what has changed

[le pire]

I've just gotten back from my grandmother's funeral and it was a little family reunion. I had not seen most of them in more than 10 years, and some of them I met for the first time.

For the most part, my family on my father's side (my american half) is overwhelmingly conservative and blindly republican, so needless to say I was continually barraged with GOP talking points and anti-French slurs... at a funeral no less.

I asked only one question to them, and no one could give me a real answer. And that question was this:

Since this war began- a war that has pretty much been replaced from the public consciousness by Janet Jackson's tit, Scott Peterson's murder, Terri Schiavo's vegetative state and Michael Jackson's love for boys- what has changed for you, the average person? And I don't mean how you "feel," but what has really changed?

-for 1500+ honorable American soldiers, what has changed is their lives are over

-for 11,000+ honorable American soldiers health has been changed to physical injury and/or permanent disability

-for 150,000 (?) Iraqis life has turned to death

- injury and sickness has come to ???,??? Iraqis

So what has changed in our lives?

what, really?

Gas is more expensive, that's certain. The rich are richer and the poor are poorer, sure. But what else? Where's the big salvation, the big hoorah, the big "YEAH, THAT'S what we're fighting for!!!" What? Tell me one way that our lives are truly and tangibly better. I can't think of any.

[jester]

In the fall of 2000 I felt optimistic about the world. Peace was being dragged kicking and screaming into palestine, Northern Ireland was changing, Eastern Europe was stabilising and the EU was expanding to accommodate these countries, Russia was talking with NATO...

Then suddenly... Some Isreali Soldiers killed a 14 year old boy during riots which could easily have been avoided had a certain Bloody minded politician simply not set foot in a place where he wasn't welcome.

George Bush won the whitehouse. USA gave up on democracy and threw away any moral high ground that it thought it had. By time of september 2001 I just wasn't surprised anymore.

What has changed?

I am much more grateful for my life and my own personal mild struggles and I realise that if I had been born in the wrong place, I would have been one of the millions of people affected by Ettienes statistics.

But then you haven't counted the millions of refugees in unstable areas of Africa, the Millions with HIV and the impoverished asian sweatshop workers who make our nice designer clothes.

The whole world is one big facist planet and we happen to be The Master Race, not by colour, not by genes, but by where we live.

Didn't feel nearly so cynical in 1999.

[worldwidese]

Plus ca change. plus ca reste....

It's good that some of us, like Etienne and Jester have managed to tear through the web that the sycophantic Media have shrouded us with regarding what's really going on.

It's bad that most people are sheep and don't start to think for themselves.

It's good that the whole town of Crawford, Texas, including the Mayor, has completely turned off from George Dubyah. ( I got this info from the "Shut Up And Llisten" Team who interviewed me recently in Jackson Square, and who had just come from interviews in Crawford) Call it a Grass Roots Movement starting.

It's bad that under Globalization, we are all being led down the path to Feudalism.

It's good that when people are hurting badly enough they will start a mass movement for change.

It's bad that they wait till they've lost their job, their home, their car and their bank account.

It's good that the pendulum does swing forth as well as back!