Next week on my radio show, Raising Sand Radio, I'll air an interview with Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Project. Daniel will discuss AFRICOM as it is currently constituted ....
One thing Volman says that resonates with me is that many of the US military brass that he has talked to about AFRICOM agree that it leaves a lot to be desired.
For example, there are many war scenarios and exercises regularly conducted over US air space. (Think back to 9/11/2001... VP Cheney said that it took so long for air traffic controllers and USAF to align because of military exercises conducted over DC that day. I'm not suggesting anything fishy, just reminding ....) At any rate, these continue and in a recent batch of military exercises earlier this year, military brass began to realize that certain contingencies were simply not dealt with at all. This because they cannot be solved militarily. I'll not go into it here - listen to the show - but what stuck with me is how little many of those in the military want to commit our youth to war when contingencies are ignored.
Then there is the other side: the "chicken hawks" like Rumsfeld (who, btw, was instrumental in AFRICOM) who can't wait to get our youth into war (remember "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want"?) ...and "bring 'em on" Bush (remember "mission accomplished"?)
Life is so much easier when the "bad guys" are easy to identify and one can, sans guilt, pick a side and stay with it rather than have to think through all the complexity and "flip flop". (I'm in favor of flip-flopping when accompanied by well thought out and articulated reasons to do so.)
All this to say that I (sort of) repudiate my last posting (below titled "It's happening again..and again...) ...that I feel bad that I felt bad about our collective failure...and that I'm ready to stop feelin' bad and "fight back" again. So, I'll be at the next boring meeting bringing creative thinking instead of downer energy. See you there?
BTW, this week's radio show presents Dr. Michael Parenti on acculturation and assimilation and IAVA's Patrick Campbell on the New GI Bill.
(Sign up to get on the radio show's listserv)
Another excellent move by the Yes Men on the NY Post - watch the editor of the actual NY Post decry Yes Men propaganda.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
it's happening again...and again...and again...and....
Einstein said, "You cannot solve problems with the same level of consciousness that created them."
Pres Obama has even used Einstein's aphorism in his speeches. Turns out the prez is more of a motivational speaker than a transformative leader. For he and all the other American politicians and civic leaders with any clout continue to follow the same tired old, inept, deadly pattern: same jargon, same bickering, same lame old politics...same old urgings to consumers to "spend our way out of debt" while bailing out the "too big to fail" institutions, spending enormous sums on war, and ignoring the worldwide climate crises....
Meanwhile, members of "the peace movement" continue to meet, discuss, strategize, and carry signs in the street. Our strategies are so old and tired that they've even trickled down to the "the right" - who is using them quite successfully for the time being. What more glaring indication that new and creative directions are needed than "the right" - aka "the right wing nuts" -- emulating progressive tactics and getting 60,000 or 70,000 protesters into the street in short order? (True, these numbers are disputed...but 60,000 to 70,000 are the low end of the scale. The accusation that 'the right wing media' inflated the numbers - another post-street protest cliche - is missing the point. When was the last time 60,000 to 70,000 war protesters showed up in San Francisco?)
Robert Fisk addresses this theme in his article, ""Everyone seems to be agreeing with bin Laden these days". He closes, "More troops will not guarantee success in Afghanistan," failed Republican contender and ex-Vietnam vet John McCain told us this week. "But a failure to send them will be a guarantee of failure." How Osama must have chuckled as this preposterous announcement echoed around al-Qa'ida's dark cave.
Parsing "Failure"
I don't have the energy to attend strategy meetings anymore. I'm tired of the same old thing: just figuring out a date for the meeting takes a week of emails going back and forth about why the various potential attendees cannot make that date. Finding a venue is tough. Tallying who will or will not show up then fretting about changing dates and venues to accommodate changes goes on for more weeks. Finally, about a third of those confirmed actually show up...to find a sub-meeting already occurred somewhere else and all the significant decisions have been made.
How is this different from meetings held in corporate or bureaucratic workplaces? Both are showpieces to present roles and get "buy in" rather than practices in democracy.
