this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters
we honor courage in all its forms
cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.
image and poem below the fold
Relatives grieve for victims outside Kindi hospital following two explosions in central Baghdad, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006. Two bombs exploded minutes apart near a central Baghdad square Tuesday, killing at least seven people and wounding about 20 more, police and hospital officials said.
(AP Photo/Samir Mizban)
Apple Garcia, wife of Filipino-American U.S. army chief warrant officer Ruel Garcia, hugs a U.S. flag during a burial ceremony for her husband at a cemetery in his hometown in Obando, Bulacan province, north of Manila February 7, 2006. Garcia, 34, a pilot, died along with his co-pilot in a crash after their Apache helicopter was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on the morning of January 16 in Taji, Iraq.
REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco
The Song of Despair
by Pablo Neruda
translated by W. S. Merwin
The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!
Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.
In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.
You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!
It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.
Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!
In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!
I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.
Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.
Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.
There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.
There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.
Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!
How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.
Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.
Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.
Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.
And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.
This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!
Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!
From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.
You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.
Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!
It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.
The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.
Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.
Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.
It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.
– – –
put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet
read Ilona’s important diary at MLW – Returning Vet PTSD – One Soldier’s Story as well her comprehensive series on PTSD and Iraq War vets.
view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)
take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)
support Veterans for Peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors – TAPS
support Gold Star Families for Peace
support the fallen
support the troops
support Iraq Veterans Against the War
support Military families Speak Out
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day
Click on the candle to copy the image into your own comment (you can leave it on my server), and/or rate this one – not for mojo, but to leave a small mark after taking this moment.
” I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”
from Dirge Without Music
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Peace
…know no borders, they are universal.
.
in Afghanistan to assist Norwegian ISAF Forces under attack with rocks and grenades at their military NATO base.
The F-16 fighter aircraft tried first with several low passes, but needed to fire their board cannons as warning that the crowds should back-off. Afghan police came in for support and gunfire was exchanged leaving at least four dead.
KABUL (Reuters) Feb. 7 — Afghan police opened fire on a mob trying to storm a NATO peacekeeping base housing Norwegian troops, killing four people and wounding 18 as protests over cartoons depicting Islam’s Prophet Mohammad flared again.
Afghan protesters hold banners and chant slogans during aprotest in Herat against cartoons published in Denmark.
Protests were also staged in Kabul, Peshawar, Tehran and
Kut in Iraq (5,000 men), the stronghold of Al Sadr.
Ahmad Fahim/Reuters
British troops were sent to the northwestern city of Maymana to secure the airfield, after crowds attacked a NATO base with guns and grenades.
“Police had to open fire. Some people are aiming to disrupt and disturb security,” said Azim Hakimi, spokesman for the provincial security department. “Some people used guns.”
Crowds of young men also threw grenades and petrol bombs at the camp manned by Norwegian troops. Two Norwegian soldiers were slightly hurt.
The Norwegians fired teargas while Dutch F-16 jets flew over Maymana in a show of force, a spokeswoman for the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said.
The worst of the violence was outside Bagram, the main U.S. base north of Kabul, with Afghan police firing on some 2,000 protesters as they tried to break into the heavily guarded facility, said Kabir Ahmed, the local government chief. Two of the demonstrators were killed and five were injured, while eight police were also hurt. No U.S. troops were involved in the incident, Ahmed said.
Dems’ Template for Success: Follow Jack Murtha …
LEAVE Iraq to the Iraqis
“But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
{Rapidly Running, After Starting In The Late 80’s Early 90’s, After ‘Democracy’ Stopped With The Supremes, Since Than We Are Witness!}
Light A Candle For
Peace, Tolerance, Understanding
and For The Children – Innocence Lost!
The End
VCS Board of Directors member and Iraq War veteran David DeBatto writes “what we are witnessing here with this blatant shredding of one the most important of our constitutional guarantees, is the beginning of the end of the republic. Make no mistake about it. When a sitting administration, through it’s highest officials, willfully, knowingly and arrogantly violates the laws of the land as well as the sacred trust it has with the American public, then the end of the government as we know it is right around the corner.”
“Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to think, and this they consider freedom.”: Oswald Spengler – (1880-1936) Source: The Decline of the West, 1926
Cowardly Lions
by Emily Bazelon, Slate
Yesterday’s NSA hearings showed Congress standing up to the White House and then running away from the fight.
“A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if they will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if they can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, they can be induced to lay their liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert their institutions; in all these cases they are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.” — John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, 1861
A War Too Far
by Tom Porteous, TomPaine.com
Bush’s escalation of his war against terrorists into a war against the “evil ideology” of radical Islam may trigger a clash of civilizations.
“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” — John Adams, 1772
Iraq war vets enter U.S. political fray
“Having military experience is a great resume item, but it does not automatically make someone a good candidate,” said Carl Forti, spokesman for the House Republican campaign committee. “It takes a lot more to be a credible candidate than one strong resume point.”
{56 Iraq Veterans are Now Running for Various Fed/State Political Offices Around the Country for 2006 Elections, All 56 are Democrats!!}
Number Of Iraqi civilians Slaughtered In America’s War 100,000 +
Number of U.S. Military Personnel Slaughtered (Officially acknowledged) In Bush’s War 2252
The War in Iraq Costs $239,040,972,605 See the cost in your community
There is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with ‘a money touch,’ but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers:
Theodore Roosevelt
Dog of war builds £62m business on Iraq
Modern mercenary company financially doing well thanks to the Iraq war.
“A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one!”: Alexander Hamilton
OP-ED Customs `camps’ cause for concern
Considering what took place in Nazi Germany, as well as the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans in 1942, no detention camp should be built without the widest possible public scrutiny.
“The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.”: Charles-Louis De Secondat – (1689-1755) Baron de Montesquieu – Source: The Spirit of the Laws, 1748
Prof. Strauss and the neocon takeover
By Jim Silva
Have you seen the latest blockbuster? Like Star Wars, it’s classic good verses evil – a power hungry dictator plotting to seize control of a goodly Republic. The twist is it’s for adults. Ones who know reality is stranger than fiction. You guessed it! This epic thriller is actually your life, and it’s called “The Fall of the Republic – Sleeping Through the Revolution.” Here’s a behind the scenes look:
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“If Everyone In This Country Lost A Brother/Sister, A Son/Daughter Or Grandson/Grandaughter, Things Would Be Very Different”
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Vietnam War History 101:
“The Only Glory In War, Is In The Imagination Of Those Who Were Never There”
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“Every Bomb dropped in Iraq Explodes over New Orleans and the Gulf Coast!!”
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CIVIC {Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict} is a Washington-based nonprofit organization founded by Marla Ruzicka, who was killed on April 16, 2005 by a suicide bomb in Baghdad while advocating for the families of Iraqi civilians killed and injured in the conflict. CIVIC believes that civilian casualties should be counted and their families assisted by the governments responsible, and is working to identify victims and help their families.
Not the Iraqis. Not talking about the terrists.
They – The Bush Administration.
I spent the afternoon with another mother of a child like no other and I came home feeling really raw and emotional. Get two moms with autistic children and the talk always gets to autism. Why won’t don’t we have answers? Whose covering for whom? Where are the studies? Where is the outrage?
My son is about to come home.
No one will ever care for him as much as I do. Period. And I donn’t expect anyone else to care… but this blatant disregard for LIVES. For HUMANS…
Humans in the desert. Humans in the Gulf Coast.
So why should I dare think that the Red Regime would care about the future of one child. One family. One generation?
Let the mercury rain on down. Down. Down. Let the children grew up unable to breathe due to the air pollution. Let them crawl amongst the rubble of destroyed cities due to economical collapse. Let they waste and rot due to no health coverage.
The Red Regime is about death.
The Red Regime is about raping and pillaging.
Profits. Lies. Back patting anc covering up.
It’s not at all about my child or yours. Or anyones.
We all are dying. We all are bleeding. It’s just that those in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur, Gulf Coast don’t have to die as slowly as we and our children will.
Wish I could give you a 10 girl! That was the best fucking summation of the Bush Administration I have EVER read. May they rot in hell!
and may that peace begin with me, with us.
OUT OF IRAQ NOW!
IMPEACHMENT NOW!
Roadside Bombs Kill Four U.S. Marines in Iraq