Posts
Whenever virtue declines and unrighteousness rises, I manifest Myself as an embodied being. To protect the Saints and Sages, to destroy the evil-doers and to establish Dharma (righteousness), I am born from age to age.
-Bhagavad Gita 4.7 and 4.8
***
It's our position here that Modernity is the best thing that's happened to Humanity in the past 5,000 years, since the beginning of the Argricultural Revolution. We feel that Modernity, its the triune revolutions of the American, French, and the Industrial Revolutions, must spread across the face of the Earth to the benefit of all people universally-- without exception. We argue here that the resistence to Modernity needs be countered by force until Moderity is triumphant.
We argue here that Modernist men and women must of their own volition colonize the primitive world and conquer its people, after the prior example of William Walker. Not everyone agrees. Some resist the very notion that Modernity is good. Some argue that Modernity is bad. Others argue that we not only should not invade other people's lands but that they should invade ours to make us behave acording to tribal customs of 7th century Arabia and Islam. Here, instead, one will find sympathy for our military men and women who defend us and our societies, those who further the defence of all people for the sake of freedom and personal security. We are, in short, in favor of our war. Others are not.
***
By David Pastor May, 26, 2005
As Cindy Sheehan is interviewed by Univision's reporter Xochitl Arellano, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan name is read aloud at Sacramento's Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. When she hears her son's name Cindy Sheehan is overcome by emotion. Her hand covers her mouth, her eyes close in grief as her head turns down towards her son's very own boots, she stops talking to Arellano.
Sheehan, 47 from Vacaville, and the reporter are kneeling down amid 171 empty boots representing the armed services personnel from California killed in the Iraq war. California is the state with most casualties in Iraq.
The rank, name, and birth state of the 1, 529 US service men and women killed continues to be read as part of the Eyes Wide Open exhibition. The names are read one by one along the names of the identified killed Iraqis. The process will last for hours.
After pausing for a few seconds Sheehan continues the interview, one of the very many she has given since a year ago her oldest son Casey was killed in Iraq.
This image of Sheehan unfortunately has become a familiar one for many of you. You might have seeing her at Good Morning America in inauguration day, you could have seen her watery eyes in a picture at the San Francisco Chronicle, or in the front cover of The Nation magazine, or perhaps you have seen her addressing the President on her election time TV ad for Moveon.org.
Arellano commented on the impression Sheehan caused on her. At first she didn't know why, at the middle of the interview, she suddenly stopped talking, fighting tears. But then Sheehan explained her that her son's name had just been read. Arellano said that she was emotionally moved when Casey Sheehan's mother told her, "wars will stop when women are in power."
....
Cindy Sheehan has also been traveling since late Spring last year. She has joined the exhibit in around the 10 occasions, when her other activism and public commitments allowed her. When the exhibit was in Northern California she had the opportunity of staying at home for about a week, the most that she has spend there for the last months. She had so many public engagement that she even lost her job due to her activism. She said about the reason why she speaks out. "To make sense of his death I have to try to stop the war."
[S]he has started a support organization called Gold Star Families for Peace - in reference to the Gold Stars awarded for the killed in action. The organization, that has more than 70 military families as members, is a resource center for the military and their families.
Sheehan has seen the local support for her family decline since she started being active against the war. She said that even though a couple of hundred people attended her sons funeral now their friends don't even call them. She also has seen opposition to her cause in local newspapers editorials and letters to the editor....
Patrick Sheehan, Cindy Sheehan husband, supports his wife in her activism, he participates in some events and drives with Cindy when he is not working as a sales representative. He spoke about the toll this work is taking in the family. "If she is not away traveling or speaking, she is home with her laptop, watching news, or talking on the phone…This is important, we try to continue to support her."
But he also understands that it is hard for her to be around the memories all the time. "Some times I am not sure if it is helping [the grief process] It might be delaying some of her grief, but it's also a very good reason to get out of bed, get up and get moving."
Once again Cindy Sheehan will surely fight back tears as she talks about her son and the war. This Sunday will be a very special day for her, a day no mother can ever forget. The day she saw her first son's face for the first time.
This is the very same day when 26 years ago Casey Sheehan took his first breath of air, starting the life Cindy had given him, one year ago last month he would take his last breath in Iraq.
You can find more information about Gold Star Families for Peace and Cindy and Casey Sheehan at http://www.GSFP.org
***
What One Mom has to Say to Bush
By MIKE FERNER
"That lying bastard, George Bush, is taking a five-week vacation in time of war," Cindy Sheehan told 200 cheering members of Veterans For Peace at their annual convention in Dallas last Friday evening. She then announced she would go to Bush's vacation home in nearby Crawford, Texas and camp out until he "tells me why my son died in Iraq. I've got the whole month of August off, and so does he."
Sheehan left the VFP meeting on Saturday morning and is now in Crawford with a couple dozen veterans and local peace activists, waiting for Bush to talk with her. She said in Dallas that if he sends anyone else to see her, as happened when national security adviser Steve Hadley and deputy White House chief of staff Joe Hagin did later that day, she would demand that "You get that maniac out here to talk with me in person."