And, yes, I feel bad about all of this. I feel bad about myself. I feel bad feeling bad. I feel bad that I recognize that "the peace movement" - or the anti-war movement - is a failure... and I feel bad that I sound blaming when I admit our failure to hardworking "comrades".
We, the People are stuck in our individualized, atomized worlds.
Alas! A change of consciousness is needed...but how? And who? And when?
Pres Obama has even used Einstein's aphorism in his speeches. Turns out the prez is more of a motivational speaker than a transformative leader. For he and all the other American politicians and civic leaders with any clout continue to follow the same tired old, inept, deadly pattern: same jargon, same bickering, same lame old politics...same old urgings to consumers to "spend our way out of debt" while bailing out the "too big to fail" institutions, spending enormous sums on war, and ignoring the worldwide climate crises....
Meanwhile, members of "the peace movement" continue to meet, discuss, strategize, and carry signs in the street. Our strategies are so old and tired that they've even trickled down to the "the right" - who is using them quite successfully for the time being. What more glaring indication that new and creative directions are needed than "the right" - aka "the right wing nuts" -- emulating progressive tactics and getting 60,000 or 70,000 protesters into the street in short order? (True, these numbers are disputed...but 60,000 to 70,000 are the low end of the scale. The accusation that 'the right wing media' inflated the numbers - another post-street protest cliche - is missing the point. When was the last time 60,000 to 70,000 war protesters showed up in San Francisco?)
Robert Fisk addresses this theme in his article, ""Everyone seems to be agreeing with bin Laden these days". He closes, "More troops will not guarantee success in Afghanistan," failed Republican contender and ex-Vietnam vet John McCain told us this week. "But a failure to send them will be a guarantee of failure." How Osama must have chuckled as this preposterous announcement echoed around al-Qa'ida's dark cave.
Parsing "Failure"
I don't have the energy to attend strategy meetings anymore. I'm tired of the same old thing: just figuring out a date for the meeting takes a week of emails going back and forth about why the various potential attendees cannot make that date. Finding a venue is tough. Tallying who will or will not show up then fretting about changing dates and venues to accommodate changes goes on for more weeks. Finally, about a third of those confirmed actually show up...to find a sub-meeting already occurred somewhere else and all the significant decisions have been made.
How is this different from meetings held in corporate or bureaucratic workplaces? Both are showpieces to present roles and get "buy in" rather than practices in democracy.
And, yes, I feel bad about all of this. I feel bad about myself. I feel bad feeling bad. I feel bad that I recognize that "the peace movement" - or the anti-war movement - is a failure... and I feel bad that I sound blaming when I admit our failure to hardworking "comrades".
We, the People are stuck in our individualized, atomized worlds.
Alas! A change of consciousness is needed...but how? And who? And when?
Monday, August 24, 2009
It's happening again...or, the truth will out
In Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" Launcelot says:
Well, old man, I will tell you news of
your son: give me your blessing: truth will come
to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son
may, but at the length truth will out.
August 24th, one of the premier US mainstream newspapers, the New York Times, presented the headline, "Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?"
The article suggests that Obama's presidency ought perhaps to be compared to that of Lyndon B. Johnson.
To be sure, the L.B.J. model - a president who aspired to reshape America at home while fighting a losing war abroad - is one that haunts Mr. Obama's White House as it seeks to salvage Afghanistan while enacting an expansive domestic program.
Then on August 22, in Columbus, GA. former Lt William Calley of the infamous My Lai Massacre stood in front of a gathering at the Kiwanis Club and spoke publicly for the first time about that massacre in Vietnam on March. 16, 1968.
Forty years later, Calley said: "There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai...I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."
(See a more nuanced and thoughtful piece in The Lede.)
Indeed, the truth will out.
Deborah Nelson, author of The War Behind Me uncovered evidence that, in fact, My Lai was only the most publicized of the American-perpetrated atrocities that occurred in Vietnam.
I contend, in my own book, Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror, that, as long as we continue with the atrocity that is war, we will continue to have events such as My Lai in Vietnam, the bombing of refugees in UN facilities as in Qana, Lebanon, Mutla Ridge and Nissour Square in Iraq, the slaughter in Gaza in 2008-09 - and this is just contemporary history!
