Category: humanity

Palestine Children’s Relief Fund: Cincinnati 2016

Yesterday I met a young mother and her infant child at the annual PCRF picnic 2016.
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I gazed into the eyes of that beautiful woman and her precious child. Let me just inform you that they are in Cincinnati because those who can help transcended borders and the powers that be, to bring them to Ohio. Helping the helpless. Something that defines Menschheit (the word for “humanity” in German and Yiddish). Mother and child are here because white phosphorous burns to the bone. And, yes, it happened in Gaza.
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Yesterday brought souls together to share inextinguishable joy in the very spite of every attempt to extinguish the spirit of a proud people, century-long family traditions in culture, history and charm.
Yes, they melted my heart, moistened my eyes.
The occupiers who uproot ancient olive trees wishes that these people would plant their ancient roots anywhere but along the paradise of a Mediterranean shore that has nourished Philistines (Filistina) for so long.
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The occupiers boast of residing in a land celebrated as mere desert waiting for miracle workers to bring seed to fruit. The evicted and exiled Philistine people have every right listed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including a refugee’s right to return. The United States signed this document in 1948, the year of Nakba.
Yesterday I attended the PCRF picnic and enjoyed splendid company, warm smiles and genuine enthusiasm. Most importantly it was an opportunity to meet people who better our world by healing wounds, providing support for families and restoring hope that the youngest and most innocent among us may flourish.
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Such a delight and a privilege to speak personally with people who work miracles in the course of their daily lives. Cynicism and disillusionment are not support systems within PCRF: joy derived from mending deep wounds humbles the ego and makes room for love. 

Jimmy Carter: Epic Underdog

Google parses data and presents common search terms: a mix of auto-correct and auto-suggest. I just typed in “jimmy carter”:

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Then I typed in “george w bush”:

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net worth? National Enquiring minds want to know. Unless that worth is not monetary value. Speaking of net worth, I also read that Michael Pence would like to be a Vice-President like Dick Cheney.

The conundrum of the curmudgeon: pessimism and honesty are not mutually exclusive positions. Feel-good news about humane factory farms is not news. We are witnessing the disappearance of journalism, I am much afraid to report.

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While we are yet upon a theme of curmudgeons and conundrums, allow me to recommend Ambrose Bierce. There are yet a few months remaining in the fell year 2016, so consider the Bierce definition of  PATRIOTISM,

In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

Let me suggest that Dick Cheney take the net worth award, W take the quotes award. Period. Full Stop.

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What gives with this “net worth” fascination?

Google provides no suggestions for ‘dick cheney gross worth’

However, the clarity of Carter’s insight, restraint and persistence lifts my spirit. His quiet presence as a defender of minority views and marginalized peoples makes him my role model. Search the internet for guinea worm to discover the name of its mortal enemy. Here is a small hint: it’s not the rabbit.

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Peace not Apartheid

I like to imagine an alternate history where a Carter second term sends Reagan back where he always belonged: Hollywood. Privatizing everything does not advance the common good. But it may often advance the common bad.
Carter learns from his mistakes. Negotiation is a better for genuine peace, why do countless Presidents select “war without end Amen.”

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Carter did not drop a single literal bomb on any political opponent. The Camp David Accords accorded hope for the ever bedeviling slaughter in Israel-Palestine/Palestine-Israel.
500,000 nails sealed the coffin memorialized by an imagined headstone: Oslo Accords of 1993: Epic Fail. RIP

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I also imagine an alternate history where Gore actually occupies the office he legitimately won.

And I voted for McGovern in 1972.

The Tyranny of the Majority

Majority rule is an expedient way to exercise authority over the unwanted and to marginalize unpopular ethnic groups, such as Native Palestinians in Palestine.

That guy on the $20 bill made the South safe for democracy. Somewhere in Jacksonian Democracy lies a lesson, one learned by 10,000 despots: if undesirables are out of the picture, they are not a problem. Future generations can safely and comfortably observe “mistakes were made.”

After the Trail of Tears, America was made safe for slaveholders again. Cherokees are for westerns or in teepees next to a Stuckeys. Have you heard this one: “I’m 1/24th Cherokee.” Really?

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Look up Nakba for a similar trail of tears.

America was great I hear. But them Indians got it made now, every tribe has a casino. Sad to say, they’re fat and lazy and coddled by Washington. Things never change, I guess. Wink. Nod.

Grocery stores near reservations are food deserts. If a vehicle becomes available a real supermarket is only 70 miles away. While you are 70 miles away from home you can stock up on health care services and relax a while at the local casino. Chill with your fellow ingrates.

Native Americans are number one in death by police.(The Counted: 2016) among all ethnic groups.

The Guardian compiles this database, but for some reason such information is not collected in the US.

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DJT is not a reader, but profound ignorance is no barrier to enormous wealth or monstrous feats of racism. Just a casual side note.

Ethnic cleansing silences voices of dissent.

Israel expelled 700,000 native Palestinians in 1948. Today the growth of settlements in the West Bank make population distribution look a lot like reservations in the formerly unoccupied American West.

Crows Head Soup & Vegan Anarchist

I recently discovered Crows Head Soup, a site for the perplexed among us who do not view fellow sentients as simply human resources. What happens when every molecule of flesh and bone is exploited at a mega scale? Does it even rate a half-hearted shrug?

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Poetry strums and strikes here, it’s what poetry does.

Crows Head is a site gracious enough to allow rants that dare question the horror of the status quo. The Vegan Anarchist is a related site that is quite new, it appears on FB: a shorter vegan venue.

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This evening I read one of many pieces here that pierces the heart. It encapsulates the reality of daily existence in the confines of Butchertown, an historic town near Louisville. Some thoughts:

Visiting any supermarket in the country suggests the enormity of this flesh industry and the banality of its volume. How many tons today? How rapidly are the store shelves emptied? How many shelved products contain factory extermination camp content?
Twice as many chickens on earth as people. I won’t do the math here, but more than one in every pot by rough estimate.
Yes, man’s inhumanity to man sadly exceeds the ability to imagine, but fatalities among homo sapiens does not run into the multiple tens of billions per year of fellow sentients today.

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Bison skulls on the fruited plain

 

 

 

Remain humane, and thanks for reading.