Tim Brooks, Star Wars, and the Powers that Be. |
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From the Desk of George Barnard. Timothy Brooks He was the intellectually challenged son of the lady that dusted and vacuumed my flat on one day each week. He was Timothy Brooks, Brooksie, sixteen, barely four foot ten inches tall, no longer at school. With a big smile on his face, he stood in front of the bay window, blocking my view of the Pacific Ocean and two passing container ships bound for the ports of Sydney and Melbourne. “Mom says your fridge is empty. You will soon be hungry. I do your shopping?” he enquired. “Mom’s right,” I told him. “I’m now only freezing fresh air in that fridge. Hop inside, Kiddo. I’ll make you a list. You can do my shopping, but only if you are very careful when crossing the road.” The Brooks boy would turn up almost every week, delighted to obtain ‘his list’ and later lug my shopping up the hill, seemingly just to please me, but also aware of the documentation about Midwayers I was working on. As a reward for his assistance, he would be allowed to play Star Wars on my computer, as I put the shopping away, and then reviewed the printouts of my work. One day Brooksie decided to explain to me how he regarded his newfound mission in life -- in God’s service, rather than in mine. Timothy’s explanation left me quite astounded. He said, “You write your letters, and you help God. I’m too young to help God. I help you, so I help God, too!” He added, “Mom says, too.” His loving mom sure would, I figured. His weekly assistance went on for months, until January of 1998. I loathed leaving that cliff top flat, my view of the Pacific, my writing, Tim and his Mom. It had become too dangerous for me to stay there. A well-educated Christian fundamentalist, behaving more like a fool, was planning to drastically, and urgently, shorten my life for my associating with 1,111 ‘demons’. Police didn’t care, since there wasn’t as yet a corpse to be removed. The Midwayers were explicit, telling me, “Get out! Get out now!” The Powers that Be These days, it churns my stomach to think about those whom we have placed in a position of power in the Western World, and what they do with this power, even what they intend to do with this power. Unlike the mentally retarded Brooks boy, these wise men -- our choices in government -- have no inclination to put any food in anyone’s refrigerator. They would sooner, and rather, booby-trap that fridge and kill its owner. Unlike the fourteen-year-old, they have no inclination to perform their duties in a secondary role, by serving the people that serve Him. Unlike the big wide smile on that youngster’s mongoloid face, I see only anger in the eyes of those who tell us only what they want us to know, as they fill their private coffers, whilst they so misallocate the contents of the public purse. Unlike young Brooksie, who was happy to have an hour at the computer, and who considered that to be the greatest of gifts, these leaders of nations demand huge salaries, give little in return, and keep exacting more. Only just yesterday, it struck me as rather ironic that the self-seeking who want us to go out there and murder our brothers and sisters, and that sweet, unfortunate, altruistic ‘little helper of God’, both wanted to play at Star Wars. It’s absolutely all they have in common! Preemptive Strikes How can we continue to condemn Japan’s long-ago preemptive strike on Pearl Harbor? In the face of what is being planned to take place in Iraq in days, or weeks, how could we? Perhaps moral values can be compromised, if and when they are ‘re-balanced’ in some way. Perhaps there should be a brand-new international law as a concession to preemptive strikes – preemptive indictment for planned crimes against humanity, planned war crimes, and planned genocide, planned ethnic cleansing. I for one would enjoy seeing brothers Bush, Blair and Howard in shared accommodation with bro Milosovic for a time, at least to reconsider their rash condemnation of the Iraqi people, even their willingness to accept potential ‘collateral damage’ all around. Preemptive indictment would spare the lives of many of ‘God’s innocent little helpers’. © 11:11 Progress Group. |