Monday, August 18, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Two Left Feet
Which way is she spinning?
Clockwise is right brain orientation.
If you don't see her spinning... Well, you're either screwed or I didn't post the image correctly. In that case, the link I read was: http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0711/ebits.html
And if you have 18 minutes to sit down and watch something very rewarding, this is a nice compliment to the results of your test above:
If that doesn't work, the link is: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/229
Infact, Ted.com looks like a pretty cool website in general...
And as an edited longer version for those with short attention spans, here are the details to assess the results of the test.. This comes from: http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html
vice versa.
Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.
LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe
RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
"big picture" oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can "get it" (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking(or delete this part if your post is short)
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Herbs 4 life.
Brought a tear to my eye... I watch this stuff to really feel the homesickness.
Charlie T is a legend and a benchmark for voice and presence.
Monday, March 31, 2008
I'm Your Man
Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Greg Brown, Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen. How can I even think of picking up a pen and paper to the tune of my guitar with the words of these masters ringing in my head?
If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Teddy Thompson (Richard and Linda's son) does it justice. A certain member of JAMM I think could do it even better.. You know who you are.. And yes, this is a very earnest request...
"I'm Your Man", the new-ish Leonard Cohen documentary is a must watch!
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Gone but never forgotten... not even gone really.
Jeff Healey died a couple of weeks ago (a young man) and he is still one of the first guys to really freak me out because what he was doing was just so brilliant and so passionate. People like Jeff Healey will never really be gone because I bet a million bucks some love struck kids will be slow dancing to 'Angel eyes' in fifty or a hundred years from now. Cheese like that just gets better as it gets older.
Can only place the link I am afraid... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYz_LHKrgDY
love the leathers on the scary girl.. angel eyes-demon hair
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Physics, the way its meant to be taught
From The Guardian, UK:
Walter Lewin is not your average Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor. He teaches introductory physics with a difference: electric charge is demonstrated by beating a student with cat fur, he rides a fire-extinguisher propelled tricycle across the lecture hall to show how a rocket lifts off. ....
....Each lecture, complete with stunts (others have included making himself into a pendulum and firing golf balls at a stuffed monkey in a bulletproof vest) takes about 25 hours to prepare....
The lecture videos can be downloaded! Check them out at the MIT site.
What is it about dolphins....
... that makes them so incredibly cool?
A few days ago, a dolphin helped rescue two stranded whales in NZ. Check out the BBC report.
I think my favourite dolphin story is still this one. Trippy!
One morning, while driving past Kaikoura, NZ, some years ago, i had the good fortune of seeing a huge number of dolphins out for a breakfast hunt. There must have been more than a hundred out there. It remains one of the coolest things i've ever seen.....
Friday, March 7, 2008
The nature of doodles
'Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.'
Alfred North Whitehead.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
"We Can Help Create a Better World" by Dietrich Fischer
Here's an essay written by Dietrich Fischer, Academic Director, European University Center for Peace Studies (EPU), Austria in 2005. Its a long one, but very good....
We Can Help Create A Better World
Two years ago, millions of people throughout the world demonstrated against the impending US/UK led war against Iraq. It did not stop that war, but it will help stop future wars, and hopefully soon contribute to the abolition of war itself as an accepted institution, in the same way as slavery was officially abolished in 1833 in the British empire, 1865 in the United States, 1888 in Brazil and serfdom was abolished in Russia in 1861. Slavery still exists in some forms, including human trafficking, but it is driven underground and no longer officially approved. More efforts are needed to eliminate it completely, but great progress has been made since the first half of the 19th century. Even if success is not immediate, we must persist, and will ultimately prevail. War is still widely accepted as a tool of foreign policy today, but it is an evil as great as slavery and must be abolished.
Here are a number of examples of successful initiatives, individual and joint, which have helped improve the human condition.
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
In 1835, Lloyd Garrison, the publisher of the anti‑slavery gazette "The Liberator", spoke on the Boston Commons against slavery. He was arrested by the police‑‑to protect his life‑‑ because an angry mob was ready to lynch him. He was secretly moved out of the city at night in an enclosed horse coach. But he continued to fight against slavery, and 30 years later, it was abolished in the United States by President Lincoln.
The Quakers played a leading role in the movement to abolish slavery. Groups of Quakers traveled from town to town in the United States to preach against slavery, and they did not leave a town until at least one person had converted to their cause. In the end, their patience paid off.