Put armed men in situations where they're angry, fearful, far from home, un-acculturated, psychologically traumatized, and ideological prepared to think in binary "us vs. them" modes and atrocities are guaranteed.
Sure, we can finger a fall guy or two (or gal as in Lindy England's case) but the whole mess resides on the shoulders of those who create policies that inevitably lead to war, valorize weaponry, and evolve financial systems that depend on arms manufacturing and selling.
And us...the ordinary Joe-in-the-street who allows it to happen and beats the drums of war with the rhetoric of patriotism and exceptionalism and "civilization" and so on...
Since we're all of us guilty for some of this, none of us is guilty for all of it.
Yet, "at the length truth will out." I only hope that we survive the madness of war in the meantime.
Listen to my radio show this week on how the Armenian genocide plays out in this political arena.
Well, old man, I will tell you news of
your son: give me your blessing: truth will come
to light; murder cannot be hid long; a man's son
may, but at the length truth will out.
August 24th, one of the premier US mainstream newspapers, the New York Times, presented the headline, "Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?"
The article suggests that Obama's presidency ought perhaps to be compared to that of Lyndon B. Johnson.
To be sure, the L.B.J. model - a president who aspired to reshape America at home while fighting a losing war abroad - is one that haunts Mr. Obama's White House as it seeks to salvage Afghanistan while enacting an expansive domestic program.
Then on August 22, in Columbus, GA. former Lt William Calley of the infamous My Lai Massacre stood in front of a gathering at the Kiwanis Club and spoke publicly for the first time about that massacre in Vietnam on March. 16, 1968.
Forty years later, Calley said: "There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai...I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry."
(See a more nuanced and thoughtful piece in The Lede.)
Indeed, the truth will out.
Deborah Nelson, author of The War Behind Me uncovered evidence that, in fact, My Lai was only the most publicized of the American-perpetrated atrocities that occurred in Vietnam.
I contend, in my own book, Long Time Passing: Mothers Speak about War and Terror, that, as long as we continue with the atrocity that is war, we will continue to have events such as My Lai in Vietnam, the bombing of refugees in UN facilities as in Qana, Lebanon, Mutla Ridge and Nissour Square in Iraq, the slaughter in Gaza in 2008-09 - and this is just contemporary history!
Put armed men in situations where they're angry, fearful, far from home, un-acculturated, psychologically traumatized, and ideological prepared to think in binary "us vs. them" modes and atrocities are guaranteed.
Sure, we can finger a fall guy or two (or gal as in Lindy England's case) but the whole mess resides on the shoulders of those who create policies that inevitably lead to war, valorize weaponry, and evolve financial systems that depend on arms manufacturing and selling.
And us...the ordinary Joe-in-the-street who allows it to happen and beats the drums of war with the rhetoric of patriotism and exceptionalism and "civilization" and so on...
Since we're all of us guilty for some of this, none of us is guilty for all of it.
Yet, "at the length truth will out." I only hope that we survive the madness of war in the meantime.
Listen to my radio show this week on how the Armenian genocide plays out in this political arena.
Monday, August 17, 2009
It's the System, Stupid!
Remember the days of, "It's the Economy, Stupid!" and political parties called KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid!"?
Here is another: It's the System, Stupid!
The writers of the following letters haven't yet realized that the American Dream is really a System to Milk All but the most greedy and ego-maniacal of the fruits of her/his labor.
While American ideology promotes The Individual as the ultimate in human evolution The System actually divides and conquers and makes the individual feel as if/believe s/he is responsible for not having a job, that her/his life is simply a product of her/his "hard work."
Instead, we humans are social beings longing to contribute to one another
Alas, today this longing is denigrated as "Socialism"...the newest "-ism" used as a psychological baseball bat to mug us in broad daylight.
Read it and weep.
"I'm not exactly sure where I went wrong"
Here is another: It's the System, Stupid!
