  What I really want is difficult to define; I want to let go of wanting, to release these attachments I have spent a lifetime cultivating. 

I saw an offensive statement on a war memorial: "Freedom Is Not Free."  That's a lie.  The freedom of the State to do as it pleases is not free, and it is the People who pay with the lives of our young, and we pay with the demolition of our own souls for letting it happen.  When will we ever learn?  Is anyone still surprised? 

Posted at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)