When we see the billions spent for weapons today and the pittance available to work for peace, it is easy to despair. But the people who fought for the abolition of slavery in the 19th century did not even have any foundations to apply to. They made personal sacrifices and took risks, while the slave traders and slave owners accumulated huge fortunes. Yet the anti‑slavery movement prevailed in the end, because it had a just cause. For the same reason, the global peace movement will prevail over those who profit from war.
THE POWER OF IDEAS
Our actions and ideas can have a real impact in helping create a better world. The economist John Maynard Keynes emphasized the power of ideas. He said that most people vastly overestimate the control exerted by vested interests and by military and economic power, and underestimate the influence of great ideas. Most people's lives are shaped far more decisively by past thinkers' ideas than by people whom most consider to be powerful.
Let us not be deterred by people who ridicule us as idealists. Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, once said, "The greatest utopians are those who call themselves 'realists,' because they falsely believe that we can survive the nuclear age with politics as usual. The true realists are those who recognize the need for new thinking."
Here are some more examples of how people have been able to contribute to peace and justice.
HOW HAITI ABOLISHED ITS MILITARY
A soft‑spoken, retired Quaker couple from Troy, New York, took a crucial step that led to the complete abolition of Haiti's army, which in 1991 had violently overthrown the democratically elected government of President Aristide and arbitrarily arrested, tortured and murdered many Haitian citizens.
In 1994, Sue and Marvin Clark founded a small NGO, "Global Demilitarization." In February 1995 they were able to meet in New York with Oscar Arias Sanchez, the former President of Costa Rica, who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the war in Nicaragua. They asked him what country he thought might be the next to follow Costa Rica's example, which had abolished its military in 1949.
Arias suggested Haiti, since most Haitians saw their army threatening their personal security rather than protecting them from aggression. From informal conversations with many ordinary Haitians, he estimated that about 80 percent wished the army were abolished. He was disappointed that nobody seemed to pay attention to his observations, but was convinced that if an internationally recognized polling firm could confirm his impressions, the world would notice. But that would cost about $20,000, and he did not have that money.
When Sue and Marvin Clark heard this, they wrote to all their friends and friends of friends, sending out about thousand letters, explaining this opportunity and asking for donations. Within a few weeks, they raised $27,000 and sent it to the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, and soon the poll was conducted.
At a news conference in Port‑au‑Prince on April 28, 1995, Oscar Arias could announce that 62 percent of the Haitian people wished to abolish the army, and only 12 percent wished to keep it, with the rest expressing no opinion. When President Aristide heard this, he stepped to the microphone and spontaneously announced, in front of the assembled military leadership, that given the clear wish of the majority of his people, he herewith declared the army abolished!
The international media almost totally ignored this important event. But when President Aristide was asked on a nationally televised interview in the United States after the election of his successor what he considered his greatest achievement during his term in office, he said abolishing the Haitian military.
It is impressive how much difference the efforts of individuals can make. Not even the U.S. Navy was able to abolish Haiti's army. When President Clinton sent the navy in 1994 to land in Port-au-Prince and help restore the democratically elected government, it turned around in the face of a violent demonstration on the landing peer by a small group of backers of the military dictatorship. Who would have thought that two individuals, without power or wealth, would succeed in helping abolish the Haitian military, simply by talking to the right people and taking the right action at the right time. We can all take courage and hope from this. If we have a dream and pursue it step by step, never giving up, we can ultimately reach it.
A BINATIONAL ZONE
In 1995, Johan Galtung had an opportunity to meet with the former President of Ecuador who was involved in border negotiations with Peru. In the peace treaty of Rio de Janeiro of 1941, it was agreed that the border should run along the watershed in the upper Amazon basin. But depending on rainfall, the watershed has shifted back and forth. Each country insisted that the true border is where the watershed once was closest to its neighbor. Since 1941, Ecuador and Peru have fought four wars over this sparsely populated 500 square kilometer territory.
Galtung patiently listened to the Ex‑President complain about Peru's inflexibility. But he also always carefully listens to what people do not say. The Ex‑President never said that each square meter of territory must belong to one and only one country, because he assumed that was obvious. That was the principle adopted at the peace treaty of Westphalia in 1648. So Galtung asked him what he thought of the idea of making the disputed border territory into a jointly administered "binational zone with a natural park," attracting tourists to benefit both countries. The Ex‑President said, "This is very creative‑‑but it is too creative, it will take at least 30 years to get used to such an entirely new idea, and another 30 years to implement it." But out of curiosity he did propose it to Peru in the next round of peace negotiations, and to his surprise, Peru accepted it with minor modifications. This led to the Peace treaty signed in Brasilia on October 27, 1998.
