What it feels like for a girl.
Not a big Madonna fan, but this song fit.
If the embedded one cuts out like last time go here
war
Waterboy strikes again
On the November 27 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, in response to claims made by King Abdullah II of Jordan on the November 26 edition of ABC’s This Week that “we could possibly imagine going into 2007 and having three civil wars on our hands,” Rush Limbaugh said: “[W]ell, let’s just have them. Let’s just have the civil wars … because I’m just fed up with this.” Limbaugh then asserted: “Fine, just blow the place up. Just let these natural forces take place over there instead of trying to stop them.” Additionally, Limbaugh claimed: “[E]verbody comes to us. … So we go and try to fix it and our own people, Democrats and the left in our country do their best to sabotage our efforts, and then we get blamed for trying to clean up the messes that these people start.”
One thing we know about Rush AKA The Waterboy;
“Something’s wrong with his medulla oblongata.”
Day 2 (Dec. 6th Action)
The word childhood evokes thoughts of lullabies, carefree days, playing, friends….
For too many this is not the childhood they know. Too many are dying.
Dying from poverty, disease, war, crime and abuse.
While these problems may seem insurmountable when taken together, when addressed individually the solutions are often simple, easy and affordable.
Case in point Spread the Net
Imagine the difference you could make in the life of a family by buying a sanitation kit, a goat or a chicken. Simple things to us, perhaps the difference between life and death for others.
And don’t forget the children next door. The girl who may need a mentor, the boy who is too ashamed to come right out and ask for help, the children who go to bed hungry.
You are only one person but, one person CAN make a difference.
No Bravery
There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
Tears drying on their face.
He has been here.
Brothers lie in shallow graves.
Fathers lost without a trace.
A nation blind to their disgrace,
Since he’s been here.
And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.
Houses burnt beyond repair.
The smell of death is in the air.
A woman weeping in despair says,
He has been here.
Tracer lighting up the sky.
It’s another families’ turn to die.
A child afraid to even cry out says,
He has been here.
And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.
There are children standing here,
Arms outstretched into the sky,
But no one asks the question why,
He has been here.
Old men kneel and accept their fate.
Wives and daughters cut and raped.
A generation drenched in hate.
Yes, he has been here.
And I see no bravery,
No bravery in your eyes anymore.
Only sadness.
Poppies and Peace
From the Peace Pledge Union website
An alternative view of the British Legion inspired Remembrance
ceremonies is deeply rooted in the history of the Peace Pledge
Union. The PPU’s original pledge – I renounce war and will
never support or sanction another – was taken from an
Armistice Day sermon given in 1933 in New York by Canon
Fosdick, called The Unknown Soldier. Canon Fosdick was an
army chaplain and his sermon was an apology to the men who
had been sent to their deaths in World War One: ‘If I blame
anybody…it is men like myself who ought to have known better.
We went out to the army and explained to these valiant
men what a resplendent future they were preparing for their
children by their heroic sacrifices.’ He went on to ‘renounce
war because of what it does to our own men’ and ‘what it
compels us to do to our enemies’. ‘I renounce war for its consequences,
for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying
hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place
of democracy, for the starvation that strikes after it.’
snip
The white poppy was conceived by the Women’s Co-operative
Guild in 1933. Members of the Guild were themselves the
wives, mothers, sisters and lovers of men who had died and
been injured in World War One. They were only too well aware
of the likelihood of another war, and chose this symbol for
peace ‘as a pledge to Peace that war must not happen again’.
The PPU joined with the Guild and later took over the distribution
as Europe once again drifted to war.
The declaration of war in 1939 put a stop to Armistice Day
ceremonies. The failure of the First World War to achieve anything
of significance was too obvious. Remembering the ‘Glorious
Dead’, who gave their all to save future generations from
war, would have sounded false even to regular Armistice Day
attenders.
War affects everyone. It does not only affect those “sent to war” it affects those from whom they were sent. It affects those they were sent to kill and it effects the lives of all in the country besieged.
As Tolkien wrote in Lord of the Rings “those without swords can still die upon them”.
It has been said that the white poppy is an insult to the veterans of war, that it takes away from their sacrifice, yet it was originally a symbol of the sacrifice and grief of the families they left behind. Is their grief, and the grief of those who recently lost sons and daughters to war, disrespectful?
As we take a less romanticized view of war we recognize that while we are grateful to those that fought in the “great wars” we cannot forget that there were also great crimes. Many women were sacrificed upon the alter of victory. Women whose lives deserve to be honoured.
And while we remember the sons and daughters lost so recently in Afghanistan, let us also remember the losses of families living there.
Peace is not a four letter word. Most of those returning from the world wars spoke highly of the need for peace. Lest we forget, was the message.
Recognition of the veterans both combative and non combative, of those still being sent to war, of the families who have lost loved ones, of the women whose lives were and are so brutally and forever changed, of children from whom childhood was and is stolen, of the bloody, heart wrenching, gut wrenching, soulless enterprise that war is can and must surely exist together.
For it not to do so would be a greater insult to those who are sacrificed to war.
…did I do that?
I suppose you can’t expect much from people who think the internet is a series of tubes
Still you would hope that a government which regularly uses THE WAR ON TERROR as their go to for every right killing bill they pass would have some sense that posting how-to manuals on chemical weapons and atomic bombs on the internet just might possibly be a bad idea.
(is it an oxymoron to use sense and republican in the same sentence? I think it might be.)
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
Last night, the government shut down the Web site after The New York Times asked about complaints from weapons experts and arms-control officials. A spokesman for the director of national intelligence said access to the site had been suspended “pending a review to ensure its content is appropriate for public viewing.”
Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency, fearing that the information could help states like Iran develop nuclear arms, had privately protested last week to the American ambassador to the agency, according to European diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. One diplomat said the agency’s technical experts “were shocked” at the public disclosures.
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