....
"And the other thing I want him to tell me is 'just what was the noble cause Casey died for?' Was it freedom and democracy? Bullshit! He died for oil. He died to make your friends richer. He died to expand American imperialism in the Middle East. We're not freer here, thanks to your PATRIOT Act. Iraq is not free. You get America out of Iraq and Israel out of Palestine and you'll stop the terrorism," she exclaimed.
"There, I used the 'I' word – imperialism," the 48 year-old mother quipped. "And now I'm going to use another 'I' word – impeachment – because we cannot have these people pardoned. They need to be tried on war crimes and go to jail."
As the veterans in Dallas rose to their feet, Sheehan said defiantly, "My son was killed in 2004. I am not paying my taxes for 2004. You killed my son, George Bush, and I don't owe you a penny...you give my son back and I'll pay my taxes. Come after me (for back taxes) and we'll put this war on trial."
The co-founder of Gold Star Mothers for Peace objected to hearing that her son was among the soldiers lost in Iraq. "He's not lost," she said tearfully. "He's dead. He became an angel while I was sleeping."
....
www.counterpunch.org/ferner08092005.html
***
One might well have sympathy for a grieving mother. One might have sympathy for Muslims commenting on the progress or lack thereof of Westernism in the world at large.:
Again you dodge the issue and run in circles, look at what is happening in the World, look at the hate America has got for itself across the World, why?? What is the cause??
"Have you ever done any research on Islamic slave ownership, ia? It is still approved of by your clergy and your holey books."
Really, I'm glad I improved your day, God is Great.
Stop running in circles.
Now back to what I said, Americanos still have slaves, especially in the Far East. Slavery is alive today and the Americans are bringing only more and more misery to the vulnerable people. Why is America spreading White supremacy across the World, why does America aim to hold other non-White people back, please tell me.
HasbinAllahwanaymulwakeel.
"Why are Americanos so arrogant, why do you think you should dictate how others should live their lives. Tell me, I want to know.
Posted by: ia786 at August 12, 2005 03:05 PM
Answer the question.
Why should the rest of the World have to bow down before the US. I hate that American attitude, it makes me sick. You just mind your own business, sort your own country out. Oh yeah, while your doing that stop murdering, looting and poisoning the rest of the World, got that??
Posted by: ia786![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at August 12, 2005 03:41 PM***
No, not everyone seems to apreciate the sacrifices our people make for the spread of Human decency. Some who've lost family members to war have turned toward hatred and express their grief in public. One can almost sympathize.
***
There is a mother grieving in the desert, crying for her dead child. Grief is as old as Humanity, and we'd be less than Human if we were to cease feeling it's pain. A mother grieves in a desert for her son who died in a desert far away. The man died in the land of Gilgamesh.
The world's oldest known book comes from the land where the young man died. The Epic of Gilgamesh in part tells the story of him and his friend Inkidu who fight the monster that threatens them. Inkidu dies from his wounds after the battle. Gilgamesh is stricken for the first time in his life by grief. He knows death. He looks at his friend's body and asks:
"Must I too, like my friend, lay me done, never to rise again?"
Gilgamesh wanders to the Cedars of Lebannon searching for eternal life, which he finds-- and loses. There's nothing good about dying young, nothing good in witnessing the death of ones loved-ones. It is ocassion for grief.
In the desert a woman is grieving for her dead child. Others have joined her. They are not with her to share her grief. They join her to hate those they feel have caused the death of a young man and many others like him, the deaths of many from the land of Gilgamesh, and the deaths of countless people across the face of the Earth, dead, killed by the hand of America.
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in a battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all, "We died at such a place," some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.
William Shakespeare, Henry V
All the world's a stage, and a mother's son becomes a prop to mourn before an audience, chorus weeping, faces twisted, fists shaking, voices rasping: "Bush lied; people died."
"Root cause, root cause, root cause...."
Not a word for the man. No one says he died, like others died, like others will die, because life is for the living:
Go and tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
That here, obedient to their laws, dead we lie.
Simonides of Ceos (556-468BC) - Epitaph on the monument marking the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC)
***
We had a little bit of trouble with locals today. We are beginning to feel a little unwelcome here. One lady almost ran over a film crew that was filming a commercial today. She screamed at us that the neighbors are really mad at ...so we moved down the road to our closest neighbor who is very sweet. Her husband is a medic who just got home from Iraq.
Again, I did tons of interviews. It looks like I will be on the cover of People Magazine. Time Magazine, Vanity Fair and Oprah's magazine will be interviewing me also.
Due to the generosity of you all, the Crawford Peace House has gotten over 30,000 dollars and GSFP has gotten a lot of donations too. I got about 2 and a half dozen bouquets of flowers from all over everywhere. I am so amazed and overwhelmed by the support and love we are getting from everywhere.
http://sacramentofordemocracy.org
***
Plutach on Spartan Women.
***
We have in our lives a sickness that is spreading across our lands, a sickness of ourselves. We have in us a hatred of life that is a death-worship. Some of us call it peace.
