[Peace-discuss] Letters on a low, dishonest decade

[John W.]

Very powerful, Carl.

Is any of you out there in AWAREland aware of something called the Real ID 
Act?   http://www.norealid.com/




At 03:59 PM 9/3/2007, C. G. Estabrook wrote:

>[I sent the following letter(s) to the slender reeds upon which our 
>representation to the federal government rests. --CGE]
>
>September 1, 2007
>
>Senator Richard Durbin
>309 Hart Senate Building
>Washington, DC 20510
>
>[cc: Senator Barack Obama
>713 Hart Senate Office Building
>Washington, D.C. 20510]
>
>[cc: Representative Timothy V. Johnson
>1207 Longworth House Office Building
>Washington, D.C. 20515]
>
>
>Dear Senator Durbin:
>
>The rumored attack on Iran by the United States must be stopped, and it is 
>your responsibility to do so.  You cannot acquiesce in the war crime that 
>the Bush-Cheney administration seems about to commit.  Please do all that 
>you can to prevent this enormity from occurring.
>
>An attack on Iran would obviously violate the United Nations Charter, 
>which forbids "the threat or use of force against the territorial 
>integrity or political independence of any state."  American leaders would 
>be guilty of what the German leaders were condemned for at Nuremberg -- 
>"the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression." 
>In a famous passage from their judgment, the four judges of the tribunal 
>(American, British, French and Russian) declared the crime of aggressive 
>war to be "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war 
>crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the 
>whole" -- i.e., even worse than terrorism.
>
>Of course the German leadership had excluded the legislature from the 
>decision to wage aggressive war, so only the leaders were punished.  But 
>if the Congress of which you are a member permits the executive to commit 
>the supreme international crime, you too should be answerable before a new 
>Nuremberg court.
>
>Sincerely,
>
>C. G. Estabrook
>
>L. S. Estabrook
>
>Enc.: W.H. Auden, SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
>
>=================
>
>SEPTEMBER 1, 1939
>W.H. Auden
>
>I sit in one of the dives
>On Fifty-second Street
>Uncertain and afraid
>As the clever hopes expire
>Of a low dishonest decade:
>Waves of anger and fear
>Circulate over the bright
>And darkened lands of the earth,
>Obsessing our private lives;
>The unmentionable odour of death
>Offends the September night.
>
>Accurate scholarship can
>Unearth the whole offence
> From Luther until now
>That has driven a culture mad,
>Find what occurred at Linz,
>What huge imago made
>A psychopathic god:
>I and the public know
>What all schoolchildren learn,
>Those to whom evil is done
>Do evil in return.
>
>Exiled Thucydides knew
>All that a speech can say
>About Democracy,
>And what dictators do,
>The elderly rubbish they talk
>To an apathetic grave;
>Analysed all in his book,
>The enlightenment driven away,
>The habit-forming pain,
>Mismanagement and grief:
>We must suffer them all again.
>
>Into this neutral air
>Where blind skyscrapers use
>Their full height to proclaim
>The strength of Collective Man,
>Each language pours its vain
>Competitive excuse:
>But who can live for long
>In an euphoric dream;
>Out of the mirror they stare,
>Imperialism's face
>And the international wrong.
>
>Faces along the bar
>Cling to their average day:
>The lights must never go out,
>The music must always play,
>All the conventions conspire
>To make this fort assume
>The furniture of home;
>Lest we should see where we are,
>Lost in a haunted wood,
>Children afraid of the night
>Who have never been happy or good.
>
>The windiest militant trash
>Important Persons shout
>Is not so crude as our wish:
>What mad Nijinsky wrote
>About Diaghilev
>Is true of the normal heart;
>For the error bred in the bone
>Of each woman and each man
>Craves what it cannot have,
>Not universal love
>But to be loved alone.
>
> From the conservative dark
>Into the ethical life
>The dense commuters come,
>Repeating their morning vow;
>'I will be true to the wife,
>I'll concentrate more on my work,'
>And helpless governors wake
>To resume their compulsory game:
>Who can release them now,
>Who can reach the dead,
>Who can speak for the dumb?
>
>All I have is a voice
>To undo the folded lie,
>The romantic lie in the brain
>Of the sensual man-in-the-street
>And the lie of Authority
>Whose buildings grope the sky:
>There is no such thing as the State
>And no one exists alone;
>Hunger allows no choice
>To the citizen or the police;
>We must love one another or die.
>
>
>Defenseless under the night
>Our world in stupor lies;
>Yet, dotted everywhere,
>Ironic points of light
>Flash out wherever the Just
>Exchange their messages:
>May I, composed like them
>Of Eros and of dust,
>Beleaguered by the same
>Negation and despair,
>Show an affirming flame.
>
>         ###