A recent conference, titled, "Weaving a Net of Accountability: Taking on Extraordinary Rendition at the State and Regional Level," included much discussion about the role Johnston County, NC plays in what can only be termed a national disgrace.
Aero Contractors, based at the publicly-owned Johnston County Airport, has provided jets, flight crews -- and perhaps more -- for the CIA's extraordinary rendition program. Under the program, people have been kidnapped and tortured as part of the US Government's war on terror. Johnston County residents employed at Aero have been accomplices in criminal activities that led to the indictment in Italy of three Aero pilots.
Distinguished human rights lawyers and political activists from throughout the US and Europe were at Duke University's John Hope Franklin Center April 8-10 to strategise on ways to hold the perpetrators of rendition and torture accountable.
Co-sponsored by the Duke Human Rights Center and NC Stop Torture Now, conference leaders chose North Carolina for the gathering specifically because of our state's shameful legacy of complicity in the extraordinary rendition program. Aero employees, who may sit next to you in church or stand behind you in the grocery store line, have been identified and charged with aiding and abetting serious crimes, including torture.
While torture is always a crime, evidence has come to light that many of those rendered and tortured were in fact innocent of any wrongdoing. Some of these victims were held in solitary confinement for months and years, denied due process and abused. Some have died as a result of being tortured.
Conference participants lamented the refusal of federal courts, Congress, the NC General Assembly, other state officials, the Johnston County Commission and the Johnston County Airport Authority to honestly acknowledge and atone for our nation's role in the extraordinary rendition program.
So deeply is Aero and Johnston County implicated in these crimes that Aero's flights from the Johnston County Airport have been dubbed the "Guantanamo Express" by victims and opponents of extraordinary rendition.
Gavin Simpson, the Council of Europe's lead investigator on extraordinary rendition, led a panel discussion titled, "North Carolina's Role in the 'Global Spider Web' of Extraordinary Rendition to Torture."
Simpson said his investigation uncovered "chilling details" of a rendition program that included bilateral agreements between the US and most European states. Aero personnel operated aircraft on "rendition circuits," Simpson said. Aero personnel were part of "systematic cover-up" and Aero pilots disguised flight plans to help the CIA avoid detection.
After leaving the Johnston County Airport, Aero jets would stop in Washington DC to pick up eight-to-12 member "rendition crews" of CIA operatives. Detainees, picked up around the globe, were usually stripped, beaten, placed in a hood and adult diaper, shackled and handcuffed and given a sedative rectally, all in the presence of Aero crews, Simpson said.
Panelist Christina Cowger of NC Stop Torture Now, asked the question many conference participants would like answered: "What else was Aero Contractors doing for the CIA other than flying the aircraft and providing the crew?"
Since the election of Barack Obama little has changed in what is publicly stated about the rendition policy, Simpson said, and most importantly, the Obama administration has failed to implement what he called a "never again" policy on torture.
Under the current non-policy of denial, victims of wrongful kidnapping, imprisonment and torture have received no apologies, no reparations and no acknowledgement of their mistreatment.
"Who stands to account for these crimes," Simpson asked.
This is a question Johnston County citizens should be asking officials, and demanding answers.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
The Country of Marraige
A poem by Wendell Barry
Little Note: Since recently coming across another famous Berry poem posted below on this site, I remembered this one as well -- which held me in awe some years back. This Father's Day, I had constant thoughts of the "sacredness of marriage and family" and how connected our deepest relationships are to world peace. No one love or marriage is the same. Yet are there not clues here for a long-lived one? (for both persons in such a partnership?) Be sure to look for other poems, writings and fascinating interviews with this truly independent thinker and role-model, Wendell Berry, who lives, breathes, and teaches universal PEACE in love, family, nature and in society.
I.
I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
II.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.
III.
Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.
IV.
How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.
V.
Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen tine and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.
VI.
What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.
VII.
I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.