We are marching toward our civil war. Some of us will fight for life for the living, and some of us will choose the side of death. We who choose to fight, we who die in battle, we will fight and die for the lives of the living. If we perish from this Earth, still, I call it peace.
***
The Gettysburg Address
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania
November 19, 1863
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
***
But I remember war, and none of my comrades died for anything like oil or another man's riches. No, as I recall it we fought for life, and not just our own. Some of our mates died. Some were maimed. Some got drunk. But maybe somewhere someone today goes to school because mine died. Maybe somewhere far away life is for the living and not the brutal bastards who killed with impunity for sport and madness. Maybe we did good. Because of the dead, maybe the living, living at all, live better.
***
The Supreme Lord said: I am death, the mighty destroyer of the world, out to destroy. Even without your participation all the warriors standing arrayed in the opposing armies shall cease to exist.
Therefore, get up and attain glory. Conquer your enemies and enjoy a prosperous kingdom. All these (warriors) have already been destroyed by Me. You are only an instrument, O Arjuna.
Bhagavad Gita, chapter 11, verses 31-33
***
***
"What will you do if Karna is able to kill me?" Arjuna asked Krishna. Krishna smiled and replied, "The sun will fall, the earth shatter into a thousand fragments, and fire lose its heat before he kills you. But if he does, it is a sign that the end of the world has come. As for me, I shall kill him with my bare hands."
-Mahabharata, Book Eight: Karna (P. Lal)
***
Some of us who've lost our friends are driven to our knees with nothing left to us to clasp but our bare hands. Must we too, like the men we killed, lay us down, never to rise again? Must we never raise our eyes and see the good we did for those who could do nothing for themselves? Must we forever walk through the field of the dead and hold our peace like a coin we fear to spend for fear we'll never earn another? I don't love my enemies. I don't love death. But I don't love life so dearly that I'm willing to deprive others of it because I fear for myself. No, like most men who know a need to fight for those who can't fight to save themselves we have a will to live to keep the living alive. Mine and our friends were plain men in just war. You mightn't know any one of them by name. Even their mothers won't recall them as well as the living do they saved. The dead didn't die like hereos, they didn't die for glory. They died for boring, silly things in the lives of others, for the simple existence of their fellows' simple lives, as boring and silly as they are.
Is it important who won and who lost? Won't it all happen yet again? Isn't it all pointless and inhuman? Isn't it all a plot to enrich the rich yet more?
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
George Santayana.
***
In the desert a woman sits mourning her dead son. If only he'd died for some reason. If only he hadn't died for the sake of Haliburton getting contracts to sell Iraqi oil to enrich the capitalists feeding off the blood of the workers!
Around that mother gather those who wish to wail for the cameras too.
***
The house where the dead dwell in total darkness,
Where they drink dirt and eat stone,
Where they wear feathers like birds,
Where no light ever invades their everlasting darkness,
Where the door and the lock of Hell is coated with thick dust.
When I entered the House of Dust,
On every side the crowns of kings were heaped,
On every side the voices of the kings who wore those crowns,
Who now only served food to the gods Anu and Enlil,
Candy, meat, and water poured from skins.
I saw sitting in this House of Dust a priest and a servant,
I also saw a priest of purification and a priest of ecstasy,
I saw all the priests of the great gods.
There sat Etana and Sumukan,
There sat Ereshkigal, the queen of Hell,
Beletseri, the scribe of Hell, sitting before her.
Beletseri held a tablet and read it to Ereshkigal.
She slowly raised her head when she noticed me
She pointed at me:
"Who has sent this man?"
***
Gilgamesh seeks eternal life. He wants his friend back. He doesn't want to die. He intrudes upon the realm of death itself looking for eternal life. And when he finds it, he loses it, because such is the lot of Man. Does he like it?
Death has devoured my body,
Death dwells in my body,
Wherever I go, wherever I look, there stands Death!
No, death is not for the living.
For whom have I labored?
For whom have I journeyed?
For whom have I suffered?
I have gained absolutely nothing for myself,
I have only profited the snake, the ground lion!
Is that it? Is our death only to be used as a prop for actors in a play for television? Are the dead only food for the grief leeches?
Some of us, bowed down on our knees under the burden of grief and in a state of exultation, remember that today we fought, and tomorrow others will have to fight again for the same ground we won before them. Bitter though we might be, we will lay ourselves down, never to rise again. And that will have been us.
Whenever virtue declines and unrighteousness rises, I manifest Myself as an embodied being. To protect the Saints and Sages, to destroy the evil-doers and to establish Dharma (righteousness), I am born from age to age.
-Bhagavad Gita 4.7 and 4.8
***
From the Muslim point of view we get the following wit and wisdom, via www.jihadwatch.org.:
"Oh, this is my business."
No, it has nothing to do with you. That's one thing I can't stand about Americanos, they seem to think they know what is best for everyone. You mind your own business, oh arrogant one.
Help Africa, give back the things you stole. Free the slaves you have across the World, help those that live in the fattest city in the World, Houston, USA. Sort your own country out, there are areas of your country that are like 3rd world Countries. Do that before you make silly statements.
Posted by: ia786