The writers of the following letters haven't yet realized that the American Dream is really a System to Milk All but the most greedy and ego-maniacal of the fruits of her/his labor.
While American ideology promotes The Individual as the ultimate in human evolution The System actually divides and conquers and makes the individual feel as if/believe s/he is responsible for not having a job, that her/his life is simply a product of her/his "hard work."
Instead, we humans are social beings longing to contribute to one another
Alas, today this longing is denigrated as "Socialism"...the newest "-ism" used as a psychological baseball bat to mug us in broad daylight.
Read it and weep.
"I'm not exactly sure where I went wrong"
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Rallying the (storm)troopers?
At Ali Abuminah's recommendation on my Facebook page I read Lizzy Ratner's blog posting. It is, as he suggests, a thoughtful essay that concludes:
- Instead of tours that whisk young people from Auschwitz to Israel, I would like to see trips that go from the Warsaw ghetto to the Jabaliya refugee camp.
- In place of a Jewish mainstream that looks only – and mistakenly – to Israel for its identity, I would like to see Jews who reach across time and space, to old countries and new countries, for a sense of who they are – and might be.
- ...[I would like to] see the true lessons of “never again” enshrined in a single, consummately-inclusive Israeli-Palestinian state....
In return, I recommend Andrew Bacevich's blog piece, "Farewell, The End of the American Century." (The text is a transcript of the included video clip.) To progressives, Bacevich is airing ideas that have been our guiding principles for some time. Yet to his audience these ideas are revolutionary. It is revolutionary to call for a public admission that We the People have been propagandized with the nomenclature of Freedom and Democracy to perpetrate deeds whose results are the polar opposite of freedom and democracy. For some, to seek the admission that "the greatest" anything (father, mother, teacher, or history book) makes mistakes is revolutionary. For others, to admit that the "the greatest country in the world" made -- and continues to make -- mistakes is almost beyond revolutionary...it flirts with treason!
It is dizzying just thinking of the ensuing chaos as the concentric layers of different communities within the American frame of reference accept such admissions!
Ratner's and Bacevich's pieces have in common the underlying assumptions that recognizing and acknowledging past mistakes is essential to re-orienting the planet's current disastrous trajectory to one that is more just, equitable, and sustainable. The other assumptions are that a "we" exists ...and that that "we" can come to a common understanding about why and how we went off course... and that we can agree upon why and how we might re-orient.
I appreciate the need to surface and acknowledge these assumptions; and implementing them is easier said than done. Just a cursory scan of today's "mainstream" and/or "alternative" media's reporting on the state of American health care plans suggests how difficult it is to even broach these assumptions (that there is, #1, a "we" who can, #2, recognize and acknowledge mistakes and, #3, re-orient, and #4, that something "just", "equitable" and "sustainable" could, or should, exist).
For the sake of simplicity, let's remain within the American frame of reference and imagine, if you can, the majority of current Republican leaders accepting that there are any assumptions to examine...and if there are, that there is a need to admit they're unjust and inequitable.
Not easy to imagine, is it? Indeed, that party appears increasingly unhinged and incapable of anything other than whipping up their stormtroopers' emotions. (As an aside, is the messaging coming out of folks like Limbaugh and Gingrich and Palin expected to rally their base? If so, then their base consists solely of two extremes: a mob of Joe-the-Plumbers on one end -- wanna-be-rich, wanna-be-celebrity, and intellectually under-endowed -- and a mob of Bushies on the other -- already obscenely rich, over-privileged, and intellectually under-endowed.) Instead of functioning from political pragmatism, that party seems to be operating from a shrill ideological mono-culture whose driving force is "I can drink the Koolaid faster than you" powered by the fear of scarcity. Is there anything the Republican leadership wouldn't say, nothing they wouldn't do, to sabotage Obama no matter what he says and does? (While I'm not thrilled with Obama's direction at least the man appears mostly sane and appears to be working toward a more sane future given the political realities. Frankly, his central vision is flawed: "we" cannot save ourselves with more shopping. The era of capitalism and consumerism is over...instead of politicians, "we" need visionaries able to implement sustainable futures.)
