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Stretcher asks: “How do you imagine your life might change if the United States attacks Iraq?”
Kim Anno: My life is changed even by the threats, the thoughts, the aggression of my country around the world that has been going on for as long as I have lived. This changes me into a very defiant citizen. Can anyone imagine what it would be like to wake up and say “Wow, I love what my government is and what it does…” This is not the reality, so my thought is that the U.S. government is in a wrong universe, that we as a nation have to have a paradigm shift of how we conduct ourselves in the world. We are the imperial power that preys upon the lifeblood of a people and then we speak of human rights when it benefits us. There has been no ethics and no aesthetics in our government, or perhaps it has tiny micro pockets that do not make it into media. But having such a souless government based on fear and retaliation and preemptive strikes is a heavy responsibility for a caring, thinking person. Because even if we dissent they keep it going. Somehow the dissent has to escalate in very visual ways, very visible ways. A really interesting Buddhist Nun by the name of Tsensin Palmo said, “Check your motivation first, and then act, do it in the name of compassion for all the characters, all the people, both the perpetrators and the victims.” This of course can happen quite quickly if we want to do it. I want to find the bridges.

- Meredith Tromble [Tuesday, October 22nd, 2002]

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