Newsletter n°117 – July 2023

PEACE LINES MESSAGERIES DE LA PAIX www.peacelines.org peacelines@gmail.com

Newsletter n°117

July 2023

« … the task of diagnosis. To identify, through some sensitive traces, what is happening. To detect the event raging inside of rumours that we cannot hear anymore, inured as we’ve become. To state what there is to be seen in the things we see every day. To shed light, suddenly, upon this grey hour which has befallen us. »  

                                                                 Michel Foucault, Le discours philosophique  (2023)

Who will tell the price they pay ?

Speaking of the nameless babushka, in the night of June 5 to June 6, 2023, when she heard the terrifying sound of the flood rushing down from the collapsed dam, and found the dirty water rising above her knees. Who cares that she is « West Ukrainian », « East Ukrainian », or « Russian » ? All that we know is that she was left stranded, likely a widow, with her two terrorized dogs, in a devastated home that she had to leave.

« I cannot forget war. I would like to. I sometimes spend two or three days without thinking about it and all of a sudden, I see it again , I feel it, I am exposed to it again. And I am afraid. »  Jean Giono, Refus d’obéissance   (1937)

I cannot forget the babushka on the wrong side of the dam.

I cannot forget Mary McHugh, lying on John Regan’s grave, in Arlington, Virginia. John was her cherished fiancé. He lost his life in Iraq, in May 2007, from the explosion of a homemade bomb, set by local insurgents against the invasion of American troops. One of the 4,614 who came back home from Iraq in a flagged coffin. Or take a broader view : one of the 655,000 victims of this American war « for freedom » (from 2003 to 2006 ; Lancet survey).

What did John Regan die for ?

The motive was possession by Iraq of Weapons of Mass Destruction that posed a threat to the US and other nations. Weapons that could never be found. Did they die for a lie ?

32,292 Americans were flown back wounded and maimed, that nobody cares about, except the forsaken mothers and wives. The Philadelphia Weekly ran six pages on that in January 2007. THE PRICE THEY PAY Countless Iraqis maimed.

How dare we forget ? How dare we look the other way ?

I am not afraid like Jean Giono wrote he was. I have worked in war zones in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Algeria, in Palestine, in Israel. It is not fear that I feel facing the prospects of more wars. It is rage and disgust. Rage at those who send younger men to death and murder. Disgust at those who choose to close their ears and mind. Have they lost every notion of humanity, of belonging to an endangered species, our species ?

How truly happy we could be in this here world, if we could sort of identify the germ of murder and destruction, and spread some vaccine against it.

DEATH OF TERROR MASTERMIND

June 10, 2023

The main problem we have is with memory. Memory in time. Memory going back twenty, thirty, fifty years, and beyond, seventy to a hundred years, providing context. This is the tool we need to delve into the structures, substructures of the dams that may be targeted next.

The dams of understanding and rationality, common sense and coexistence.

Meaning, a quiet daily system of activities as we normally enjoy it, whether in Davos, Belfast, Gaza, Dakar or Montelimar, holds thanks to dams of logics and mutual interest, that protect the fabric of society as a whole. Beyond these invisible dams lay the vast reservoirs of human potential for boundless powers. The powers that be, the hidden powers of togetherness or destruction.

Take it from an expert in global analysis and predictions, Yuval Noah Harari, Artificial Intelligence already has hacked the fabric, the operating system of our civilization.

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bkszgnrvn

Leave this to further investigation. The point now is the deadly virus that  thrives within the human minds to transform pretty ordinary folks into war criminals, serial killers, terrorists.

It may be more interesting, on another level, to look into the making of one particular serial killer. Taking the case of Ted K., who passed from cancer/suicide in an American jail, on June 10, 2023, at the age of 81, after 27 years in prison.

He was sentenced to eight life sentences without parole, for killing three and wounding 23 (professors, computer store owners mostly). A mathematics prodigy in his early twenties, the man had become an assistant professor at U.C.L.A . Berkeley at the age of 26, before he resigned in 1969 and went out to live in a shack in the woods, in Montana, from 1971 until his arrest in 1996. Without electricity or running water. The man had a vision, and is best known for his Manifesto, Industrial  Revolution and its Future, partly based on Ellul’s works.

As you can see, when you read his stance and lines, the man makes quite a few points about land and the survival of the human species in a friendly environment. So why did the FBI have to spend 50 million dollars in its longest quest (17 years), delegate 130 to 150 agents to his capture,  with a million-dollar reward for any information leading to him ?