Now, imagine the ensuring complexity if we broaden American assumptions and frames of reference to include European assumptions and frames of reference. Now add, say, the Arab world's assumptions and frames of reference. Then, the Asian, and African, the Native American worlds' and cultural frames of reference. Dizzying, eh?
Lizzy Ratner and Andrew Bacevich are offering something along the lines of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee. That was something unique in the world. It succeeded in putting some new concepts and operating principles on the sociopolitical map. And, it has not been able to forward them in any practical, consistent, and lasting way. Many still point to the TRC as an example to emulate - progressive Israelis particularly like to do this - but its real contribution is not that it accomplished tangible changes. This was not due to lack of trying but because revolutionary ideas need time to soak into the sociopolitical culture.
The TRC's overarching and lasting accomplishment was allowing -- then popularizing -- a new nomenclature of reconciliation.
Humankind simply does not evolve simultaneously en masse -- especially when those who benefit from chaos rely on the the very dumb...and for whom the very word "evolution" is taboo -- to maintain the status quo.
New ideas need time to soak into old cultures...and new language makes this possible. This takes time...and a critical mass of patient individuals introducing new ideas via a new language. Ratner and Bacevich come at this work from different angles. More importantly they represent two variants of a consistent, passionate, and courageous cohort committed to forwarding and popularizing a new nomenclature of reconciliation.
It may take another century or at least another generation or two to enact reconciliation but, with hard work and lots of luck, even the Republican Party will change; it will have to....
- Instead of tours that whisk young people from Auschwitz to Israel, I would like to see trips that go from the Warsaw ghetto to the Jabaliya refugee camp.
- In place of a Jewish mainstream that looks only – and mistakenly – to Israel for its identity, I would like to see Jews who reach across time and space, to old countries and new countries, for a sense of who they are – and might be.
- ...[I would like to] see the true lessons of “never again” enshrined in a single, consummately-inclusive Israeli-Palestinian state....
In return, I recommend Andrew Bacevich's blog piece, "Farewell, The End of the American Century." (The text is a transcript of the included video clip.) To progressives, Bacevich is airing ideas that have been our guiding principles for some time. Yet to his audience these ideas are revolutionary. It is revolutionary to call for a public admission that We the People have been propagandized with the nomenclature of Freedom and Democracy to perpetrate deeds whose results are the polar opposite of freedom and democracy. For some, to seek the admission that "the greatest" anything (father, mother, teacher, or history book) makes mistakes is revolutionary. For others, to admit that the "the greatest country in the world" made -- and continues to make -- mistakes is almost beyond revolutionary...it flirts with treason!
It is dizzying just thinking of the ensuing chaos as the concentric layers of different communities within the American frame of reference accept such admissions!
Ratner's and Bacevich's pieces have in common the underlying assumptions that recognizing and acknowledging past mistakes is essential to re-orienting the planet's current disastrous trajectory to one that is more just, equitable, and sustainable. The other assumptions are that a "we" exists ...and that that "we" can come to a common understanding about why and how we went off course... and that we can agree upon why and how we might re-orient.
I appreciate the need to surface and acknowledge these assumptions; and implementing them is easier said than done. Just a cursory scan of today's "mainstream" and/or "alternative" media's reporting on the state of American health care plans suggests how difficult it is to even broach these assumptions (that there is, #1, a "we" who can, #2, recognize and acknowledge mistakes and, #3, re-orient, and #4, that something "just", "equitable" and "sustainable" could, or should, exist).
For the sake of simplicity, let's remain within the American frame of reference and imagine, if you can, the majority of current Republican leaders accepting that there are any assumptions to examine...and if there are, that there is a need to admit they're unjust and inequitable.
