April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

peace

Code Blue for Canada?

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Code Pink In a stunning move of synchoanty, Canada denied access to both Ann Wright and Medea Benjamin because they were on an FBI list of undesirables.

Today the Globe and Mail is carrying Ms Benjamin’s response to this occurrence.

If Canada’s policy of excluding those who have committed non-violent civil disobedience were truly enforced, the results would be absurd. It would block 14 members of the United States Congress, including Holocaust survivor Rep. Tom Lantos for his arrest outside the Sudanese Embassy in 2006 protesting genocide in Darfur. The list of banned Americans would be populated by Nobel Prize-winners, members of clergy, writers, scholars, actors, musicians, activists and the thousands of Americans who have been arrested protesting the Iraq war.

I’ve taken out the link to the petition as some dumb fuck has linked it to a young porn site.

Happy Holidays

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The turkey was brought to the table with care
To banish the hunger of those gathered there.

However and what ever you celebrate I hope you had a wonderful day.

The holiest of holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Away in a manger

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Christmas Eve many focus on a birth of long ago, and so I give you a story of birth.

From the Independent

In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem – but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.

Fadia Jemal is a gap-toothed 27-year-old with a weary, watery smile. “What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today? She would endure what I have endured,” she says.

Fadia clutches a set of keys tightly, digging hard into her skin as she describes in broken, jagged sentences what happened. “It was 5pm when I started to feel the contractions coming on,” she says. She was already nervous about the birth – her first, and twins – so she told her husband to grab her hospital bag and get her straight into the car.

They stopped to collect her sister and mother and set out for the Hussein Hospital, 20 minutes away. But the road had been blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning. “Obviously, we told them we couldn’t wait until the morning. I was bleeding very heavily on the back seat. One of the soldiers looked down at the blood and laughed. I still wake up in the night hearing that laugh. It was such a shock to me. I couldn’t understand.”

Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. “I don’t remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital,” she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could “certainly” have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.

A song of Peace

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Christmas in the Trenches by John McCutcheon

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here
I fought for King and country I love dear.
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung,
The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung
Our families back in England were toasting us that day
Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground
When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound
Says I, “Now listen up, me boys!” each soldier strained to hear
As one young German voice sang out so clear.
“He’s singing bloody well, you know!” my partner says to me
Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony
The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more
As Christmas brought us respite from the war
As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent
“God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” struck up some lads from Kent
The next they sang was “Stille Nacht.” “Tis ‘Silent Night’,” says I
And in two tongues one song filled up that sky
“There’s someone coming toward us!” the front line sentry cried
All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright
As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night
Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man’s Land
With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand
We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well
And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave ’em hell
We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home
These sons and fathers far away from families of their own
Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin
This curious and unlikely band of men

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more
With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
“Whose family have I fixed within my sights?”
‘Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung
For the walls they’d kept between us to exact the work of war
Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell
Each Christmas come since World War I, I’ve learned its lessons well
That the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame
And on each end of the rifle we’re the same

Day 4 (Dec. 6th Action)

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I don’t know what to write today to introduce you to this video.

It covers many subjects and it is of course up to the viewer to make their own interpretation.

If you think the voices sound familiar, it is Judy Collins and Joan Baez.

*some images are graphic*

For some reason the embedded player was cutting out half way through, it is fine on the youtube site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqewiVEemww

Day 2 (Dec. 6th Action)

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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.