“[I]n times of crisis it’s interesting that people don’t turn to the novel or say, ‘We should all go out to a movie,’ or ‘Ballet would help us.’ It’s always poetry. What we want to hear is a human voice speaking directly in our ear.”
Billy Collins, U.S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003) speaking to the New York Times, as quoted in The Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson
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.
april is national poetry month
image and poem below the fold
an image from the multimedia presentation The Lifeline
A three-part Los Angeles Times series following the lives of soldiers wounded in Iraq
by David Zucchino
photographs by Rick Loomis
From Digby’s Hullabaloo
Voices From The front
by digby
I highly recommend this series in the LA Times about wounded military in Iraq and Afghanistan. (There are some very graphic pictures, so don’t look if you have a weak stomach. It’s the real face of the war in all its bloody horror.)
It’s quite a tribute to these soldiers’ courage and the miracle of modern medicine. There have been more than 17,000 wounded in Iraq thus far, an average of 110 per week. In past wars a vast number of them would have died. Today, with great battlefield medicine and immediate transport to Europe and the States, most of them pull through. But their wounds are grievous and their lives will never be the same. The primary means of wounding them isn’t bullets — it’s explosive devices.
These people have made a great sacrifice for a cynical, political purpose and it makes me furious. It’s not the first time this has happened in history, but it damned well ought to be the last time the US ever does it.
The Lifeline
A three-part Los Angeles Times series following the lives of soldiers wounded in Iraq
by David Zucchino
photographs by Rick Loomis
A Bird in Hand
by Amber Flora Thomas
I’ve memorized its heart pounding into my thumb.
Breath buoys out. My fingers know how to kill,
closing on the bird’s slippery head.
I don’t remember. Was it that beak bit my chin?
Was it a claw cut my wrist? I blow feathers
away from its chest, smelling pennies and rain.
Skin like granite, a real white-blue, flecked
by knots of new growth. I found my need,
cold in cupped palms, just the way I was taught.
I return to account for whose neck falls around
backwards. Eyes that go cataract bring clouds.
That fat pearl with wings looks like water disappearing in me.
– – –
put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet
read Ilona’s important new blog – PTSD Combat
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
…in the hospitals of all victims of war will be replaced with lines of Peace.
Perfect Manny!
IMPEACH NOW!
Light A Candle For
Peace, Tolerance, Understanding
and For The Children – Innocence Lost!
War is the business of barbarians. – Napoleon Bonaparte
Decorated conscientious objector buried with honors
Source: CNN (4-4-06)
The only conscientious objector to receive a Medal of Honor in World War II has been buried at a national cemetery with a 21-gun salute.
Desmond T. Doss Sr., 87, died March 23 in Piedmont, Alabama, where he and his wife, Frances, had been living with family.
A horse-drawn hearse delivered the flag-covered casket to the grave site Monday in the Chattanooga National Cemetery. Military helicopters flew overhead in a tribute formation.
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living. – Omar Bradley
Iraq Tourism Ministry: U.S. Damaged Ancient City
Source: NBC5.com (3-31-06)
An Iraqi ministry has claimed that United States forces are damaging the ancient city of Kish and must withdraw from the 5,000-year-old archaeological site.
The Ministry of State for Tourism and Antiquities Affairs said in a statement that U.S. forces had set up a camp in Kish, near Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
“[T]he Administration has seized the power of Congress to make the laws, they have seized the power of the judiciary to interpret the laws, and they execute them as well. They have consolidated within themselves all of the powers of the government.”
— Glenn Greenwald, Unclaimed Territory, March 25, 2006
Read More…
FOCUS | Dahr Jamail: How Massacres Become the Norm
Dahr Jamail writes that Robert J. Lifton’s studies on the behavior of those who have committed war crimes led him to believe it does not require an unusual level of mental illness or of personal evil to carry out such crimes. Rather, these crimes are nearly guaranteed to occur in what Lifton refers to as “atrocity-producing situations.” Iraq today is most certainly an “atrocity-producing situation,” as it has been from the very beginning of the occupation.
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This Country also better be Prepared for what may come from the Children Now Actually Living those Tragic Experiances, in Iraq and Afganistan!!For we waged War, and are Fighting, against many who were the Kids of the 1st Gulf War, the bombings, the highway of death, the loss of family members and others…………..! And in Todays World will they Lash Out as have some Leading Up To This, think about it!!!!!!!!!!!!
WWJD?
