Today Libya, Tomorrow Wall Street

Heartfelt congratulations to Libya's freedom fighters.


Lao Tsu said


Weapons are the tools of violence;
all decent men detest them.


Weapons are the tools of fear;
a decent man will avoid them
except in the direst necessity
and, if compelled, will use them
only with the utmost restraint.


Peace is his highest value.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can he be content?
His enemies are not demons,
but human beings like himself.


He doesn't wish them personal harm.
Nor does he rejoice in victory.
How could he rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?


He enters a battle gravely, 
with sorrow and with great compassion, 
as if he were attending a funeral.

(Tao te ching, 31)


Now the second time of difficulty begins. The last ten months have been physical, with death and injuries, grief and fear. Now there is a different challenge: the need for peace, reconciliation, forgiveness tolerance, and construction. The hardest part will be the politics, endless negotiations and compromises. And resisting the corporations, who are moving in like vultures to get their share.

The corporations seek profit. The people need food, water, sewerage, reafforestation and socio-economic justice.

The Arab Spring has taught the world a lesson in democracy; now it can lead us in developing green economics.

Two things we can do to help resolve the Libyan situation

Just emailed this to the  Letters Editor at the Guardian. You can too if you like, by using the copy, paste and edit facilities provided by your computer.


To Letters Editor,
The Guardian

With regard to Libya, either can sit down and theorise about what went wrong, what is going wrong, and what will go wrong in the future, or we can press our democratic representatives to call for two courses of action that have been left out of the picture so far.

Static armchair analysis no doubt meets a need for some, but dynamic action calculated to bring on an early victory for the pro-democracy revolutionaries has got to be the way to go. The question, "How will it end?" is meaningless. Nobody knows what the future holds: the best we can do is to try to make a beneficial outcome more likely.  There are two things that we can do.

First, we can ask the MoD to close down Ghaddafi's broadcast facilities.  Libya State TV is the means whereby Gaddafi spreads his delusions to such of the Libyan population still support him. It is clearly inappropriate for a deluded individual to be permitted to spread his delusions through a TV station, especially when he is in the process of destroying whole cities. If Churchill had the means of applying tape to Goebbel's mouth, he would certainly have used it. The Government has been silent for over a week on whether they will be pursuing this course of action. It is time they stopped debating it and started doing it.

The second is to ask William Hague to get the UN to lean on Chad, Mali and other countries who are sending mercenaries to Libya. They must be persuaded to force the recruiting agencies in their countries to recall their dogs of war. Again, we have heard nothing about this course of action, not even that it is under consideration.

These two simple, positive and non-violent actions would help enormously  to bring democracy to Libya, and by extension, to countries waiting in the wings for their turn in the revolutionary limelight. They are actions to which everyone, whether hawkish or doveish, can lend a hand.

Sincerely
[name, address, tel no]