Photo above discovered at Photo Gallery Wild Wonders here
Little Note: Since recently coming across another famous Berry poem posted below on this site, I remembered this one as well -- which held me in awe some years back. This Father's Day, I had constant thoughts of the "sacredness of marriage and family" and how connected our deepest relationships are to world peace. No one love or marriage is the same. Yet are there not clues here for a long-lived one? (for both persons in such a partnership?) Be sure to look for other poems, writings and fascinating interviews with this truly independent thinker and role-model, Wendell Berry, who lives, breathes, and teaches universal PEACE in love, family, nature and in society.
I.
I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.
II.
This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.
III.
Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.
IV.
How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.
V.
Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen tine and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.
VI.
What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.
VII.
I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.
Photo above discovered at Photo Gallery Wild Wonders here
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Journalism: keeping the great tradition alive
'Beyond the Killing Fields': Why Journalism Is in a 'State of Chaos'
By Sydney Schanberg
"So what can we do to repair this mess? It isn't just a case of a profession in decline but a dumbing down of an entire nation -- one that has considerable effect on the rest of the world..."To restore a higher grade of journalism, we will have to convince the public that without serious reporting, they will not have the means to make informed decisions." (excerpt from article below)
Five Politics Daily staffers -- Carl Cannon, Melinda Henneberger, Walter Shapiro, David Wood and James Grady -- are joining in an online discussion with Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg about politics and the press as seen through the prism of his new book, "Beyond the Killing Fields."
Here is Schanberg's response to David Wood, who lamented the shrinking of foreign news bureaus and asked Schanberg how the great tradition can be kept alive.
With life on our planet spinning faster and faster on the electronic wings of the digital revolution, I have no simple answers.
There is no way to turn back the clock. The world has embraced the new technology, and as I see it, the craft of credible, serious journalism is in a state of chaos.
Money is at the heart of the issue. Papers have lost much of their advertising to the Internet, which so far has produced sparse original reporting considering the volume of websites, choosing instead to cherry-pick from newspapers without compensating them.
Also, Internet sites have decided that their audiences want shorter, splashier articles, not lengthy, detailed ones that often force governments and corporations to correct errant ways of dealing with the public.
Papers are disappearing into bankruptcy on a regular basis. Those that remain are struggling to find a business model that can still support in-depth reporting. The best journalism costs serious money. I'm referring to investigative journalism, which is especially costly because it can take months for a team of reporters to bring forth a solid, major story. In the past, these came almost entirely from a small number of major newspapers and a few magazines.
As newspapers and their staffs have shrunk, so has that special product, which is crucial for any healthy democracy based on a well-informed public. Those still standing have created their own websites to seek new advertising revenue, but the money gap has not closed. And the decline of credible journalism continues.
Good journalism does not have to be printed on paper. But the Internet has also spawned an endless 24/7 trail of garbage, which I call bits-and-pieces journalism -- "borrowed" or "aggregated" material from other sources, especially original stories from newspapers. Internet companies say that the material they use is in the public domain and therefore free.
So what can we do to repair this mess? It isn't just a case of a profession in decline but a dumbing down of an entire nation -- one that has considerable effect on the rest of the world.
The public does not hold journalists in high esteem largely because news outlets, including newspapers, have chosen over time to increase fluff stories about gossip, celebrities, sex scandals, etc., and mix them with hard news.
We were dumbing down the coverage before the Internet reared its head. If we want to restore a higher grade of journalism, we professionals will have to address the public and convince them that without serious reporting, they will not have the means to make informed decisions.
In the past, we have never explained ourselves well to the public. We resent it when citizens raise questions about our stories. As a profession we have been soft and have not challenged our publishers when they sought more fluff. If we want to rehabilitate professional journalism, restore foreign bureaus, raise newsroom standards, then we're in a fight -- on the Internet and at newspapers.
We would have to stand up and speak out. But I don't know a silent, invisible way to get a task like this done.
Photography: Noah Greenberg, Potomac Books
© 2010 Weblogs, Inc. All rights reserved. Politics Daily is a member of the Weblogs, Inc. Network.
