I find it highly disturbing that more human beings are being killed in

[G_j]

the latest moves by both the US and Israel. There appears to be extensive 'collateral damage' in both cases.
Is this all tied to US politics and the fact that the US election is dominating world news?

I hate to think of how callous and numbed people are to all the killing.

[captainjack]

1. people would be more attuned if they were forced to live there for a year

and then they'll understand fear, death, totalitarianism, the power of free speech, and a whole host of knowledge about the true human condition. but, what can you do? the media only wants sensational stories, and people cannot understand the magnitude of what's going on thousands of miles away.

[opihimoimoi]

2. Unnecessary Death in any numbers large or small are disturbing

but soon the spector of large Famines will haunt us as tens of millions will die for lack of nurishment. The Math equation cannot be denied. As our population continues upward and our food resources diminish....holy hell will result. In fact, it is here already. what we see is only the beginnings...

[BeFree]

4. A little dark today, eh, opihimoimoi?

Been there, done that. Empathy abounds.

But there is an alternative. Let's keep planting those seeds. MLK once said something like: "Even if I knew I was gonna die tomorrow, I'd still plant fruit trees today."

As to the original posting: We can only hope that America tires of the carnage in time to institute regime change here at home. 'Twould be a history making change, eh?

[rainy]

6. man can live on fruit alone...

I just planted a georgia peach, necterine, two cherry, and three blueberry trees.

[luaneryder]

5. I think you're onto something

and it's the only reason I'm glad I don't have grandchildren. There is so much more than politics wrong with this world. I'm hoping the Kerry administration cna at least slow down the hurts of the world; I'm afraid it's too late to heal them completely.

[madrchsod]

3. both nations are hell bent to

slaughter as many people as they can before the presidential elections. no one really cares but us traitors

[Kanary]

7. callous and numbed

I just opened the page for my local news, and found a LARGE picture of an injured dog, and big story about it, which will get an outpouring of sympathy, and people sending in thousands of $$$ to save it.

This happens all the time, yet dying soldiers get little coverage, and carnage around the world gets little attention.

Callous?

Numbed?

Screwed up priorities?

Or....... furry smoke screens.......?

Kanary

[G_j]

8. watching a small child

pulled from the rubble of an American bombing...
What has happened to people? Where did the disconnect begin?

[Kanary]

11. the "disconnect" began a long time ago...... maybe we Merkins

were *never* the kind, compassionate people we pride ourselves on being.

Many years ago, my son was kidnapped. I thought people could understand the shock and grief I was going through. I was knocked over at the uncaring responses, and some people seemed to go out of their way to be just plain nasty and confrontive.

We are one screwed up collection of people.

Yet, many sneer at the very idea of a Dept. of Peace.

Go figure.

Kanary :( :( :( :( :( :(

[Barney Rocks]

14. were you

able to get your son back?

I am very sorry you went through that.

:(

[Kanary]

20. No. thank you.

It certainly changes the way a person sees the world.

Kanary

[G_j]

16. sometimes tragic circumstances

seem to test the fiber of 'friends' and community members. I'm so sorry to hear of your ordeal. I sure hope your story had a positive resolution, bless your heart.

As for a Dept. Of Peace, I really have a hard time respecting anyone who scoffs at such a common sense idea. This is something to ridicule? But I have heard this also, and I can't for the life of me understand it. Some American Indian tribes had both a Peace Chief and a War Chief, I guess they were just 'primitives' and in our 'civilized' society we only need a 'war dept.' ??
The most powerful country in the world should have a Dept. of Peace if it really believes in peace.

[Kanary]

21. tragic circumstances test *EVERYTHING*

That wasn't the only incidence that has served to isolate me from most people. People in this society, that includes EVERYONE, really don't want to hear the tragedies in people's lives. I see this a lot also in Dems, and it has adversely affected me working on campaigns, or anything else. One thing we who have been through stuff like this are expected to do it os "put it aside" and concentrate on whatever others think we should concentrate on. Of course. if something bad then happens to *them*, they want our compassion then. But, we aren't supposed to need it for ourselves. The expectations are truly crazy-making.

