"I was, and still am, a co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City Bombing."
By Lara Braveheart.
April/May 2001
"I was, and still am, a co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City Bombing."
My life as a co-conspirator in bombings, murder and starvation, started when I was young. All it cost was my money, my vote, and my silence. I never did any of my killing myself, someone else was always kind enough to do it for me. Why did I want others killed? I was either afraid of them (they're brown, black, white, rich, poor, slanty-eyed, have different religions than I do, or some political 'ism' different than mine), or more often, they threatened my financial security (or so I was told!).
I was afraid of them, so I, and many others, would dehumanize(hate) them, and then think ourselves better than them, and very quickly we would have no qualms about getting someone else, or our government, to silence them forever. Rather than understand myself and my own fear, I sold my soul, my vote and my voice, for thirty pieces of silver.
My first ten pieces of silver, vote and silence went to the South African Apartheid Government.
In exchange for the privileges of good schools, universities, shopping malls, jobs, careers, servants and good food for my 'white face', I paid my taxes, voted and was silent as thousands of blacks were tortured, imprisoned and murdered, because they simply wanted to live their lives freely and be treated as humane.
My second ten pieces of silver, vote and silence went to corporations in the name of mass production and mass consumption. I worked like a robot on steroids. I conformed like a sheep. I was polite, nice and thought that the aim of my life was a good job, nice house, and 2.2 kids. I did what I was told. I drank beer to numb my questions, slept with strangers to numb my heart's longings, and bought toys to entertain my brainwashed mind. I watched as motor companies bought up public transit systems and annihilated them. I watched as mining companies raped the earth. I watched as pharmaceutical companies poured toxics down our rivers. I watched as oil companies supported the murder of indigenous peoples.
I watched as arms manufacturers made billions, subsidized by my taxes, selling landmines, guns and rocket launchers to dictators around the world. I watched as the CIA supported Saddam Hussein with my tax money, my vote and my silence. I watched mother earth get a hole in her ozone layer, her rivers turn toxic, her fish die, and her indigenous people's get slaughtered because they still lived in harmony with nature. I had lost all harmony with my nature. I had become a silent killing machine. I was eating my own fear of what I had become, I was so disgusted with myself and still I sat silent!
My hands were dripping with blood from the wound of my soul and I was unaware of my pain.
My next five pieces of silver, vote and silence went to the United States Government, in the name of 'free-trade' and 'capitalism', under the alleged auspices and rhetoric of 'humanitarianism'. I watched as President Clinton bombed Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq repeatedly, and then Yugoslavia massively. I watched as the U.S. supported proxy wars in Angola, Colombia, and various other places. I supported U.S. forces deployed on every continent and ocean, with 300 major overseas support bases. I supported this all in the name of peace, democracy, and humanitarianism; all to defend unspecified "U.S. national interests" abroad, all to keep the American people safe from would-be adversaries who supposedly are just waiting to pounce upon us.
I wondered why we said we did this in support of oppressed minorities, but did not consider bombing the Czech Republic for its mistreatment of the Romany people (gypsies), or Britain for oppressing the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, or the Hutu for the mass murder of a half million Tutsis in Rwanda -- along with the French.
Why did the White House not consider launching "humanitarian bombings" against the Turkish people for what their leaders have done to the Kurds, or the Indonesian people because their generals killed over 200,000 East Timorese, or perhaps Clinton should pulverize Guatemala City for the Guatemalan military's systematic slaughter of tens of thousands of Mayan villagers?
How did my U.S. leaders not only tolerate such atrocities but be actively complicit with the perpetrators? How did my U.S. leaders decide when to launch 'humanitarian bombings' in support of oppressed people, and in other instances be active pariticipants in the murder, torture and systemic annihilation of oppressed people?
Did bombing have anything to do with 'humanitarian' concerns, or was the primary dedication to find dictators who were in support of helping Washington make the world safe for the Fortune 500, at the expense of my soul?
Deep inside me the questions burned, but they were too overwhelming, what could I do about it? I was only one person. It sickened me and the best thing I could do was drink more beer and buy more toys and just get fucked. I mind-fucked my soul out into the world of hate and despair again, and again, and again...