=============
Posted originally on 07/8/10 NOTE: oneheart blogger found this piece at Reader Supported News dot org
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Nature is a Force Which Restores Our Awe
CLASOHM.COM GalleryObere Firstalm, Spitzingsee (18 May 2007
Chris Hedges, one of our most moving reporters today, expanded for me in a recent reflection piece why we humans can't live without nature and how it's fury can become healing.
(From) Freedom in the Grace of the World:
...Year after year I returned to these forbidding peaks from conflicts in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. I had a house in Maine on an 800-foot hill with no television, cell phone or Internet service. The phone number was unlisted. It rarely rang. I refused to give the number to my employer, The New York Times. I brought with me the stench of death, the cries of the wounded, the bloated bodies on the side of the road, the fear, the paranoia, the alienation, the insomnia, the anger and the despair and threw it at these mountains. I strapped my pack on in the pounding rain at trailheads and drove myself, and later my son, up mountains. I rarely stopped. Once, in a bitter rain, I crested the peak of Mount Madison in August and was immediately thrown backward by howling winds whipping across the ridge and pelting hailstones. It was impossible to reach the summit. On a hike in the remote Pemigewasset Wilderness I made a wrong turn and, fearing hypothermia, walked all night. By the time the sun rose my blisters had turned to open sores. I wrung the blood out of my socks. I go to the mountains to at once spend this fury and seek renewal, to be reminded of my tiny, insignificant place in the universe and to confront mystery.
Berry writes in "The Peace of Wild Things":
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry is one of my favorite poets, writers, farmers and people. I recently was with a cousin who wrote his dissertation on Berry. He, his wife and children live daily a Wendell Berry sort of awe in partnership with nature in the middle of town...
Read the whole of this unusual and strangely refreshing piece by Hedges - I do believe you'll be more than glad you did... GO here
===
Live From Afghanistan: Rachel Maddow of MSNBC -Tuesday & Wednesday
TV cameras overlook a rather tame scene (Photo from The Maddow Blog)Just found this info from Christopher Hayes via Twitter - a report that Rachel Maddow will be on The Today Show today, Tuesday, and also live on The Rachel Maddow Show from Kabul. See my blog - No More Crusades for more information for more information - GO - here
Monday, July 5, 2010
Call Torture by its Real Name (Christopher Hayes on The Ed Show)
Nation in the News. July 2, 2010 See at original site here
Nation in the News
July 2, 2010
"Imagine for a moment our country elected a bunch of people who thought rape should be legal…" This is what Nation Washington editor Christopher Hayes asks us as guest host of The Ed Show. He says that the pro-rape people know that just coming out and promoting rape would not be accepted by the general populous. So instead, they get everyone to call it "unilateral, physical intimacy." But Hayes knows, "this is not a neutral phrase, this is propaganda."
Guest-hosting The Ed Show, Nation Washington Editor Christopher Hayes examines the GOP's farcical cross-examination of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.
Hayes uses the same argument for the pro-torture euphemism, "enhanced interrogation techniques." He refers to a Harvard University study that compares how the media described the practice of waterboarding before the Bush administration and after. From the 1930s to the early 2000s, the New York Times called or characterized waterboarding as torture, 82 percent of the time. From 2002 to 2008, it was only 1 percent of the time. As for the Los Angeles Times: from the 1930s to the early 2000s waterboarding was called or characterized as torture 96 percent of the time and only 5 percent of the time from 2002 to 2008. During that later period, USA Today never referred to it as torture. "The term enhanced interrogation technique from the beginning was designed to fuse our moral circuitry," Hayes says. "It’s the job of the independent press to trigger our moral alarms. The New York Times and the LA Times failed this basic duty."