This is why I keep bringing up that if we want a different world, we're going to have to look to ourselves first. Dems, progressives, liberals..... none of us have some sort of lock on healthy internal lives, and healthy communication, and healthy personal growth. We're going to be bumping up against the same ugly crap until we decide that we are, indeed, part of the problem. Yet, I don't see any willing to even entertain that idea.

I was really struck a couple of weeks ago to see a video called "Healing The Hurts", about Native Americans really looking at how much they have been affected by their experiences in "residential schools" (more like prisons!), and how it has affected them as people, and made a mess of their lives, interactions with others, etc. I was so struck by how many said they wanted to deal with the depths of their hurt so they could heal it, and improve all aspects of their lives -- not just their own pain, but their relationships, etc.

At the end, the leader remarked that all of their prophesies talk about going through a long winter, then having a spring of healing and becoming a force for healing in the world. AFter seeing this video, I certainly have hopes they, as a people, will show the rest of us how it's done.

*THAT* is the essence of a Dept. of Peace. It MUST begin with us, and to do that, there has to be healing of all the past injustices and hurts. They serve to keep us divided.

Kanary

[Ladyhawk]

13. I'm not sure. When I was a right-wing fundy, I didn't bother...

..."my beautiful mind" with such banalities as "collateral damage." :( The right can just switch off their compassion. If it doesn't affect them, who cares?

I can't do that anymore. I hope I'm more human, but god, it hurts. :(

[H2O Man]

9. The film clip of the dead child being

pulled from the rubble needs to be played over and over. It has a power very similar to the film clip of the little girl running down the road after being hit with napalm in Vietnam. Reading about the horror in Iraq etc is simply not enough. Our nation needs to see what it is we are doing.

That child was a Child of God. Are the "christians" in the White House aware of what the Master taught about those who harm children? Can they seriously think that that child's family will not hate America? That the child's family will not hate America, just the same as we would hate anyone who - God forbid - murdered one of our family? An innocent child?

"They must see Americans as strange liberators," Rev. King said of the people of Vietnam in his challenge to the American public after he saw a photograph of a dead Vietnamese child. "We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only non-communist revolutionary political force -- the unified Buddhist church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men. What liberators!" (A Time to Break Silence;4-4-67; Riverside Church, NYC)

[greekspeak]

10. Puke Mentality: If you call living human beings "collateral damage..."

Has anyone REALLY died?

[drunkdriver-in-chief]

12. Genocide in Iraq has been going on for 14 years

After the first gulf war "ended" bush1 continued bombing iraq as did clinton and bush2. Nobody cared until 2003 when american soldiers were sent to iraq and got killed.

[Zhade]

15. Yep. Two war criminals who know how to use distraction well.

Sharon and b*sh, two fascist murderers who know when to strike.

Sickening.

[Disturbed]

17. Some dare call this a Christian Nation!!!

It is repulsive and sickening that Americans support this carnage in the name of "Freedom".

The Pres. says it is hard work and he has seen things on his TV screen. He is not a Christian. He is a Sociopath.

This slaughter will continue in our name for many more months. The world has disdain for us. Amerika has lost it's way again in the mire of the 911 Attack which seems to excuse everything.

[auburngrad82]

18. I've thought that there are a lot of similarities between

Israel and Palestine and the US and Iraq lately. The way we are just going in and leveling houses on the pretense that they may be harboring terrorists is just like Israel's leveling Palestinian houses under the same pretext. It disturbs me. How can we win the confidence of the Iraqi people when we are behaving like the one country that most middle eastern countries hate more than the US?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. I had an interesting talk with an expat in Tokyo last week

He said that he had noticed that the most common factor separating the rightwing and leftwing people he knew in the States was experience living overseas among local populations, or at least traveling extensively. The rightwingers he knew had mostly never left their home regions.

When I look at my own relatives, I think he's on to something. That's one reason why, as a college professor, I urged my students to take advantage of the study abroad programs that allowed them to live with families in foreign countries. They came back as different people, which is why some affluent parents--who could easily have afforded the extra tuition-- were adamantly opposed to sending their children abroad.

If you've never lived overseas, foreigners are just an abstraction, and their sufferings are no more real than the imaginary sufferings of actors in a disaster movie.

I've never been to the Middle East, but I've heard horrific World War II stories from elderly people in both Germany and Japan. If those stories aren't enough to put you off war for a lifetime, then you're made of stone.