Peace Quickening, Peace Weaving, and Frith Faesten/ Peace Fast 1st Week

4-color totalistic cellular automaton with rule 600116

being used to represent a weaving process.

I find it undbearable to let this thing in Iraq continue without doing something. The war ended, yet it did not end. How can this be? It may have something to do with our refusal to leave. Let me clarify: when I say the war ended, I mean that we pulled into Baghdad and took over. The war is over. What happened after is not "the Iraq war"; it is something we created. We call it the "war" so we can keep on keeping it on, a state of constant war, just as if we lived in Orwell's Oceania in 1984. It is we the American people who refuse to accept an end to hostilities. This is due to the fact that the Iraqi populace was not sufficiently docile for whatever our real plans and intentions were - those motives which extended beyond removing a "bad guy" from power, toppling his statue, and stretching his neck. In the meantime, we are doing politics as usual and running a presidential beauty pageant that will last a year and a half, which gives us a terminus for a minimum amount of time that Iraq must continue to die: Iraq must continue to die until the new president takes over in January, 2009. This is due to the fact that we the American people will not do anything to end the war. As a act that may be futile, but also may be the first of other acts, I shall institute a fast once every week until this war is ended. The fast day will be Friday. If Friday isn't suitable, any day will do. Fridays have always been important. There is sun down on Friday, there is prayer at the mosque, and there are what RCs call First Fridays. Since there is no notice of what I do, I am obviously fasting away from public view. Gandhi at least had his newspaper guys. Gandhi was a fanatic for publicity, and that is why he was so succesful in creating a political entity. I shall only fast for my own peace of mind. I cannot sit by idle and watch the entertainments we consider news while the Great Dying continues. I hope that I may soon be able to do more. Dream girl weaving, dream boy running these are the residue of life. On both sides of the street there were doors of iron but the hinges were of straw. The reeds along the river shu-shu in the voice of ghosts. I saw a ghost once, I thought it was my sister's daughter, little Maha, her only child. But she snarled like a dog when I came by and she vanished... I heard a splash and ran to the river. But there was only a widening ripple, widening into a tsunami of regret... I cannot eat the food and chocolate I had set out for myself. ps. There is a site: http://www.fastforpeace.com/ set up by Felix Arroyo. I expect to hear something from them. pps. "Quick" in the title means "living" or "coming into being", as in the contrast "the quick and the dead". Peace weaving is probably a new concept for most of us, coming from the old culture. It deals with the "web" of contacts created by women between the tribes. These contacts are often alliances by marriage. Present day scholarship tends to focus on the womens' role. "Frith Faesten" is Anglo-saxon for "Peace Fast"