NOTES OF AN UNBELIEVER (Oct-Dec 2001 updates))
"It is doubtful whether the sight and experience of monstrous suffering breed compassion.
All the publicizing of the [Nazi] horrors have not
mademankind more tender of humanity."
- Dorothy Thompson, 1945
* * *
I just receieved one of those pass-this-on-to-everyone e-mails....
Here it is...
A movement has been started like that from Desert
Storm. During Desert Storm we tied yellow ribbons
anywhere we could.
Well, now the movement is to tie purple ribbons the
same way.This is for two reasons:
1. In remembrance of not only the firefighters,
police officers, paramedics who have died, but also
for all who have died in this terrible tragedy.
2. Just as in the military, when a serviceman get
injured, he is given the Purple Heart. Well, our
country has been injured to its core.
Please pass this on to everyone you know, and let's
see purple ribbons everywhere.
And so I responded, with an alternative
"movement".
(It's okay, you don't have to pass this on to everyone.)
Forget jumping on the bandwagon for this mostly meaningless feel-goody gesture and do something
that might really matter. Save the purple fabric.
Instead, tell your friends and family that this
Xmas you will be truly celebrating the supposed "spirit" of the holiday and you will take all the
money you would have spent on trees and paper and presents and etc etc, and donate it all to relief
organizations.
Instead you will gather together in quiet circles, around a candle perhaps, and eat
some bread and water, realizing what a fragile fabric life is made of and that while we usually gorge
and award ourselves on this shopping-orgy of a day, that people all around the world are struggling
and suffering, often times because the fruits of thier almost-slave labor produce our luxury purchase.
"When hell freezes over" I hear the public respond, justifying their upcoming shopping stampede in
hundreds of ingenious ways.
"Consumption is a national duty, without the performance of which, by every loyal citizen, our economy, and thus our culture and way of life, would collapse."
Oh well, just a thought.
Just be aware that I suspect the original message was started by a few individuals who own stock
in a vast amount of warehoused purple ribbon that they've been trying to get rid of for years.
Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King/
I got forty and shoe strings
And a thousand telephones that don't ring/
Do you know where I can get rid of these things?
And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son/
And he said yes I think it can be easily done
Just take everything down to Highway 61.
-Bob Dylan
* * * Hiroshima, A Reminder * * *
March 2002 update
Some sources of alternative information:
AlterNet
The Nation
ZNet
Anti-War Songs!