Galtung pointed out that this initiative cost only $250 for an extra stopover in Quito, a night in a hotel, and a very lavish meal for the Ex‑President and his wife. By comparison, the Gulf War cost $100 billion, not counting the destruction it caused. Most of all, peaceful conflict transformation can save many lives.
Most governments wait until a conflict erupts in war and then intervene with military force, instead of seeking to find a peaceful solution long before it leads to violence. Such a policy is comparable to driving a car with closed eyes, waiting until we hit an obstacle and then calling an ambulance, instead of anticipating dangers and avoiding them.
We need a UN Agency for Mediation, with several thousand professionals, who can detect emerging conflicts and help transform them peacefully before they lead to war. That would be an excellent investment for a more peaceful world.
THE BLACK HOLE
When Johan Galtung, who is widely regarded as the founder of peace research, founded the first International Peace Research Institute in Oslo in 1959, he and his colleagues sent copies of their working papers regularly to about 400 institutes around the world, including the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. They received acknowledgements from many quarters, but never heard anything from IMEMO. It was as if the papers disappeared in a black hole, leaving no trace. Despite of this lack of feedback, the members of the Oslo team persistently kept sending their papers on alternative approaches to peace, security and development to IMEMO throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1979, Johan Galtung attended a conference at IMEMO. During a break, the librarian took him to the basement in the library, opened a locked room, opened a locked cabinet inside the room, and showed him a pile of papers. Here was the entire collection of papers that he and his friends had been sending over the years. This was the "black hole." Surprisingly, the papers were worn out from having passed through many hands, edges bent and torn, with portions underlined and numerous notes in the margins.
In 1991, Vladimir Petrovsky, the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, came to see Johan Galtung in Oslo and said, "I really wanted to tell you once how grateful we were for all your papers that you kept sending us. During the Brezhnev era, I was part of a group of young scholars at IMEMO who met frequently to discuss new ideas, and we studied your books and papers intensively, among others. We knew that our system needed reform, and that the time for change was coming. You provided us with valuable new concepts and concrete ideas how to proceed."
The end of the Cold War has many sources, but new ideas developed by Western peace movements‑‑on human rights, economic and political participation, nonviolent conflict resolution, security based on mutual cooperation instead of threats and confrontation, conversion of military industries to civilian use, and nonoffensive defense‑‑which seeped into the former Soviet Union through various discrete channels and apparently found receptive ears, have played an important role.
Can individuals make a difference for the course of history, or are their efforts insignificant compared to major trends, like the movement of a single molecule in the wind? It is clear that if a situation is not ripe for change, if nobody wants to hear new proposals, one individual can make little difference. But if people are unhappy with their present conditions and search for new ways, a good idea, persuasively argued, can go a long way. Yet even when an opportunity for major change arises, someone must seize it or it may be missed. Similarly, if one plants a fruit tree in the desert, it will die. But even in the most fertile soil, under the best climatic conditions, only weeds may grow unless we plant something better. And we never know for sure whether an apparent desert may not hide fertile ground just below the surface, in which one seed can over time give rise to a whole forest. Even if we do not see the results of our efforts for peace immediately, we should not give up, because they may bear fruit some day in unexpected ways.
A SNOWFLAKE
Randy Kehler, who later became national coordinator of the Nuclear Freeze
ent in the United States, was drafted into the Army in the early 1970s to go fight in Vietnam. Like many others, he refused to serve and was sentenced to jail. But unlike many others, he did more than that. Before beginning his jail sentence, he toured the United States, speaking out against the war on university campuses, in churches and to peace organizations. He had no idea whether this would make any difference, but his conscience demanded that he try to do whatever he could.
