Inside Outside

Inside, he sat in the quiet beside the window.
Outside, the sky was grey. Yesterday's sun was gone.

Inside, he held a hot cup of coffee in his hands.
Outside, the temperature dropped. The air grew chill.

Inside, his cold fingers clicked at his keyboard. A white light shone on his face.
Outside, a lone white pumpkin-skull guarded his door.

9:05:17 AM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []  

Tools of Coercion

The regime in Iraq is brutal, violently brutal. Evidently life means nothing to them, only power and control and ruling the roost. They know how to keep the people quiet, trembling in the corners, thankful for the opportunity to breathe. The Christian Science Monitor has this article on life under the hammer. It shows how adept the regime is at turning individual surivival instincts into a tool for maintaining power.

We are hopeless... We are controlled... Maybe we are defeated within ourselves.

Sadly, the tools used by the Iraqi regime are to some extent the tools by regimes in control everywhere.

Let's not forget that when the Ayatollah deposed the repressive regime of the Shah in Iran, he found it useful to retain the services of the Savak to ensure that the citizenry adhered to the new regime's dictats.

And let's not lose sight of the fact that although government-sponsored brutality and violence is largely absent in our country, the rush to wage a new war on terrorism in defense of the homeland has led many in our halls of power to advocate the use of ratting on neighbors, making the use of that technique in Iraq (as reported in the article above) seem less ... unique.

8:35:27 AM   permalink: []   feedback:   comments: []