Not easy to imagine, is it? Indeed, that party appears increasingly unhinged and incapable of anything other than whipping up their stormtroopers' emotions. (As an aside, is the messaging coming out of folks like Limbaugh and Gingrich and Palin expected to rally their base? If so, then their base consists solely of two extremes: a mob of Joe-the-Plumbers on one end -- wanna-be-rich, wanna-be-celebrity, and intellectually under-endowed -- and a mob of Bushies on the other -- already obscenely rich, over-privileged, and intellectually under-endowed.) Instead of functioning from political pragmatism, that party seems to be operating from a shrill ideological mono-culture whose driving force is "I can drink the Koolaid faster than you" powered by the fear of scarcity. Is there anything the Republican leadership wouldn't say, nothing they wouldn't do, to sabotage Obama no matter what he says and does? (While I'm not thrilled with Obama's direction at least the man appears mostly sane and appears to be working toward a more sane future given the political realities. Frankly, his central vision is flawed: "we" cannot save ourselves with more shopping. The era of capitalism and consumerism is over...instead of politicians, "we" need visionaries able to implement sustainable futures.)
Now, imagine the ensuring complexity if we broaden American assumptions and frames of reference to include European assumptions and frames of reference. Now add, say, the Arab world's assumptions and frames of reference. Then, the Asian, and African, the Native American worlds' and cultural frames of reference. Dizzying, eh?
Lizzy Ratner and Andrew Bacevich are offering something along the lines of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee. That was something unique in the world. It succeeded in putting some new concepts and operating principles on the sociopolitical map. And, it has not been able to forward them in any practical, consistent, and lasting way. Many still point to the TRC as an example to emulate - progressive Israelis particularly like to do this - but its real contribution is not that it accomplished tangible changes. This was not due to lack of trying but because revolutionary ideas need time to soak into the sociopolitical culture.
The TRC's overarching and lasting accomplishment was allowing -- then popularizing -- a new nomenclature of reconciliation.
Humankind simply does not evolve simultaneously en masse -- especially when those who benefit from chaos rely on the the very dumb...and for whom the very word "evolution" is taboo -- to maintain the status quo.
New ideas need time to soak into old cultures...and new language makes this possible. This takes time...and a critical mass of patient individuals introducing new ideas via a new language. Ratner and Bacevich come at this work from different angles. More importantly they represent two variants of a consistent, passionate, and courageous cohort committed to forwarding and popularizing a new nomenclature of reconciliation.
It may take another century or at least another generation or two to enact reconciliation but, with hard work and lots of luck, even the Republican Party will change; it will have to....
Monday, July 27, 2009
"...the biggest issue is the profit motive...".
Use the problems with health care as a measure of the problems with other areas in American life and you cannot help but come to the same conclusion: "the biggest issue is the profit motive that drives US health care".
As in health care, so goes the "defense industry" and auto industry, the banking and financial industries, the higher education and student loan industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the media industry, the under-the-radar "fear and scarcity" industry, and until recently, the mortgage industry.
Kudos to Wendell Potter, former senior executive at giant US health care firm Cigna. He did not need a heart transplant to find his own heart. Read the article.
As in health care, so goes the "defense industry" and auto industry, the banking and financial industries, the higher education and student loan industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the media industry, the under-the-radar "fear and scarcity" industry, and until recently, the mortgage industry.
Kudos to Wendell Potter, former senior executive at giant US health care firm Cigna. He did not need a heart transplant to find his own heart. Read the article.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Human Rights Yes! Intervention No! - Iran Rally, July 25, 2009
(I delivered this short rallying call at the Human Rights Yes! Intervention No! - Iran Rally, in San Francisco today, July 25. About 7,000 people showed up at SF City Hall. See the list of speakers, etc. And Listen to interviews recorded by KPFA Radio, too.)
Thank you for being here. That you are here today is a testament to a saying in Iran, “It might seem quiet to an outsider, but there is fire below the ashes .” Today, the fire is in all of our hearts.
For over seven weeks now -- for 52 days -- the fire below the ashes has been reigniting. For over 7 weeks, the freedom loving people of Iran have demonstrated to one another and to the world that they will not be silenced, they will not go home and shut their doors and they will not shutdown the spirits.
One of the most touching features of this movement for civil and human rights in Iran is hearing peoples’ voices echoing across the neighborhoods at night. When I first heard those calls I was deeply touched by the peoples’ determination to have a say, to not be silenced. I heard the dignity and the deeply human need to reach out to one another through the uncertainty, the fear, and the anger.
