Community Articles
General News · 19th March 2008
Dwayne Rourke
I remember the day the US went to war in Iraq. It was Spring Equinox, just like it is today; a momentary point of balance in Earth's journey around the Sun. Day and night in equal measure. It was a day I decided to begin a series of video-documented rituals under the name of “Axis of Equal”, little prayers of peace to polarize the machinations of the warlords and all they command.
I have performed and documented this personal ritual twice a year ever since, always with the intention that it become progressively more and more collective – perhaps even vastly collective. I look to my generation and to our children to make it happen.
My generation, the ME GENERATION, those of us born in the decade following WWII. We aimed for the stars, we climbed to the Moon. We brought you the Beatles, Woodstock, Flower Power and more. We claimed Big Love and brought the Viet Nam war to a halt.
Now, we must find a way to bring the War on Terror to a close. The warlords would have our countries bomb their way forward under the cause of the War on Terror but this is just another devious way of duping and controlling the masses through fear. War IS terror and its first casualty is always truth. It will never lead to true and lasting peace. We have to find another way.
In the wake of the war that destroyed his homeland, Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn provided the world community with a clear and lasting rallying point when he declared “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”
Being peace, here and now, is the way forward and on the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, a brave group of US veterans and active-duty soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan are showing the way. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, this recent event was modeled after the historic 1971 Winter Soldier hearings held during the Vietnam War.
Soldiers are now returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, scarred by war. They are publicly coming to grips with the fearful psychological consequences of having committed atrocities under the command of “superior officers”. What emerges from their testimony is a powerful indictment of those atrocities and of all who are complicit in performing them.
If we, as a species, are to ever cease making war on ourselves, a critical mass of us will have to hold the vision of a different way forth, a peaceful way forth, into an era of truth and reconciliation. The brave soldiers now voicing their own, sad truths are already voicing intimations of what that era will require of us. We gain from their experience to the extent we are able to bear witness to it.
_____________________________
The testimony by soldiers referred to above is now being broadcast 24/7 over the Internet on Democracy Now! Click HERE.
Why not join me in performing your own Axis of Equal ritual? Find out more at www.axisofequal.com.
Related article HERE.
Axis of Equal on Google Video
AXIS OF EQUAL I
AXIS OF EQUAL II
AXIS OF EQUAL III
AXIS OF EQUAL IV
AXIS OF EQUAL 2007: SPRING EQUINOX
I have performed and documented this personal ritual twice a year ever since, always with the intention that it become progressively more and more collective – perhaps even vastly collective. I look to my generation and to our children to make it happen.
My generation, the ME GENERATION, those of us born in the decade following WWII. We aimed for the stars, we climbed to the Moon. We brought you the Beatles, Woodstock, Flower Power and more. We claimed Big Love and brought the Viet Nam war to a halt.
Now, we must find a way to bring the War on Terror to a close. The warlords would have our countries bomb their way forward under the cause of the War on Terror but this is just another devious way of duping and controlling the masses through fear. War IS terror and its first casualty is always truth. It will never lead to true and lasting peace. We have to find another way.
In the wake of the war that destroyed his homeland, Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hahn provided the world community with a clear and lasting rallying point when he declared “There is no way to peace, peace is the way.”
Being peace, here and now, is the way forward and on the anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, a brave group of US veterans and active-duty soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan are showing the way. Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, this recent event was modeled after the historic 1971 Winter Soldier hearings held during the Vietnam War.
Soldiers are now returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, scarred by war. They are publicly coming to grips with the fearful psychological consequences of having committed atrocities under the command of “superior officers”. What emerges from their testimony is a powerful indictment of those atrocities and of all who are complicit in performing them.
If we, as a species, are to ever cease making war on ourselves, a critical mass of us will have to hold the vision of a different way forth, a peaceful way forth, into an era of truth and reconciliation. The brave soldiers now voicing their own, sad truths are already voicing intimations of what that era will require of us. We gain from their experience to the extent we are able to bear witness to it.
_____________________________
The testimony by soldiers referred to above is now being broadcast 24/7 over the Internet on Democracy Now! Click HERE.
Why not join me in performing your own Axis of Equal ritual? Find out more at www.axisofequal.com.
Related article HERE.
Axis of Equal on Google Video
AXIS OF EQUAL I
AXIS OF EQUAL II
AXIS OF EQUAL III
AXIS OF EQUAL IV
AXIS OF EQUAL 2007: SPRING EQUINOX