In one of his audiences was Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon analyst and co‑author of the "Pentagon Papers," the secret history of the Vietnam war. He had become increasingly disillusioned with the way the United States fought the war, and had begun to doubt its justification. But he said that what finally persuaded him to do something was hearing Randy Kehler speak. Here was a young man willing to go to jail for his conviction that the war was immoral. So Ellsberg secretly made four sets of photocopies of the 7,000 page report, and left them anonymously in boxes in front of the offices of the New York Times, the Washington Post and two other major national newspapers. When editors read the reports, they realized that they contain so many accurate facts that they could not have been forgeries by someone outside of the government, and they began to publish them. President Nixon ordered them to halt publication, but the US Supreme Court ruled that prior restraint violated the first amendment of the US constitution guaranteeing free speech. When people read that they had been deceived all these years by their own government, and that the United States was not winning the war, they began to oppose it in large numbers. That forced President Nixon to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam in 1973, and led to an end of the war in 1975.
At the right moment, one more snowflake can break the branch of a tree. Even if our efforts don't show any immediate result, whatever we do makes it easier for others who follow to complete our work.
STARFISH
Alone we can do little, but together we can make a difference, as the following metaphor suggests. A boy walked along the beach and picked up starfish in the sand and threw them back into the sea. A wise old man watched him for a while, and then asked him, "What are you doing?" The boy said, "I am throwing these starfish into the water to save them, because otherwise they would dry out and die." The wise old man laughed and said, "My dear boy, there are millions of starfish, you can never save them all." The boy replied, "I know I cannot save all of them, but it surely makes a difference for this one, and that one. They feel much better in the water." The old man agreed and began to help pick up starfish and throw them into the water. Other people saw them, and began to join. This way, the starfish were indeed saved.
As the anthropologist Margaret Mead has said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Let us all do our best to help create a more peaceful and more just world.
Here are a number of examples of successful initiatives, individual and joint, which have helped improve the human condition.
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY
In 1835, Lloyd Garrison, the publisher of the anti‑slavery gazette "The Liberator", spoke on the Boston Commons against slavery. He was arrested by the police‑‑to protect his life‑‑ because an angry mob was ready to lynch him. He was secretly moved out of the city at night in an enclosed horse coach. But he continued to fight against slavery, and 30 years later, it was abolished in the United States by President Lincoln.The Quakers played a leading role in the movement to abolish slavery. Groups of Quakers traveled from town to town in the United States to preach against slavery, and they did not leave a town until at least one person had converted to their cause. In the end, their patience paid off.
When we see the billions spent for weapons today and the pittance available to work for peace, it is easy to despair. But the people who fought for the abolition of slavery in the 19th century did not even have any foundations to apply to. They made personal sacrifices and took risks, while the slave traders and slave owners accumulated huge fortunes. Yet the anti‑slavery movement prevailed in the end, because it had a just cause. For the same reason, the global peace movement will prevail over those who profit from war.
THE POWER OF IDEAS
Our actions and ideas can have a real impact in helping create a better world. The economist John Maynard Keynes emphasized the power of ideas. He said that most people vastly overestimate the control exerted by vested interests and by military and economic power, and underestimate the influence of great ideas. Most people's lives are shaped far more decisively by past thinkers' ideas than by people whom most consider to be powerful.
Let us not be deterred by people who ridicule us as idealists. Richard Falk, a professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, once said, "The greatest utopians are those who call themselves 'realists,' because they falsely believe that we can survive the nuclear age with politics as usual. The true realists are those who recognize the need for new thinking."
Here are some more examples of how people have been able to contribute to peace and justice.
HOW HAITI ABOLISHED ITS MILITARY
A soft‑spoken, retired Quaker couple from Troy, New York, took a crucial step that led to the complete abolition of Haiti's army, which in 1991 had violently overthrown the democratically elected government of President Aristide and arbitrarily arrested, tortured and murdered many Haitian citizens.
In 1994, Sue and Marvin Clark founded a small NGO, "Global Demilitarization." In February 1995 they were able to meet in New York with Oscar Arias Sanchez, the former President of Costa Rica, who won the 1987 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the war in Nicaragua. They asked him what country he thought might be the next to follow Costa Rica's example, which had abolished its military in 1949.
Arias suggested Haiti, since most Haitians saw their army threatening their personal security rather than protecting them from aggression. From informal conversations with many ordinary Haitians, he estimated that about 80 percent wished the army were abolished. He was disappointed that nobody seemed to pay attention to his observations, but was convinced that if an internationally recognized polling firm could confirm his impressions, the world would notice. But that would cost about $20,000, and he did not have that money.