But the beer was not helping, and neither were the toys. Other drugs helped, but only for a day or two.
My heart was crying for love, and I only had five pieces of silver left.
With my last five pieces of silver, I sold my own heart, killing it with the idea of 'romantic love.'
But little did I know about love. Everything I knew about love I had learnt, copied, made up for myself. What I copied, I copied from a system where sex (love) is sold as a type of consumerism, or status. I learnt a hatred for my physical appearance, where I tortured and judged myself physically inadequate, and hence insufficiently loveable. Because appearance sells, love became a matter of appearance.
I had finally learnt to hate not only all those others, but myself included. I learnt that hate for others is essentially hate for myself. I was eating my own excrement, and did not even know it! I had sold myself, and I knew I had nothing left to share, except pain.
My last thirty pieces of silver spent, I realized I had sold my soul, my vote and my voice, to my own ignorance and certainty in my beliefs. I couldn't find my ass with both my hands, a telescope and a AAA celestial map with explicit directions!
Who was I?
I had been persuaded to feel ashamed of myself, to be dependent on external judgements and authorities. I had abandoned my capacity for creative, independent thought and coherent understanding. I had abandoned my ability to stand with strength, understanding and independence in love. I had been seeking strength, solutions, coherence, and affirmation in the only place I had ever been told to look for them -- outside myself. I woke up, spent and broken, not a fucking clue who "I" really was, except as I had been defined by governments (white), corporations (consumer), and everyone else. The only thing left I had to lose, were a few illusions about illusions, and they were teetering on the edge of the cliff of illusions, plunging into the canyon of reality and despair. As Kris Kristofferson says "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
I was about to learn that the price I pay for living is not in pieces of silver (dollars), but in how much I am prepared to follow my heart, my dreams, and my passions, giving voice to the vote of my soul. All it took was one Radical Honesty workshop, with that truthteller, passionate lover of life, radical extraordinaire, forgiving, compassionate, ass-kicker of illusions, Brad Blanton, and I was set on the road to finding myself.
I decided to face my fears about anger and fear. I know! Your thinking, "Love me, my anger, my fears, my pain?" I must've been insane!
I discarded every certainty I had ever had, including the idea that there ever is certainty about anything. I decided to find out what worked for me! Who was I? What was I on this planet for? Did I have the courage to be true to myself? I decided to give voice to the vote of my soul, by loving myself enough to find my own answers, to ask my own questions, stand for my own principles, and not be afraid to change my mind. To learn to live in harmony with me, even if that meant the world would brand me an outcast.
I learnt that my hope is truth. I must seek the truth about myself, and especially about my cherished beliefs, for my most cherished beliefs may be my worst enemy, my solutions may be my problems, my hope may be my despair, my virtue may be my vice. [This applies to everything written here as it does to everything else.]
I must seek to understand, trusting in truth and life and death, sceptical of all certainty, including about truth and life and death.
First, I submitted a letter to the Register for Reconciliation, expressing my appreciation for President Nelson Mandela, Bishop Tutu, thousands of freedom fighters and the millions of forgiving, compassionate people of South Africa, who could rise above the inhumane, torturous depravity that apartheid inflicted upon them, and forgive a people so unforgiving and unrepenting of our fear. I confessed to how I had benefitted from the ravages of apartheid, and made my admissions of guilt. I took responsibility for the awful crimes that were committed in my name, and for my benefit, irrespective of whether I knew or asked for them to be committed. And I made reperations and appealed to other white South Africans to do the same. I donated my future inheritance (a quarter of my parents farm (Ed Note: shortly thereafter sold by her parents) to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
I met my nanny, my family, told them about my guilt and my innocence, my truths, my lies, my pain and my shame. I wept, eventually forgave myself and wept again, and still do.
Next, I faced my fear of conformity in the name of mass production and mass consumption. I stopped working like a robot addicted to conformity. I got fired plenty times for speaking up for other sheeple. I started thinking whether I wanted to live my life as I was being told to do, or as my soul wanted. I sold, or gave away my toys. I used public transit systems. I bought green, and I started to protest.
