In Flanders Field

In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army IN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Link

Most Americans have no idea the lives that were lost before American forces stepped into the trenches. We got off fairly easy in that war. When I was ten, there were many WWI vets. There were even Spanish-American war vets - my Uncle Hugh was one. My daughter's maternal great grandfather was at Balleau Wood and the Ardenne. She knew him in life and remembers a bit of him. When I worked in the Corner Drug Store, Mr. Henry would come in in his wool uniform and Smokey Bear hat. He would pass out the paper poppies that he had made.
Please read the history.

Lantern Bearer __________________
Today in Iraq
Please, be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible.

You have no business to believe me.
I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself. . .
If you have not a critical mind, your visit here is useless.
G.I. Gurdjieff

Rumsfield Chaney

Rumsfield

---

I have read much of what is available re: Rummy. He along with
Chaney have been the Princes of inflexibility that have kept this mess afloat since it became obvious to the more practical leadership of both parties that they R and C were being quite limiting by their very inability to admit any error.

The Rummy/Chaney dynamic is now broken. Chaney may now conveniently have a coronary event that allows him to slip away into medical retirement and from the comeuppance that he richly deserves.

I am a very forgiving adversary. I must however in this case withhold any appreciation toward Rumsfeld because he had to have his ass handed to him by the voters. Chaney will never be able to say "Hold, enough . . ." and drop his sword arm. He will have to be grilled in Congress, maybe twice, before he pulls the heart dodge.

The ultimate good that may come of this is that W, now free from the headlock by the above mentioned duo, will act on his own over the next two years to make some amends. I have read a good deal of what is available re: George Walker Bush. He is a bumbler and a good-ol'-donkey-git-along-boy, but he has been out of character since he handed himself over to the Neos. He may yet display some of the better heart that is in him. He has two years. He owes as much to his dad, who has been in great pain over the mess that has been created in his son's name.

So. I am going to call this a defeat for the Neos. They deserved it. Now W must rise above the smoking ruins and be really presidential. He owes it to himself.

Lantern Bearer

__________________
Today in Iraq
Please, be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible.

You have no business to believe me.
I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself. . .
If you have not a critical mind, your visit here is useless.
G.I. Gurdjieff

Election Day has come and . . .

the results are a bit less than expected but still favorable for breaking out of some of the arrogance and idiocy of the past six years. Now the process of politics (in the best sense of the word) may get back on track.

On my first class day in my freshman Political Science class, the professor, a Republican with state and national standing in the then Nixon' White House, said, "Politics is the art of creating a sense of fairness and balance in the national polity." That is the noble job of politics. There are many subfunctions of the grand plan and sometimes methods are used to create outcomes that are inimical to the greater process.

Radical departures from the classic liberal center of American politics (of which there are two wings, Democrat and Republican) as displayed by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, may achieve a new overlay of fairness to the national experience but there is a price to pay. The Eisenhower years nurtured a new level of intervention and military adventurism, not so much by Ike's leadership, but rather by whom he allowed access to the national resources. In so doing he nurtured the idealist and operatives of military adventurism in Iraq. The lessons of history are not on that side of the equation. The current "leadership" (read enamblers) have allowed a whole new level of privateering and racketeering to prevail for the moment. Some of that will go unpunished, but the dockets and committees will have criminal fodder to chew on for several years.

The American experience is by design a construct of the best of the western Christian moral tradition as cast through the prism of the Enlightenment. The American experience is a process of trial and error. It has been messy but the order of tyranny has never had a lasting run.

The greater work is now just ahead. the errors of the last six years have to be addressed. The trickery and the empty words of alliance with particular groups of malleable interests will become exposed.

As a nation, in the world, we have a lot of water to carry and a lot of places to visit officially with hat in hand and a plan to serve rather than to kill. After all, it is the tradition on which we are established.

Please do be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible.

Primitive Sinop

From GREENPEACE

July 4, 2006

Mothers fight against first Turkish nuclear power plant

Posted by Lisa at 2:43 PM

It's great to see that plans for Turkey's first nuclear power plant are facing opposition thanks to a bunch of middle aged women. Having suffered the effects of Chernobyl in this Black Sea region many people are against nuclear power while the Government is pushing plans for three nuclear power stations to come online by 2012. Many local fisherman in the northern city of Sinop where the plant is planned to be built, are now carrying anti-nuclear stickers and flags on their boats. They want to protect the nearby harbour, which is one of the richest fishing areas around. They are concerned that the cooling station will raise the temperature of the sea and have detrimental impacts on the fish. Outstandingly the "Mothers against Nuclear Power" have already got 25,000 signatures on their petition and even Sinop's Mayor is supporting them. Interestingly there is no mention of this opposition in the Turkish press!

This is the first place where I spent hours in the water, snorkeling and observing sea critters. The water there was clear to about sixty feet and the the junk of ages covered the bottom. The fish were there in schooled masses as I had never seen - growing up in Kentucky. Nearby Sinop, to the West there is the only fjord that exists outside of Scandinavian Europe. The whole north coast of Turkey is a place of great primitive beauty. If development could be achieved with great thought to the historicity of the place and the delicacy of the dry rolling countryside, it would be a benchmark for the rest of the developing world.
Lantern Bearer