1. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
  2.  
  3. TZM: Response to Media; Death of Osama bin Laden
  4.  
  5. On May 1, 2011 Pres. Barack Obama appeared on national television with the
  6. spontaneous announcement that Osama bin Laden, the purported organizer of
  7. the tragic events of September 11th 2001, was killed by military forces in
  8. Pakistan.
  9.  
  10. Within moments, a media blitz ran across virtually all television networks
  11. in what could only be described as a grotesque celebratory display,
  12. reflective of a level of emotional immaturity that borders on cultural
  13. psychosis. Depictions of people running through the streets of New York and
  14. Washington chanting jingoistic American slogans, waving their flags like
  15. the members of some cult, praising the death of another human being,
  16. reveals yet another layer of this sickness we call modern society.
  17.  
  18. It is not the scope of this response to address the political usage of such
  19. an event or to illuminate the staged orchestration of how public perception
  20. was to be controlled by the mainstream media and the United States
  21. Government. Rather the point of this article is to express the gross
  22. irrationality apparent and how our culture becomes so easily fixed and
  23. emotionally charged with respect to surface symbology, rather than true
  24. root problems, solutions or rational considerations of circumstance.
  25.  
  26. The first and most obvious point is that the death of Osama bin Laden means
  27. nothing when it comes to the problem of international terrorism. His death
  28. simply serves as a catharsis for a culture that has a neurotic fixation on
  29. revenge and retribution. The very fact that the Government which, from a
  30. psychological standpoint, has always served as a paternal figure for it
  31. citizens, reinforces the idea that murdering people is a solution to
  32. anything should be enough for most of us to take pause and consider the
  33. quality of the values coming out of the zeitgeist itself.
  34.  
  35. However, beyond the emotional distortions and tragic, vindictive pattern of
  36. rewarding the continuation of human division and violence comes a more
  37. practical consideration regarding what the problem really is and the
  38. importance of that problem with respect to priority.
  39.  
  40. The death of any human being is of an immeasurable consequence in society.
  41. It is never just the death of the individual. It is the death of
  42. relationships, companionship, support and the integrity of familial and
  43. communal environments. The unnecessary deaths of 3000 people on September
  44. 11, 2001 is no more or no less important than the deaths of those during
  45. the World Wars, via cancer and disease, accidents or anything else.
  46.  
  47. As a society, it is safe to say that we seek a world that strategically
  48. limits all such unnecessary consequences through social approaches that
  49. allow for the greatest safety our ingenuity can create. It is in this
  50. context that the neurotic obsession with the events of September 11th, 2001
  51. become gravely insulting and detrimental to progress. An environment has
  52. now been created where outrageous amounts of money, resources and energy is
  53. spent seeking and destroying very small subcultures of human beings that
  54. pose ideological differences and act on those differences through violence.
  55.  
  56. Yet, in the United States alone each year, roughly 30,000 people die from
  57. automobile accidents, the majority of which could be stopped by very simple
  58. structural changes. That's ten 9/11's each year... yet no one seems to pine
  59. over this epidemic. Likewise, over 1 million Americans die from heart
  60. disease and cancer annually - causes of which are now easily linked to
  61. environmental influences in the majority. Yet, regardless of the over 330
  62. 9/11's occurring each year in this context, the governmental budget
  63. allocations for research on these illnesses is only a small fraction of the
  64. money spent on “anti-terrorism” operations.
  65.  
  66. Such a list could go on and on with regard to the perversion of priority
  67. when it comes to what it means to truly save and protect human life and I
  68. hope many out there can recognize the severe imbalance we have at hand with
  69. respect to our values.
  70.  
  71. So, coming back to the point of revenge and retribution, I will conclude
  72. this response with a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., likely the most
  73. brilliant intuitive mind when it came to conflict and the power of
  74. non-violence. On September 15, 1963 a Birmingham Alabama church was bombed,
  75. killing four little girls attending Sunday school.
  76.  
  77. In a public address, Dr. King stated:
  78.  
  79. “What murdered these four girls? Look around. You will see that many
  80. people that you never thought about participated in this evil act. So
  81. tonight all of us must leave here with a new determination to struggle. God
  82. has a job for us to do. Maybe our mission is to save the soul of America.
  83. We can't save the soul of this nation throwing bricks. We can't save the
  84. soul of this nation getting our ammunitions and going out shooting physical
  85. weapons. We must know that we have something much more powerful. Just take
  86. up the ammunition of love.”
  87.  
  88. - Dr. Martin Luther King, 1963 -
  89.  
  90.  
  91. ~Peter Joseph
  92.  
  93. wwwthezeitgeistmovement.com