I started to get back my harmony with myself and nature, and learnt to tell the truth about my fears, my hopes, and my wants. The nature of the love for myself and my fellow brethren (including those I had feared before) bloomed in my heart like flowers in the desert after rain.
Next, I faced my fear of supporting governments that carry out destruction with my pieces of silver, and in my name. I stopped paying taxes to support the defence arsenal of the government with the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, on the planet, possibly the fucking universe! (;-)) I became a silent love machine!
I protested and got arrested for campaign finance reform and against the war in Iraq. I reported policemen arresting the innocent, black and poor. I got harrassed by policemen for reporting them. I reported them to the mayor. Nothing was done. Two years later the same policeman was found to have been one of the ringleaders in the Oakland Rider scandal, where they falsely arrested black and poor suspects, planted drugs on them and beat them up. I felt vindicated. I was speaking up.
I educated myself, read alternative newspapers and learnt about the drug war the US government is waging against it's own people. I learnt from US government documents how the CIA had known about drugs flowing into the country and had done nothing. I joined others and we filed a class-action lawsuit against the CIA. The night before our lawsuit was filed, my parents house was stormed by alleged burglars with AK-47's. Interestingly, for burglars, they had a particular interest in the paperwork in my father's study! I never found out why. Maybe they wanted to find the manual on telling the truth, forgiveness and love, and how to deal with the pain!
Lastly, I gave up my brainwashed notion of romantic love.
I learnt that love was connecting with another human being's soul, with his passions, with his fears, with his joy, with his willingness to stand and think for himself, whatever others may say.
I learnt that love did not have to be about sex, or appearances, or status, but about deep inside our souls, about forgiving others and ourselves. I learnt to love my whole being, and I started to recognize other beings who loved themselves enough to be true to themselves, irrespective of the consequences.
I was learning that the vital steps to freeing myself from the bondage to the murderous requirements of profit and power, was to appreciate the real causes of my hatred for other people.
I learnt that hate, whether for foreign tyrants, domestic minorities, or individual people I knew, was usually rooted in my fears and delusions. My delusions were that it was not possible for me to understand another person's behaviour, especially when I found it to be incomprehensible with my experiences of life, and especially if their behaviour was unacceptable, again based on my experience of life (not theirs).
I learnt that where I could look deeper into the radical (root) of the causes of their behaviour, and my fears, I could find understanding, and I could dispel my fear's and hate. I could forgive and love again, with less blame.
I also learnt that sometimes I may not agree with anothers actions, but that I could understand their anger and pain.
This was the case with Timothy McVeigh.
Essentially, I imagine, Tim had learnt the same lessons as I, he had trusted his beliefs in governments, in corporations, that he had been taught at school and in our society.
I imagine, when he realized the reality of his certainty's were nothing but faint illusions dissapearing into the fog of his anger at the lies he had been told, it consumed him, and his rage took over.
I had Brad Blanton interrupt my anger and show me the tools on connecting with my anger and sharing it and getting over it. That he taught me -- is forgiveness! Nothing else in your head, but that -- 'getting over your anger', not for someone else's benefit, but YOUR OWN!
Lying about your anger kills you, and the life in you, while you're alive! Telling the truth about your anger, to the person you are angry with, and forgiving him, sets you FREE to live and love again!
Tim McVeigh had the FBI and BATF interrupt and fertilize his anger with front-row seats at Waco, as he watched the FBI and BATF systematically burn the entire compound of women and children.
His anger and message came in a truck, mine comes on paper.
Both our messages sow more fertilizer as more and more people realize they have spent their 30 pieces of silver, and been sold only loneliness from their true selves, toys, empty hearts, and how to be fake, pretentious, nice and polite and live a life of conformity to the murderous demands of mass consumption and mass production.
I -- and I imagine Tim (and you?) -- am tired of supporting laws demanding to be paid for with the guilt or innocence of my soul, in the hypocrisy and deception of greed, gluttony, lust, hoarding, and fraud, silently inflicting violence on others and myself.