Simply because of the means he used to « make a change ». Killing and maiming.

Admittedly, he was a very small level Handwerker, artisan, managing to hurt twenty people and kill three « only » with sixteen bombs in all his wild years. Reminding us of how ineffective the operators of Islamic Jihad have been lately, in Gaza, launching some 150 rockets, and only able to target an old woman to death, and a Palestinian worker.

Not discussing the rationale here, behind the acts, all the Whys. The line is loud and clear. As long as you disregard reverence for life, Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben, there is no difference between the large-scale industrial killer and the small scale one. Let Inga Avramyan remind us.

Making it pretty hard to grasp how on Earth the Tehran Islamic Jihad-backing régime could ever « congratulate » their protégés over their « historic triumph », « firing over 1,000 rockets » – in which process  33 Palestinians were killed and 150 wounded.

« Lies and deception, and in the end you lose. It’s always the same.» (J.J. Burnel)

Not entering into rhetorics and winding recesses of theology, but doesn’t the Quran say that « Whoever kills an innocent person it is as if he has killed all of humankind. »  Surah 5, 32.

Actually, the translation « innocent » is quite questionable, since the real wording for « innocent » is something like « someone who has not committed murder or done mischief in the land ». Mischief in the land leaving much room to interpretation for the hangmen.

The surface case made here against small scale operators being their pathetic lack of success in their endeavours, we may recall another bomber, by the name of Timothy McV, who was much more effective, in

Oklahoma City, five days after Ted K.’s last bomb (which managed to take Gilbert Brent Murray’s life – Gilbert Murray, president of California Forestry Association). In Oklahoma the toll was of 168 killed and 680 wounded, on April 19, 1995. A brilliant recruit of the Infantry corps at the age of twenty, Sergeant McV was known as a top-scoring gunner, became an expert in firearms and explosives, and then he was sent to Iraq for « Operation Desert Storm » in early 1991 (estimated toll of 40,000 killed among Iraqis & Kuwaitis, 75,000 wounded in action ; 113 US troops were K.I.A.)

Sergeant McV was greeted as a hero once back home, rewarded for his gunning scores of 998/1000 and 1000/1000 and actions in Iraq with six medals.

The Big Red One    The Combat Infantryman Badge 

The Bronze Star    The Commendation Medal 

The National Defense Service Medal    The Achievement Medal 

On April 19, 1995, he packed a rented truck with over three tons of explosives and parked it before a Federal building at 9 a.m. Arrested shortly afterwards, he was strapped to a death bed in an Indiana prison, on June 11, 2001, and injected with pentobarbital, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride.

Like Ted K. Timothy McV left his weltangschauung in writing, published by Media Bypass.

https://web.archive.org/web/19990429110745/http://www.4bypass.com/stories/mcveigh.html

A short 956-word text, it is titled An Essay on Hypocrisy.

Here is part of the Iraq hero’s testimony, his rationale :

« When a U.S. plane or cruise missile is used to bring destruction to a foreign people, this nation rewards the bombers with applause and praise.

[…] The truth is, the use of a truck, a plane, or a missile for the delivery of a weapon of mass destruction does not alter the nature of the act itself.

These are weapons of mass destruction – and the method of delivery matters little to those on the receiving end of such weapons. 

Whether you wish to admit it or not, when you approve, morally, of the bombing of foreign targets by the U.S. military, you are approving of acts morally equivalent to the bombing in Oklahoma City.»

From the Whys and the rationales – with a clear realization that there is no difference in nature between jet bomber pilots and wanton terrorists, only a difference in degree – to the Hows, we’re back to the bottom line : there are no two ways about reverence for life.

Either you stand for it whole-heartedly and make sense in all your acts and involvements, or you don’t, and then it is one long and winding highway to the bloody destruction of dozens or hundreds, thousands, depending only on how high you rank in a hierarchy of murder, inc. (be it national, religious, commercial, or private). As for the concept of reverence for life, Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben, it came to Albert Schweitzer, during a boat trip on the Ogooué river in Gabon.

« Ethics is nothing other than Reverence for Life. Reverence for Life affords me my fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life, and to destroy, to harm or to hinder life is evil. »         Civilization and Ethics

END OF JUNE 2023… FUBAR…

Look at them. Elisha, 17. Nachman, 17. Ofer, 60. Harel, 21. Mohand, 25.