When Sue and Marvin Clark heard this, they wrote to all their friends and friends of friends, sending out about thousand letters, explaining this opportunity and asking for donations. Within a few weeks, they raised $27,000 and sent it to the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress, and soon the poll was conducted.
At a news conference in Port‑au‑Prince on April 28, 1995, Oscar Arias could announce that 62 percent of the Haitian people wished to abolish the army, and only 12 percent wished to keep it, with the rest expressing no opinion. When President Aristide heard this, he stepped to the microphone and spontaneously announced, in front of the assembled military leadership, that given the clear wish of the majority of his people, he herewith declared the army abolished!
The international media almost totally ignored this important event. But when President Aristide was asked on a nationally televised interview in the United States after the election of his successor what he considered his greatest achievement during his term in office, he said abolishing the Haitian military.
It is impressive how much difference the efforts of individuals can make. Not even the U.S. Navy was able to abolish Haiti's army. When President Clinton sent the navy in 1994 to land in Port-au-Prince and help restore the democratically elected government, it turned around in the face of a violent demonstration on the landing peer by a small group of backers of the military dictatorship. Who would have thought that two individuals, without power or wealth, would succeed in helping abolish the Haitian military, simply by talking to the right people and taking the right action at the right time. We can all take courage and hope from this. If we have a dream and pursue it step by step, never giving up, we can ultimately reach it.
A BINATIONAL ZONE
In 1995, Johan Galtung had an opportunity to meet with the former President of Ecuador who was involved in border negotiations with Peru. In the peace treaty of Rio de Janeiro of 1941, it was agreed that the border should run along the watershed in the upper Amazon basin. But depending on rainfall, the watershed has shifted back and forth. Each country insisted that the true border is where the watershed once was closest to its neighbor. Since 1941, Ecuador and Peru have fought four wars over this sparsely populated 500 square kilometer territory.Galtung patiently listened to the Ex‑President complain about Peru's inflexibility. But he also always carefully listens to what people do not say. The Ex‑President never said that each square meter of territory must belong to one and only one country, because he assumed that was obvious. That was the principle adopted at the peace treaty of Westphalia in 1648. So Galtung asked him what he thought of the idea of making the disputed border territory into a jointly administered "binational zone with a natural park," attracting tourists to benefit both countries. The Ex‑President said, "This is very creative‑‑but it is too creative, it will take at least 30 years to get used to such an entirely new idea, and another 30 years to implement it." But out of curiosity he did propose it to Peru in the next round of peace negotiations, and to his surprise, Peru accepted it with minor modifications. This led to the Peace treaty signed in Brasilia on October 27, 1998.
Galtung pointed out that this initiative cost only $250 for an extra stopover in Quito, a night in a hotel, and a very lavish meal for the Ex‑President and his wife. By comparison, the Gulf War cost $100 billion, not counting the destruction it caused. Most of all, peaceful conflict transformation can save many lives.
Most governments wait until a conflict erupts in war and then intervene with military force, instead of seeking to find a peaceful solution long before it leads to violence. Such a policy is comparable to driving a car with closed eyes, waiting until we hit an obstacle and then calling an ambulance, instead of anticipating dangers and avoiding them.
We need a UN Agency for Mediation, with several thousand professionals, who can detect emerging conflicts and help transform them peacefully before they lead to war. That would be an excellent investment for a more peaceful world.
THE BLACK HOLE
When Johan Galtung, who is widely regarded as the founder of peace research, founded the first International Peace Research Institute in Oslo in 1959, he and his colleagues sent copies of their working papers regularly to about 400 institutes around the world, including the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. They received acknowledgements from many quarters, but never heard anything from IMEMO. It was as if the papers disappeared in a black hole, leaving no trace. Despite of this lack of feedback, the members of the Oslo team persistently kept sending their papers on alternative approaches to peace, security and development to IMEMO throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1979, Johan Galtung attended a conference at IMEMO. During a break, the librarian took him to the basement in the library, opened a locked room, opened a locked cabinet inside the room, and showed him a pile of papers. Here was the entire collection of papers that he and his friends had been sending over the years. This was the "black hole." Surprisingly, the papers were worn out from having passed through many hands, edges bent and torn, with portions underlined and numerous notes in the margins.