I am tired of selling myself as a product and soldier for hire, and a robotic producer of products, in the name of mass production and mass consumption.
I am no longer willing to pay the price for living in a society devoted not to life, but to non-life -- namely profit, and the selling of my voice and soul.
Never again.
I (we) are saying: NOT IN OUR NAME.
Not in our name, or with the silver blood of our soul, will we support the bombing of innocent women and children, whether in Waco, or Iraq. Not in our name, will we support the destruction of Mayan indigenous people's rainforest habitations, in exchange for cheap burgers at McDonalds. Not in our name will we support the sale of arms to governments like Turkey, whose aggression against its own people has left 3,000 Kurdish villages ethnically cleansed, 30,000 people dead and three million refugees, or the authorities in Israel, Colombia and other countries where western "interests" are in safe hands.
Not in our name will we support the genocidal sanctions that kill 6,000 Iraqi infants every month. Not in our name, will we support the illusions that what western power does is always benevolent. Not in our name, will we support the export of weapons and arms shipments to the Indonesian military, to train death squads and suppress the East Timorese from achieving their own independence.
Not in our name, will we support a war on people -- not drugs -- building prison cells to trade on Wall Street, in exchange for the smiles of the worlds children as they go insane. Not in our name will we support the devastation of our trees, our water, and our air by multinationals who think they're a product to kill for profit, not free like the sun, the wind and the rain. Not in our name.
Not in my name will you execute Timothy McVeigh!
Not in my name.
I will not stand by while those who watched Timothy McVeigh being sent to the Iraqi front line where he could see death and cause death, now scream for his execution. "This is war, killing innocents is only collateral damage," he was told.
I will not stand by, as those who cheered infront of their television sets, every time a bomb smashed a building into rubble, now wish to cheer, watching his execution, live!
Who taught him that "killing is hard at first, but it gets easier" (and so it did, except he got wise and started making his own decisions about who was at war with his soul, his vote and his pain)?
Who told him you're killing these soldiers, because they serve a dictator (just like our corporate dictators) that stockpiles weapons of mass destruction and is not afraid to use them?
Who never charged Tim with killing Iraqi's?
Who instead, sent him home with praise and no blame, or answers to his pain?
When he got home, who noticed that his eyes were sadder and his questions were growing?
Who welcomed him back home with medals and cheers for his bravery to kill children?
Who thanked him for killing for American freedom?
Did you watch as the FBI and ATF agents pulverized and burnt alive women and children in an intentional community in Waco, and do something about it?
Did you wonder why none of those agents were tried for murder?
Did you question your own government, supported by your vote, and paid for by your pieces of silver, as they covered up evidence (like so many times before), spread lies and disinformation (like so many times before), and created the illusion that these women and children somehow deserved to die as they did?
Did you do anything, or make your voice heard regarding the children in Waco, the children in Baghdad, the children in Indonesia, the children in Afghanistan, the children in Turkey, the children in Rwanda, the children in Northern Ireland, the children in Chile, the children in Panama, the children in Grenada, the children in Columbia, the children in the the West Bank, the children in Iraq, the children in Peru, the children in south-central LA, the children in Cambodia, the children in Vietnam, the children in sweat-shops, the children in whore-houses, the children all over the world, being raped of their innocence and lives, so that American's can have cheap goods, and sell lots of arms and landmines?
Did you do anything?
Did you cry and scream for justice for those children?
Did you scream for their pain?
Did you demand the live execution of the U.S. President's who murdered hundreds of thousands of children all over the world with the pieces of silver to your soul?
Did you demand the live execution of Fortune 500 CEO's who benefit from the sale of landmine's, torture and annihilation of indigenous peoples from Brazil to East Timor?
Did you give voice to your soul?
Did you say "Stop doing this in my name!"
If you answered YES to any of these questions, you and Tim McVeigh are on the same side, it's just a matter of relativity.
His experiences probably added to his anger, whereas yours have just got you questioning and demanding answers to your pain. Put yourself in his position? How angry would you be? Maybe not enough to build a bomb, but pretty damn pissed off, I imagine!
