Meditations on Freedom
I’ve been puzzling over a recent bout of apathy that seems to have come over nearly everyone I know. It seems as though, in recent days, the whole world has gone mad. Haiti is destroyed and facing massive “reformation” under the IMF; privatization and increases in cost of Haiti’s electricity and water threaten to return this nation to its former bondage. Nevermind the fact that bottlenecks are being purposefully and strategically imposed on Haiti’s citizens. 13 cases of torture of Palestinian children in Israeli custody are being brought before the U.N. Saudi warplanes are decimating Yemen, again. News coverage largely ignored the footage shot by Yemeni civilians of a U.S. airstrike now nearly four weeks ago.
Oh, and it now comes out that the Council of Europe wants to investigate whether or not Swine Flu was a hoax. Shocking.
I do not want history to disappear in apathy. I have to admit, life would be much easier for all of us if we just accepted our role as cash cows for global privatization of every aspect of our lives. It would be easier if we could just turn off that nagging, aching pain in our hearts ever time we hear the word, “Freedom.” It would be easier if we could just accept that Terrorists want to Kill Us All and that Islam is a bastion of the Antichrist.
But I can’t. I won’t, and I never will.
And my reasoning works like this. Would you trust an institution, belief system, or collection of individuals who knowingly:
A) Interred Japanese-American citizens during WWII.
B) Systematically forced the removal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, leaving them homeless, to fullfill a dream of a Zionist state of Israel, which completely goes against every teaching in Christianity, Judaism, and any person with a conscience.
C) Killed a President.
D) Killed a prophet of true change and hope.
E) Killed more than 1 million children.
F) Do I even have to mention 9/11? And the ensuing trauma perpetrated against Iraq and Afghanistan, nations that supposedly, according to the “official” story, didn’t even comprise half of the ethnic ratio of the 19 “hijackers”? Not that Saddam Hussein was a saint, but who put him in power in the first place? One hint: it wasn’t Osama Bin Laden.
Do you trust them? Do you really trust them, over evidence like this? Do you know people who have felt the burn of their brand on their skin? Have you worked with Palestinians, talked with them, shared stories of loved ones? Do you know Iraqis? Afghanis? Do you know any Muslims at all? What about South Africans who survived Apartheid? I do. I’ve listened to their stories. And I am sorry to say that I don’t know any Haitians, yet, or Rwandans, or Bosnians, or Venezuelans. But I do know one thing that connects us all. We are humans. We have souls. We have a spirit that is eternal and will not be destroyed by any materialist imperialism. They can take our bodies, our lives, our homes, our possessions; they can decimate our environment, privatize our right to exist; but they cannot take our true freedom. We are immortal beings having a human experience. When this is realized, no bondage can contain us.