Through the dark these voices encouraged one another to keep going, they called out to boost one anothers’ spirits in the face of brutality and repression, they called out to one another to stay the course for their civil rights, for the right of the people to choose their own direction and their own leadership, a leadership that is responsive to them, the people. These nightly calls through the dark, from one neighborhood to another , expressed the essence of the peoples’ courage and fortitude.
These messages were sent to all of us – to those in their neighborhoods and to those listening from so far away, was a heartfelt message of hope and of determination to keep on struggling to express their full humanity.
And here today, 52 days later, in San Francisco, we join with hundreds of thousands of voices from over 100 countries around the world, and we send a message back the people of Iran.
We hear you ……we are inspired by your determination. …We support you in your struggle for civil rights and justice …..And we reach out to you, from human spirit to human spirit, from around the world. …..We support you with a light touch, a deeply respectful touch, a deeply human touch.
Today, We will do our part to ensure your peace and your safety. And soon, perhaps it will be you, the people of Iran, showing the world’s people of peace how to win the struggle for civil rights.
Today, we the people of the world are living in a time when we can reach out to one another and with this reaching out comes the real power to change the world, to change the status quo, to really change hearts and minds, and to change our leadership. But we need courage to do that. And we need good examples. Today, Iranians are lighting the way.
Perhaps, when the day comes that, we The People of America , need to wage a real struggle for our real freedom the people of Iran will show us how to do it.
Remember, there is fire below the ashes.
So, I invite you to add your voice and let’s call out to Iran:
We are with you…
The whole segment . (My 3 minutes is the last half hour of the audio segment.)
Thank you for being here. That you are here today is a testament to a saying in Iran, “It might seem quiet to an outsider, but there is fire below the ashes .” Today, the fire is in all of our hearts.
For over seven weeks now -- for 52 days -- the fire below the ashes has been reigniting. For over 7 weeks, the freedom loving people of Iran have demonstrated to one another and to the world that they will not be silenced, they will not go home and shut their doors and they will not shutdown the spirits.
One of the most touching features of this movement for civil and human rights in Iran is hearing peoples’ voices echoing across the neighborhoods at night. When I first heard those calls I was deeply touched by the peoples’ determination to have a say, to not be silenced. I heard the dignity and the deeply human need to reach out to one another through the uncertainty, the fear, and the anger.
Through the dark these voices encouraged one another to keep going, they called out to boost one anothers’ spirits in the face of brutality and repression, they called out to one another to stay the course for their civil rights, for the right of the people to choose their own direction and their own leadership, a leadership that is responsive to them, the people. These nightly calls through the dark, from one neighborhood to another , expressed the essence of the peoples’ courage and fortitude.
These messages were sent to all of us – to those in their neighborhoods and to those listening from so far away, was a heartfelt message of hope and of determination to keep on struggling to express their full humanity.
And here today, 52 days later, in San Francisco, we join with hundreds of thousands of voices from over 100 countries around the world, and we send a message back the people of Iran.
We hear you ……we are inspired by your determination. …We support you in your struggle for civil rights and justice …..And we reach out to you, from human spirit to human spirit, from around the world. …..We support you with a light touch, a deeply respectful touch, a deeply human touch.
Today, We will do our part to ensure your peace and your safety. And soon, perhaps it will be you, the people of Iran, showing the world’s people of peace how to win the struggle for civil rights.
Today, we the people of the world are living in a time when we can reach out to one another and with this reaching out comes the real power to change the world, to change the status quo, to really change hearts and minds, and to change our leadership. But we need courage to do that. And we need good examples. Today, Iranians are lighting the way.
Perhaps, when the day comes that, we The People of America , need to wage a real struggle for our real freedom the people of Iran will show us how to do it.
Remember, there is fire below the ashes.
So, I invite you to add your voice and let’s call out to Iran:
We are with you…
The whole segment . (My 3 minutes is the last half hour of the audio segment.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)