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Posted by catdawg (Catherine Enny) on April 07, 2003 at 16:49:20:
2 DAYS AS AN AMERICAN IN EUROPE
Yesterday, Michael Franti and I began a Promo tour of Europe pushing his new album "Everyone Deserves Music." We flew into Berlin, Germany and are now in Brussels, Belgium then onward to Milan, Paris and Amsterdam over the course of the next few days.
The following is my personal diary of thoughts and feelings that have dominated my heart and mind, inbetween and often during the my work day.
I have received an amazing perspective on war in European TV view point...strange times these are...it's very humbling to be an American right now and I say this with sadness. There is so much propaganda on TV from American media point of view compared with Europe's. It's not just night vision fireworks and patriotic GI's posing with there big, sophisticated weapons of war...the Euros' show the innocents mutilated and dying in masses and the human face of it...lots of civilians hurt and dead bodies, lot's of anger, fear and sadness amongst the Iraki people...lots of children injured, burned, mother's crying.
A Reuters photo in a Berlin daily today had a photo of 4 year child blown up by a cluster bomb...a beautiful wide eyed child, almost smiling for the camera, but he had no more arms below his shoulders...no more legs below his thighs...why this child had to become so mutilated, what did he do, what is America's purpose.
I only wonder if the soldiers see this and realize the fucking brutality happening now but not only of the moment, but of the future moments when this child grows up into a man and has to deal with being an immobilized lump of living flesh with a heart, emotions, a mind, desires, dreams and anger, sadness, frustration and i don't know what else. He can't ever scratch his nose, hug a person, stretch his legs, jump up and down, feel what it's like to run his finger's through his hair...i'm so sad and cry when i think of this damage...it hurts so much.
In the dailies and weeklies they show the American ethnic cleansing prison of Guantamo Bay...prisoners on their knees in hard gravel, hands covered and bound in front of them, ears covers with headphones, eyes covered with blinders, mouth and nose covered with a mask in the hot sun--sensory deprivation for what purpose this torture. Who draws the line when it's comes to torturing to gather information from suspected terrorists...torture in the name of what?
So many EU news programs and publications I've seen in last 2 days showing the human cost of war.
It's strange to be an American abroad...I have never been embarrass to be an American and feel like i need to apologize formy government's behaviour...BUT I am PROUD of my upbringing, the opportunities, yes--the freedom to do anything I want and I am proud to be a Californian and I am proud of my friends and family, but I am NOT proud of my people's dysfunctional and misguided government. I am NOT proud of the not so subtle stripping of our people's civil rights, the disintegration of our freedom to do anything we want without fear of persecution and imprisonment or death by opinion. I am NOT proud of the numbing and dumbing of America.
Only 7% or so of Americans have passports. I feel the best thing ANYONE can do is travel out of one's country and experience others people's lands, cultures, food, traditions, views, opinions. EVERYONE should become a GLOBAL CITIZEN. HUMANITY IS BEAUTIFUL and to watch this brutal destruction of it...breaks my heart.
Power To The Peaceful--Catherine Enny
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