—Melanie Breault
Nation in the News
July 2, 2010
Just IN from Christopher Hayes via Twitter reported that Rachel Maddow will be on The Today Show and also live on The Rachel Maddow Show from Kabul. See my blog:
No More Crusades for more information GO - here
Related: Jon Stewart points out the hypocrisy of withholding the torture photos here
Guest-hosting The Ed Show, Nation Washington Editor Christopher Hayes here
The Ed Show - msnbc.com
Guest host Chris Hayes discusses a new report showing newspapers giving soft ... Veteran talk radio host Ed Schultz hosts 'The Ed Show' from 6 p.m. EST to 7 here
Nation in the News
July 2, 2010
"Imagine for a moment our country elected a bunch of people who thought rape should be legal…" This is what Nation Washington editor Christopher Hayes asks us as guest host of The Ed Show. He says that the pro-rape people know that just coming out and promoting rape would not be accepted by the general populous. So instead, they get everyone to call it "unilateral, physical intimacy." But Hayes knows, "this is not a neutral phrase, this is propaganda."
Guest-hosting The Ed Show, Nation Washington Editor Christopher Hayes examines the GOP's farcical cross-examination of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.
Hayes uses the same argument for the pro-torture euphemism, "enhanced interrogation techniques." He refers to a Harvard University study that compares how the media described the practice of waterboarding before the Bush administration and after. From the 1930s to the early 2000s, the New York Times called or characterized waterboarding as torture, 82 percent of the time. From 2002 to 2008, it was only 1 percent of the time. As for the Los Angeles Times: from the 1930s to the early 2000s waterboarding was called or characterized as torture 96 percent of the time and only 5 percent of the time from 2002 to 2008. During that later period, USA Today never referred to it as torture. "The term enhanced interrogation technique from the beginning was designed to fuse our moral circuitry," Hayes says. "It’s the job of the independent press to trigger our moral alarms. The New York Times and the LA Times failed this basic duty."
—Melanie Breault
Nation in the News
July 2, 2010
Just IN from Christopher Hayes via Twitter reported that Rachel Maddow will be on The Today Show and also live on The Rachel Maddow Show from Kabul. See my blog:
No More Crusades for more information GO - here
Related: Jon Stewart points out the hypocrisy of withholding the torture photos here
Guest-hosting The Ed Show, Nation Washington Editor Christopher Hayes here
The Ed Show - msnbc.com
Guest host Chris Hayes discusses a new report showing newspapers giving soft ... Veteran talk radio host Ed Schultz hosts 'The Ed Show' from 6 p.m. EST to 7 here
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Musings on the Dying of the US 4th of July (Independence ? Day)
Internet cache or johnnydeppwatchOur American 4rth of July began yesterday on the 3rd of July since Saturday was better for public displays of the annual fireworks and for commercial gains as this national holiday brings family and friends together. (Also more time and excuses for the drinkers to drink and buy lots of alcohol.) Everyone was out Saturday already strolling the shops and streets and eating barbecue. "The Fourth" began for me quite a few days ago in our neighborhood...
Certainly, I appreciate fun children have with the fireworks. They love doing their own and they go crazy at the larger brilliant rainbow shows in the sky. Everyone here enjoys the family events and community cook-outs that go along with the fireworks.
But each time they go off every year, I'm sure at first that a mass shooting has hit our neighborhood. The loud echoing and popping sounds like staccato gun-firings all across the area. And each year they seem to get louder! Or is that just my ears growing older? Or maybe it's my patience growing thin for celebrations of war long ago when my nation is still provoking them?
The kids are willing to do all manner of jobs in order to buy even more fireworks often illegally imported to our state. Noise sells well especially with boys.
I've been hearing the "practice sessions" of noisy firecrackers from China going off in the neighborhood now for a week it seems at all hours of the day and night and I'm tired of short nights and my son's poor whimpering dog crawling in corners and following me around everywhere I go!
But I'm even more disgusted with the annual overplaying of our National Anthem. Like many others I'm sick of a song glorifying war.
"O'er the land of the free (?) and the home of the brave...
...In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave..
And where is that band...
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. (?)
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n-rescued (?) land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! (?)
