Postmodern Collage Poetry

A blog about writing collage poetry, post modern poetry, multi lingual poetry

Monday, May 17, 2004

A Spiral of Death in Iraq

Spain is a medium sized country that completed its youth 500 years ago by
expelling the jews and moors (1492)
enslaving and destroying the Americas (1492-1825) and exporting those riches
to Europe wherein all of European "progress'was financed by the booty.Please
do not try to say Europe has Moral Superiority, it does not; a generation
ago Europe killed the jews, ruled colonial empires, slaughtered people in
Russia for thinking and more. I would put all the horrors that Americans
have committed, and there are many up against all the horrors of Europe who
has done worse? We are all benefiting from exploitation.

Europeans on the whole despise their muslim populations, Romano Prodi,
president of Europe only the other day said that the entrance of Eastern
European nations would rebalance Europe as a continent out of the Christian
tradition. Until very recently a 'german'from Brazil could get a German
passport because of blood while a Turk who lived in Germany for 40 years
could not. Go to the suburbs of Paris or Rome or Berlin and ask those Muslim
populations if they are treated well? I venture to guess that my Pakistani
neighbors here in Chicago are treated much better and are less harrassed
even today.

Europe and the US are part of the same world-wide exploitive system. Who do
you think finances all those 30 day vacations and 'free' socialized
medicine? Exploitation is not just an American problem. Americans exploit
Latin Americans and Europeans Exploit Africans and others this is the reason
we are rich and the rest of the world is poor. Europe has not moral
superiority the Europeans did not invade Iraq because it was not in their
interests to do so it had nothing to do with Morality.

I also must say that while did not agree with Bush on Iraq we have to admit
that we are in war right now to decide what kind of world-view will
succeed. While I totally reject Bush's means I do not believe that the
Islamic Fundamentalism represented by Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden and the rest
is preferable to western democracy. With all its problems would anyone trade
our current flawed system for Saudi Arabia's

We are engaged in a spiral of death, beheadings, abuse of prisoners,
violence, murder, what we need is not screaming or yelling but quiet,
prophetic responses to all this violence. We need a Ghandi, or Saladin or St
Francis someone who can see through all of this and remove the moral
authority from those who have chosen the road of death. the answer to all
this pain and death is to realize that we cannot go on as a world where
Americans, Europeans and Japanese live like kings while the rest of the
world gets only crumbs. But someone needs to challenge all of this in a non
violent way because September 11th is just the beginning of the pain that
this death spiral is causing.