Sing it with me now and everyday until we stop this madness.

I can hear you. . .you all sound great!

don't miss ~ Matters of Spirit and Expanded Views

Great story Carnacki.  It is quite amazing how little so many seem to know these days about such important parts of our past.

Has it always been so?  Maybe you and I and some of the others here are just weird cases.  Or maybe these things don't seem to be important to very many in the 2000's.

I feel like I'm on the wrong planet some days. . .well, most days.

Love ya guy
Hugs
Shirl

don't miss ~ Matters of Spirit and Expanded Views

Thanks, shirlstars.

Smiling through my tears.  Maybe there is hope.

If you want things to get better, be prepared to deal with change.

I would never try to be an apologist for our current country's situation with regards to this war - but I will say a couple of things:

First of all - the people spoke loud and clear last November. It was at the ballot box and not in the streets, but still...it was loud and clear. As Andrew Bacevich (Viet Nam Vet and Iraq War Critic whose only son was recently killed in Iraq) said recently:

What kind of democracy is this, when the people do speak; and the people's voice is unambiguous, and nothing happens?

Secondly, I remember being so disappointed in the lack of rebellion and protest in this generation of young people a few years ago - I work with a whole lot of 20-somethings. And then I thought about the different ways we grew up. I grew up hearing things like:

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

I have a dream.

Their ealiest memories are of the lies of Watergate/Viet Nam, church scandals, even the corruption of major non-profits like Red Cross (during the initial outbreak of AIDS) and United Way of America. I wonder what kind of hope and vision is possible when, in your formative years you learn that every major institution you know of is corrupt.

I'm not saying this wasn't true when I grew up - we just didn't know it and so we continued to believe that people working together could change things. I'm afraid that too many of our young people have lost that vision about the efficacy of collective action so that even when they do set out to try to make the world better, its small scale and individual actions they are drawn to.


Doesn't information itself have a liberal bias? Steven Colbert

Can you just IMAGINE???????  Thanks Shirl.  Great point made.  hugs back to ya.

Sometimes those scenes seem like only yesterday and sometimes from another life in a different dimension.

What this administration has done is to defer and obscure the sights, sounds and costs of war with the complicity of big biz, the congress and the MSM. As we've all heard, there is no shared sacrifice. The legacy of this war will become apparent somewhere down the road for others to deal with and it won't be pretty. Old Rome comes to mind. Thanks for the remembrance, shirl.

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." Dorothy Thompson, Journalist

Hi Shirl.

Reporters had kids then who faced being drafted.  Big difference today.

Obama is a Patriot

why we sit like sheep and watch our country and the values - freedom (as embodied by the bill of rights), respect for each other, hope, compassion all get trashed.  And we don't seem to even whimper out loud.  Maybe it is because the churches teach sheepdom?  Maybe it is the media that encapsulates sheepdom?  Maybe it is the cocooning we have done staying at home with the cable and internets?  Maybe it is the wedginess of politics that never really speaks truth?  Maybe it is because we no longer know that we, too, can be heroes everyday.  We do not need a caped crusader.  We do not need green berets.  We just need to grit our teeth and try something even if it is wrong!

Cindy Sheehan is showing us how to be a hero.  Al Gore is showing us how.  But we don't have to be former vp or bereaved mom, we just have to find a good outlet for our outrage.  (And find someway to communicate the outrage to others in a coherent way.)

Grandma Jo

Hi Shirl, I have days(almost all days) where I wonder where the passion in this country has gone...passion to do the right thing, passion to help make our little part of the world and the bigger world a better place, passion to feel as john edwards says-it's time to be patriotic about something besides war, passion to speak out even if you know you'll be laughed at or worse, passion to march, passion to riot in the streets if need be, passion to demand that people from New Orleans and other places have the right to go home and live their lives in a new and better city, passion to impeach.......

Instead we have miasma of lies from our 'leaders', lies from the 4th Estate enabling them, the absolute dominance of the Falwells, Dobsons and the right wing jesus freaks who preach it's our duty to basically shut the fuck up and not question any authority-patriarchal authority-I sometimes wonder why more of us aren't completely brainwashed and brain dead...I think people have lost the ability to hope?......

Another song I'd forgotten about until I watched 'Beyond the Sea' with Kevin Spacey playing Bobby Darin was Darin's 'Freedom Song'...that was/is a great song.  Very simple but powerful.

Yeah now it's ask not what you can do for your country but hey..'go shopping'.

'Poverty is the worst form of violence'--Gandhi