Something’s dead wrong there. They’re all dead now. It happened at a service station, in Eli, half way between Ramallah and Nablus. On an ordinary morning of June 2023. Just any old day in Samaria, Palestine. They were all happy, good-looking human beings, weren’t they. The kind you would relate to, without a doubt or defiance. Good eyes, the five of them.

But then the man on the far right came with a gun and sprayed the others with bullets, until he himself was cut down, by a guard, whom he wounded before dying.

Pogroms, random killings, riots.

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/why-these-pogroms-continue/?

FUBAR. Fouled Up Beyond All Repair, I call it. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

And then you have France, where seven hundred police, i.e. peacekeepers, were wounded in five days of urban rioting, and some five thousand vehicles were burnt down, five hundred police stations and banks attacked, destroyed.

The speeches of justification are many, in both cases. Revenge being the key word. You even get an old man in a white beard and black turban, an ayatollah, from Tehran, who admonishes the French authorities for their « violence » – but then in his homeland, they hang people for being « gay » or « deviant », don’t they.

In the name of « response », of « goals [to be] achieved in freedom and independence », what we find before our eyes is chaos, death and destruction, the maiming of human bodies and minds. Always more retaliation. Enough with speeches and morals now. We only need to cut through it, to the core of the action, the gesture itself.

It is an easy thing to throw stones, molotov cocktails, fireworks.

It is an easy thing to hit and run, shriek and call for mayhem.

It doesn’t take much brains to pull a trigger, does it.

Be it in Strasbourg, one of the two capitals of the European Union, or in Turmus Aya, a couple of miles from Eli in the West Bank, the rationale behind burning and looting has to be questioned. Is this what we were born for ?

Speeches and rhetorics are all « very fine » in their short-lived while, but they get sickening so fast. It takes an American general in service, by the name of Milley, to break the news, put it as it is.

"War on paper and real war are different. In real war, real people die. Real people are on those front lines and real people are in those vehicles. Real bodies are being shredded by high explosives."

He was relating to the war in Ukraine, warning, « It’s going to be very, very bloody. And no one should have any illusions about any of that. » When a US chief of staff speaks his truth, we had better listen. After Viet-Nam, Iraq, and Syria, they know what they talk about.

Leaving us all, whether we live in Gaza, Eli, Nablus, Strasbourg, or Bakhmut, Kherson, with the red thread choice of where we do stand, each of us. What kind of motion, of acts, of attitude, we want to take daily, live up to, deep down.

At the end of the fiery day, it is never a matter of morals, of good and evil, really.

More a divide between beauty and ugliness. Between harmony and foulness.

Admittedly, flames and fire may be exciting, especially in the mind of a young male in his early teens. The result, though, is ashes and blackness, the foulest smells. Likewise with the destruction of a human body. From a distance, for a sharpshooter, it may look simple and clear, as Prince Harry put it in his autobiography, almost boasting of his death count as a chopper gunner in Afghanistan. From up close, though, for the nurse, the doctor, it is a cause of added high-level stress and concern, the deepest disgust.

When General Milley speaks of « real bodies being shredded » he is as close to the truth as can be. Born in 1958 and close to retirement, I guess this is his final statement before resigning.

The trouble with any kind of violence is that it triggers counter-violence in predictably growing proportions.

The trouble with all forms of terror and attacks on physical integrity is that they not only backfire, but they aggravate the general condition of humankind.

There is a lot of talk about the German-made Leopard tanks they are selling to the Kiev régime these days. Such a vehicle runs with 340 liters of fuel for 100 km. How about that for CO2 taxes ? The Germans have built 3,600 of them. How do the Green partisans fare with that ?

At the end of this atrociously bloody day, Sergeant McV was right, in his Essay on Hipocrisy, the use of a weapon [be it of random mass destruction or of limited scope] does not alter the nature of the act itself.

The question lingers on, how do you cross the line, into a serial killer’s mind.

Either submission, or the masculine urge to emulate Spartan heroes. To become one.

Unaware that the hero syndrome is way over-rated. As the blues songs go, What was it you wanted ? Tell me, great hero, but please make it brief, Is there a hole for me to get sick in ?

Where you see an opportunity for glory and the picture of the heroic deed, I see only the aftermath of the act. The overflowing pain and misery. The women’s tears, and the horror that will remain. I see the mother, stranded in the smoky night, holding her little daughter’s hand against her ribs, dragging the boy’s arm, and hurrying to some dubious haven, the way Inga Avramyan was pushing her handicapped husband’s wheelchair towards a shelter, when the missile struck. This is all I see, for this is all there is to be seen, when all is said and done.