If you answered NO to most or all of these questions, you are probably one of those screaming for Tim's execution, and yet you are also probably one of the one's who have paid your pieces of silver to the killing of children, in exchange for profit, at the expense of your soul.
The only difference is that you got someone else to do your killing for you.
You bought a hit-man! You paid for Tim to do your killing when it suited you (your government and it's backers), but when he turned and started to think for himself, and saw the hypocrisy of a system that kills indiscrimately for profit, you turned against him.
You are still killing for profit, he killed for freedom and to avenge his anger and pain! And now you wish to execute him.
Sounds like the rationale for such an argument is 1) it's okay for my government to pay some soldier to kill, as long as I profit from it, and I'll reward that soldier with medals and ticket-tape parades of glory and honor, and 2) it's not okay for anyone to kill for passion, revenge or pain, nor can they do their own dirty killing, and if they do, I'll reward them with execution, infamy and disdain..
A rather uncivilized and inhumane argument, I have to say!
But then again, that is what happens when we sell our souls, our votes and our voices for thirty pieces of silver! (;-))
We become products, to be marketed and sold, and killing, even children, is sometimes good for profit, or so I am told!
Referendum Question for the Humane:
* I think the U.S. government should only execute Tim McVeigh for murder, if they include every other person in the United States of America who has committed, ordered or paid for the killing of children, even if that includes me.
* I think the U.S. government should charge Tim McVeigh for charges under International Law regarding crimes committed during wartime, and he should be held as a Political Prisoner of War, and I, and the people of the United States of America should realize that our government is the Fortune 500 soldier (a.k.a Murder Incorporated) killing children, for my profit.
If you think everything I have said is 'wrong', then you may be 'right'.
Maybe you drew yourself here to remember that. Man created concepts such as wrong/right, good/evil, sound/silence, solid/space, on/off, cause/effect, light/darkness, outside/inside, pleasure/pain, Dying/Giving Birth, Dead/Alive, and of course: Guilt and Innocence, Truth and Lie.
Man forgot that these are simply poles or aspects of the same thing. One cannot exist without the other.
Maybe that is where man's problem lies, in wanting to seperate things, including the idea that he is seperate from the world. Are you seperate from the world? Then you will see Tim McVeigh as guilty and yourself as innocent.
If you see yourself as one of the world, and the world in you, you will see that both you and Tim McVeigh are guilty and innocent, truth tellers and liars, it is just a matter of the relativity between your truth-telling and hypocrisy, guilt and innocence.
"If a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town."
- Stanley Milgram -
As I said, "I am a co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City Bombing?"
Are you?
Lara Braveheart
Guilty as Charged?
Truth-Teller Beware!
Innocence Paid For?
Liar Aware!
Quotes plagiarized from the following Guilty Truth Tellers:
Brad Blanton - Radical Honesty: How to Transform Your Life by Telling the Truth
David Edwards - Burning All Illusions: A guide to personal and political freedom
Alan Watts - The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are
Richard Bach - Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Stanley Milgram - Obedience to Authority
Erich Fromm - To Have or To Be
Col. David Hackworth - co-author of the 1989 international best seller, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior and the subsequent Brave Men. In 1971, as the Army's youngest colonel he spoke out on national television saying, "This is a bad war ... it can't be won we need to get out." In that interview, he also said that the North Vietnamese flag would fly over Saigon in four years -- a prediction that turned out to be right on target. He was the only senior officer to sound off about the insanity of the war. Understandably, Nixon and the Army weren't real happy with his shooting off his mouth (i.e being a guilty truth-teller)
Copyright © 2000-08/10/2007 AMANDLA
Copyright © 08/10/2007-09/10/2007
US NAVY JUDGE ADVOCATE GENERAL'S OFFICE: copyright © 09/10/2007 - PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH, WHITEHOUSE, 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVE; PER: SIR. ERIK PRINCE, BLACKWATER USA, PO BOX 1029, MOYOCK, NC, 27958 // PRESIDENTIAL AIRWAYS, AVIATION WORLDWIDE SERVICES. EMAIL: 252.435.0700.