From Peace Takes Courage.
Iraq faces up to militia problems
I have to be, though I don’t want to be. These past three days have been particularly haunting… Thank you Rub.
and for poetry month:
Peace
No where safe. A dangerous place to work.
Meanwhile in today’s post, Professor Juan Cole finds:”The Iraq civil war”continues as – newly discovered killed, numbers 40.
Regional powers are planning what they will do in case a hot civil war breaks out in Iraq
An intercession for peace.
their “Liberated, calm” Iraq.
I can’t tell you how much my heart hurts this morning…
Filled with so much worry and today the news is like a jackhammer in my head. Bombings, shootings, kidnappings, killings… Eman is back with her daughters in Baghdad today.
I don’t think I could bare seeing her or her daughters photographs of pain, loss or… in here.
Please whatever power that is out there or within peace, please stop this war.
Contrast her courage to that of Bush Co. It sickens me to think on it. I wish her and her daughters peace and happiness. I fear that it will be a long time in coming..if ever.
Thought you might want to see this. This is from one of the Groups I’m affiliated with of the PeaceRoots Alliance. I somhow Accidently found their Yahoo Group Board, which was their Message Center as they are now All over the place, joined was excepted and they’ve become Great Friends, they are a Looong Time Group of Very Active Folks. Visit link at bottom of message than the links there to find out more.
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Faiza Al-Araji
On Friday March 24, I had the opportunity to meet Faiza Al-Araji, an Iraqi woman who fled Iraq with her family, and present her with a More Than Warmth quilt as a gesture of friendship and goodwill. She was very moved by the beautiful quilt which was made by Starr Hergenrathers’s drama students from Analy High School in Sebastopol, CA. Her eyes filled with tears as I explained our More Than Warmth project and the fact that we have sent quilts to Iraq, Afganistan, Africa, and India as well as other countries.
Faiza was on a U.S. speaking tour for International Woman’s Day and Women Say No To War, sponsored by CodePink, Global Exchange, US. Tour of Duty’s Real Intelligence Project, and Berkeley Unitarian Universalists. She spoke as a member of a panel at the First Unitarian Church in Oakland featuring Scott Ritter, Ray McGovern and Medea Benjamin, sharing her personal experiences and talking about the effects and horrors of the occupation and the earlier sanctions on Iraq, as well as the lies that are being told to the American people by our government about the situation there. She said the only place in the U.S. where the women’s group was not warmly received was the Congress in Washington. The message was strong from all the panelists, not only about the war in Iraq but about the move toward war with other and eventually all the countries in the Middle East as the U.S. pushes for global domination and control of oil.
Faiza and her husband are both civil engineers and they fled from Iraq to Jordan with their family after paying a ransom to free their son who was wrongly imprisoned. She has an interesting blog with stories and letters from Iraq and pictures from Baghdad, Syria, and Jordan. The blog is called A Family in Baghdad and there is a link to it from the Code Pink website, Code Pink.
The following is her answer to a note I wrote to her after her talk. It’s wonderful to be able to make personal connections like this.
“yes, my family and I , we are waiting to go back home in Baghdad as soon as conditions be better
my youngest son is in the high school
I will ask him take the quilt to the school to let his friends see how beautiful is it.
yes, it will stay as symbol for peace between Iraqi and American people. all my love faiza”
Peace and justice for all,
Linda Hlady
More Than Warth
Thank you. Meeting Eman was amazing. I told her I would come to Baghdad and visit her and her daughters.
I will, too.
Ever since I was small, I’ve just wanted to go there. I suspect my reading lists had something to do with it. I dunno, it just always seemed magical. She said, one day, it will be back to the beautiful city it once was.
You and Me and Thousands, if not more!!!!
When the 1st Gulf War Brokeout I was reading “The History Of The Bible”, I believe that’s the exact title, this is a Extremely Rich Area of the History of Mankind!!
And th’s one of the Sadnesses of than and Now, Much Of That History Is Destroyed along with the Destruction of the Modern Inhabitants!!!!!!
The thing about the above photo is it shows her really happy for a bit.
She said that Iraq is (I hope I get this right – it’s been a while and it was a LONG day) Iraq is known as the “Land of Two Rivers”. So being along the river in Portland a city of bridges… was special I think for her.
Oh gawd… more killed in Baghdad today. This week has been so bloody.
What is interesting about this is while there are many videos available on the internets every day, it is seldom that one is mentioned by western media.