THE ERROR OF YOUR TERROR

Bombs go off. A bunch of people blown to bits. Everybody else terrified. Not a jolly time to be in Baghdad - especially if you tan well, tend to overdress, and look Iraqi. The Dalai Lama says war is already obsolete and every sane soul agrees. Except a cabal of well-connected fraternity bozos hell-bent on establishing a planetary empire founded on perpetual war. We're dealing with desperadoes heavily armed with WMDs. No blow too low for this mob. Human sacrifice is standard practice in their warlike cult. The end always justifies any means. If a "better" world calls for a drastic cull, unleash the radioactive weaponry, the earthquake machines and laboratory-manufactured epidemics... three thousand casualties or three hundred thousand, what's the difference? Collateral damage!

Those who wage war, whether by obvious or subtle means, are the real terrorists. After all, what is war if not a crude excuse to eliminate the perceived enemy by brute force. And since when did brute force ever accomplish anything constructive? The only effect of brute force is to intimidate, terrorize, abuse, disempower and enslave.

And the only real enemy is our own unacknowledged and unbefriended shadow selves. Just as the shadow aspect of greed is lack, the shadow side of militant self-righteousness is cruelty, intolerance, and fanaticism.

Fear is a very effective means of mass mind control. Fear as a primary response implanted in the hypothalamus to retard our evolution. My maternal grandfather carried a strong negative emotional charge, which passed down the genetic track to my late mother and one of my brothers. Both see the world as dangerous and hostile, and invest a great deal of energy on "security" arming themselves against bacterial and viral attacks with a huge arsenal of prescription drugs; living within a self-created prison behind steel bars, high fencing, and heavy-duty padlocks; and never trusting strangers (thereby never admitting any fresh data into their stale belief systems).

But all the "security" in the world can't keep out death when your life contract ends and doesn't get renewed. My childhood friend, whom I hadn't seen in over a decade, was viciously murdered in the sanctity of his own home along with his partner in July 2005. Apparently, a psychopath had been stalking them for some time and was driven by drug-induced demons to strike terror into what was once a quiet residential neighbourhood. The London bombs went

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