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This
section of consumercide.com has been created as a reaction to the horrendous
disasters upon US soil which were witnessed on September 11th 2001. To
preface the writings within this section, some matters must be clearly
articulated and understood about the very reasons why these essays appear
here.
First and foremost, and as stated on the home page of this web site, consumercide in no way condones the use of violence as a means to any end, and the abominable terrorist actions of September 11th 2001 simply reinforce that message. However, something more must be understood than the 'CNN picture' of the world, and there are many highly relevant but far less popularised antecedents to the terrorist attack on the United States. The events of "911" precipitated huge quantities of net discussion in email discussion & chat groups across the net. Participants from all over the world often debated issues similar to those that are discussed in the following essays. Activist and Alternative media web sites are now bulging with such essays, and this is merely consumercide's contribution to the attempt to increase understanding upon the real issues at stake. These discussions and opinions tend to express a common dissent to the 'government issued and approved' picture of events leading up to and following the attacks. Such dissent indicates that the standard rendering by mass media is woefully inadequate in coming to grips with what is really going on, and why it is occurring in the first place. This has been so much the case that even famous mainstream US journalist Dan Rather, in May of 2002, noted that there was a climate of enforced journalistic silence regarding the 'hard questions' that should be asked of the US government after the attack. He likened the situation of 'patriotic' pressure to keep this journalistic silence as a feeling parallel to the oppression of having burning tyres placed around dissident's necks, such as occurred during South Africa's apartheid. And this brings us to the reasons for the inclusion of this section on the web site. If we are not to understand the antecedents to the terrorist attacks, then we cannot in any way move towards a peaceful solution to these profound problems. For peace comes with the real solution to the differences between peoples of the world, not the mere crushing and oppression of one of those peoples and their voice. That is what brought about the events of terror in the first place. The west may single out an individual 'bogey' man or group, but it cannot fight an ideology with anywhere near as much success. Actions must be taken to directly engage with peace. If you do not understand these statements to be of substance now, perhaps they will ring truer to you after reading some of the following essays. click on the button below to continue to the essays... Note:
Consumercide by no means asserts that the contents of all of these essays
are accurate in their entirety, but it does offer a challenge to anyone
to show that the general thrust of these works are less accurate than that
of western mass media and its present coverage of the issues related to
the attacks. Any submissions to this effect, if received, will be posted
on the site.
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We must either let the Law of Love rule us through and through or not at all. Love among ourselves based on hatred of others breaks down under the slightest pressure. The fact is such love is never real love. It is an armed peace. And so it will be in this great movement in the West against war. War will only be stopped when the conscience of mankind has become sufficiently elevated to recognize the undisputed supremacy of the Law of Love in all the walks of life. Some say this will never come to pass. I shall retain the faith till the end of my earthly existence that this shall come to pass . . . . . . Non-violence is a weapon of the strong. With the weak, it might easily be hypocrisy. Fear and love are contradictory terms. Love is reckless in giving away, oblivious as to what it gets in return. Love wrestles with the world as with itself and ultimately gains a mastery over all other feelings. My daily experience, as of those who are working with me, is that every problem would lend itself to solution if we are determined to make the law of truth and non-violence the law of life. For truth and non-violence are, to me, faces of the same coin. Whether mankind will consciously follow the law of love I do not know. But that need not perturb us. The law will work, just as the law of gravitation will work whether we accept it or not. And just as a scientist will work wonders out of various applications of the laws of nature, even so a man who applies the law of love with scientific precision can work greater wonders. For the force of non-violence is infinitely more wonderful and subtle than the force of nature, like for instance electricity. The person who discovered for us the law of love was a far greater scientist than any of our modern scientists. Only our explorations have not gone far enough and so it is not possible for everyone to see all its workings. Such, at any rate, is the hallucination, if it is one, under which I am laboring. The more I work at this law, the more I feel the delight in life, the delight in the scheme of this universe. It gives me a peace and a meaning of the mysteries of nature that I have no power to describe. --Mahatma Gandhi-- From: The Essential Writings of Mahatma Gandhi
edited by Raghavan Iyer, 1996,
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