Then conquer we must, when our cause. it is just (? was it ever, is it now?)
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust" (OH who's God is this? or is it in the Pentagon? Blackwater, our commanders? More Occupied land? Power? Misplaced pride? Zionist Israel? Never being "wrong"?, more oil, guns, bombs, drones?)
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!"
(No longer do others call us Americans brave in battle! You see why many of us are sick of our nationalism or patriotism -- sick of our flag?)
Some have suggested we change our anthem to "America the Beautiful" and yes, I used to love it too. One of the first movies ever I saw was as a young girl and I was so engrossed in the media of film as I watched over and over early circular cinema enraptures and feeling I was flying on a real plane over the gorgeous planes mountains and ecstatic variety of venues across our country.
Yet how often is America STILL beautiful to either people abroad or those of us still living right here? How have her citizens allowed our name to be so undignified and trampled upon by our own war-mongers and torturers?
Some have suggested changing our anthem to "This Land is Your Land".
"This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me...
(Was it really? What about the people who's land we occupied?)
...I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me
(Oh, who's voice was that?)
...As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!"
(Well, the day for tress passin' is over now on OUR land and OTHER'S land. Nope, that song won't work anymore!)
Chorus
"In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me."
While I have sorta liked that song in the past and sung it often...it doesn't cut it for me anymore.
How about an equally skilled songwriter composing one entitled:
"THIS WORLD IS YOUR WORLD, THIS WORLD IS MY WORLD?"
And how about EVERY nation -- including (and ESPECIALLY) the United States of America -- asking herself IF this world is our world, this land is our land, this people worldwide are OUR people, how then should we act? How then should we love? How then should we make peace? What might be the Unique Part we each could play? Enough of National Flags and Anthems that are all about war and bombs dropping to tap the worst impulses of our peoples and our nations!
Every Fourth a few of us stand on the road leading to the fireworks at the College and near our courthouse with simple signs: "Peace Works" - "Let Peace Come" and a few lanterns. Every year here and at our weekly vigil more and more people give us a peace sign or a honk of agreement or tell us glad we're out there standing up for both the troops who need to come home and the people who are hurt by our warmongering...sometimes someone comes by who's knows someone, maybe a loved one who's been injured or died in the current war or even from Vietnam
and thanks us profusely for standing in their stead.
Well, I did enjoy the glorious rainbow of fireworks that lit the sky last night - shot off from our local college -- as I drove home from purchasing my EAR PLUGS. And I reminded myself that kids all over the nation were enjoying the same view and lighting some of their own.
And I was and am excited that my immediate family was going to be together this Sunday.
Yet, the larger questions need to keep reverberating throughout this beautiful land:
How and When are we going to call our young and all the others HOME from occupying foreign land? When are we going to restore the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution and our profound international agreements? When will we start living out those beautiful words attached to Lady liberty and found on the pedestal of her statue?
"...Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
(From Emma Lazarus' poem)
I hear the song made from these words still wringing in my ear on this 4th of July:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...",
Why then have we NOT left alone the pomp and glory of other cultures but rather have destroyed the same? And why do we so often imprison and torture many of these same poor as well as middle class and so many innocent and others from within and without our citizenry and those usually untried or if so unfairly so from distant lands?
What sort of legacy are WE going to give and leave our dear beloved children, each and all?
Also as a young girl of twelve or so I sang in a school choir the song:
"Let There Be Peace on Earth" and I've been singing and loving it ever since. This is the question for us each and all, no?
"Let peace begin with me
Let this be the moment now.
With every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow.
To take each moment
And live each moment
In peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me."
Well, the kids in my neighborhood and many will keep shooting their firecrackers and works for some days to come and the dog will keep whimpering and following us around. (In fact one particularly resounding firecracker just went off now!) Bless the innocence and may there be plenty of fun for All children everywhere.
And thanx be for earplugs!
Photo credit for Lady Liberty: REENA ROSE SIBAYAN / THE JERSEY JOURNAL
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