In 1991, Vladimir Petrovsky, the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister, came to see Johan Galtung in Oslo and said, "I really wanted to tell you once how grateful we were for all your papers that you kept sending us. During the Brezhnev era, I was part of a group of young scholars at IMEMO who met frequently to discuss new ideas, and we studied your books and papers intensively, among others. We knew that our system needed reform, and that the time for change was coming. You provided us with valuable new concepts and concrete ideas how to proceed."
The end of the Cold War has many sources, but new ideas developed by Western peace movements‑‑on human rights, economic and political participation, nonviolent conflict resolution, security based on mutual cooperation instead of threats and confrontation, conversion of military industries to civilian use, and nonoffensive defense‑‑which seeped into the former Soviet Union through various discrete channels and apparently found receptive ears, have played an important role.
Can individuals make a difference for the course of history, or are their efforts insignificant compared to major trends, like the movement of a single molecule in the wind? It is clear that if a situation is not ripe for change, if nobody wants to hear new proposals, one individual can make little difference. But if people are unhappy with their present conditions and search for new ways, a good idea, persuasively argued, can go a long way. Yet even when an opportunity for major change arises, someone must seize it or it may be missed. Similarly, if one plants a fruit tree in the desert, it will die. But even in the most fertile soil, under the best climatic conditions, only weeds may grow unless we plant something better. And we never know for sure whether an apparent desert may not hide fertile ground just below the surface, in which one seed can over time give rise to a whole forest. Even if we do not see the results of our efforts for peace immediately, we should not give up, because they may bear fruit some day in unexpected ways.
A SNOWFLAKE
Randy Kehler, who later became national coordinator of the Nuclear Freeze
ent in the United States, was drafted into the Army in the early 1970s to go fight in Vietnam. Like many others, he refused to serve and was sentenced to jail. But unlike many others, he did more than that. Before beginning his jail sentence, he toured the United States, speaking out against the war on university campuses, in churches and to peace organizations. He had no idea whether this would make any difference, but his conscience demanded that he try to do whatever he could.In one of his audiences was Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon analyst and co‑author of the "Pentagon Papers," the secret history of the Vietnam war. He had become increasingly disillusioned with the way the United States fought the war, and had begun to doubt its justification. But he said that what finally persuaded him to do something was hearing Randy Kehler speak. Here was a young man willing to go to jail for his conviction that the war was immoral. So Ellsberg secretly made four sets of photocopies of the 7,000 page report, and left them anonymously in boxes in front of the offices of the New York Times, the Washington Post and two other major national newspapers. When editors read the reports, they realized that they contain so many accurate facts that they could not have been forgeries by someone outside of the government, and they began to publish them. President Nixon ordered them to halt publication, but the US Supreme Court ruled that prior restraint violated the first amendment of the US constitution guaranteeing free speech. When people read that they had been deceived all these years by their own government, and that the United States was not winning the war, they began to oppose it in large numbers. That forced President Nixon to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam in 1973, and led to an end of the war in 1975.
At the right moment, one more snowflake can break the branch of a tree. Even if our efforts don't show any immediate result, whatever we do makes it easier for others who follow to complete our work.
STARFISH
Alone we can do little, but together we can make a difference, as the following metaphor suggests. A boy walked along the beach and picked up starfish in the sand and threw them back into the sea. A wise old man watched him for a while, and then asked him, "What are you doing?" The boy said, "I am throwing these starfish into the water to save them, because otherwise they would dry out and die." The wise old man laughed and said, "My dear boy, there are millions of starfish, you can never save them all." The boy replied, "I know I cannot save all of them, but it surely makes a difference for this one, and that one. They feel much better in the water." The old man agreed and began to help pick up starfish and throw them into the water. Other people saw them, and began to join. This way, the starfish were indeed saved.
As the anthropologist Margaret Mead has said, "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."Let us all do our best to help create a more peaceful and more just world.
- Dietrich Fischer
Friday, February 22, 2008
A gospel tune for those that aren't sure.
I don' think I've shared Chris Smither with you guys yet, but every time I listen to him I remember that I should. The CD that these two songs came off is called Train Home, and it is a favourite of mine and Janine's. Great, tasteful guitar playing and a perfect mix of thoughtful yet light-hearted lyrics. I couldn't decide which of these two songs from the concert was better to link up, so I had to add both. There are even more from this youtube poster of the concert, and they're all worth watching if you like these two. Judging by his thoughtfulness in lyrics and his sense of humour, I think Chris Smither would JAMM with us.
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