1 post tagged “war”
Looking at the stream of horrific images emerging from the latest stage of the ever escalating war of terror, (this time in the Lebanon), it is unbearably difficult to find any meaningful language to describe what I am seeing. In fact I can't find any adequate words, and I don't know how to relate to it, other than with a mixture of revulsion, anger, fear, pity, and some measure of intellect and prayer.
Pictures of young Lebanese children, (and adults) with their limbs separated from their bodies, and heads separated from their necks as the result of bomb attacks, don't bear repeated looking at, and I for one didn't want to see them, but I have looked, and having done so, I don't ever want to look again.
We are living in an age of almost casual insanity, where rocket and bomb attacks are claiming lives as I write, and where this occurence is only the latest salvo in a spiraling vortex of war, terror, and barbarity, that seems to be dragging us inexorably towards the threshold of another major World-War. That's if we are not already in one, after all, who announces that these things have become World Wars anyway?
These kinds of events and images are so
terrible, hurtful, and degrading, that they stretch our belief in the
essential quality of good in human beings to a breaking point. They
never fail to appall, and yet, because they are so horrific, they are
not images that we wish to dwell upon. Many people may not have seen
these
particular pictures emerging from Lebanon, because our
mainstream media are carefully screening out many of the much nastier
realities of this war for us. They are as tragic and monstrous as any
that you can imagine.
Those preaching it's message, tell us it is a war to preserve freedom, but it's only boon so far, has been to provide those who deal in death and fear with enormous opportunities for profit and influence.Whilst the rest endure the daily 'mind-war' in the marketplace of ideas that is the media. Exisiting in our compartmentalised mental pods, in varying states of awareness about what is really going on. Those paying attention, are witness to the blanket erosions of freedoms once considered worthy of fighting to preserve.
Today the cost is broken human bodies, and a massive concussive personal and structural body blow to the whole of Lebanese civil society. A quarter (at least), of the entire population has been displaced, and many tens of thousands are fleeing the region. Next month the focus of war may be somewhere else, as another terrible series of days are endured. After all, this is only one terrible snapshot in this ever expanding boundary-less and global war. This is only what's happening on the Israel-Lebanon border this week. Next week, it may be worse, it may be Iraq, or Palestine, or Afghanistan, or any major city anywhere in the world, but one thing we can be sure of, the "war" will still be with us.
I feel like a passive spectator, watching my screen, scanning news-feeds, and channels, as the elite sponsored war machine batters down the isolated pockets of goodwill, happiness, and freedom in the world. I feel in fact, as if I've entered the parallel universe of a dystopian novel, where the political air is thick with the smell of bloodshed, and the airwaves around me seem to be reverberating to the drums of dictatorship. However, I'm not asleep, and this isn't a fantasy. We really live in this kind of world now, and pinching myself awake only confirms that sad and dreadful fact to be true.
Have you noticed that there are always more dead? In this terrible terror war, there are always more casualties, and more bodies. As the latest car bomb rips through an occupied civilian street, or artillery fire rings out in a crowded marketplace, or a bus or train bomb rips through the centre of a major city, there are ALWAYS more dead. We live in an age where laser guided rocket attacks are claiming lives as I write, and I feel as if the human race is tumbling ever more rapidly into a savage and immoral wasteland, where the ends justify the means, and somehow we never seriously question the legitimacy of the lies that guide us.
Everyday our freedoms wither as our governments legislate away our liberties before our eyes, using the perverse logic that they are only doing so to in order to protect our freedom. Could there be a more absurd and dangerous example of doublethink? In this new world emerging before our eyes, it seems that 2+2 does in fact =5, and that we MUST surrender liberty to protect freedom.
Despite the obvious blind absurdity of the assertion, it seems that every day we accept our loss of freedom a little more and thus expect our freedom to be upheld a little less. We are all part of this 'war' now, whether we realise it or not, and I for one can't escape from the hollow feeling of emptiness it engenders in me every day, no matter how many digital infotainment sweeties I nibble to distract me from it's awful realities.
Link : The original site hosting these images has since been taken down. I'm not sure why. There is an archive locate here. However the images are very distressing so please be forewarned.
