Shadows of maple leaves after the park path has been cleaned by machine.
Chris Hedges: The Imminent Extradition of Julian Assange & the Death of Journalism
Chris Hedges: The Imminent Extradition of Julian Assange & the Death of Journalism
— Read on consortiumnews.com/2023/06/19/chris-hedges-the-imminent-extradition-of-julian-assange-the-death-of-journalism/
Thursday, September 7th: And, months later, the persecution continues as an Australian group travels to Washington to appeal for Assange prior to an upcoming visit from the Australian PM, Anthony Albanese.
Something
This song is called “Something“.
The song was written by George Harrison and appeared on the Beatles’ Abbey Road album released on October 6, 1969. I have just listened to the Beatles’ version and have just made more improvements that appear below in the five chord intro D D C A D (1 beat per chord) and replaced what was an F#m in the first line to a Dmaj7 (DM7) which doesn’t require a bar chord, leads more smoothly to the D7 and the first line can therefore be played D DM7 D7 G, with 4 beats on each chord.
Hope it helps…
After quickly searching for a lead sheet for the song as performed in 1996 here by Shirley Bassey on YouTube I decided to significantly modify what I found.
This lead sheet is the result of my listening to Ms. Bassey’s beautiful rendition and making several important corrections to a lead sheet that I found. These were particularly in the two line bridge beginning with “You’re” and enhancements elsewhere based on what I heard in Bassey’s performance. This arrangement is in D and since Ms. Bassey’s performance was in F, guitarists will need a capo on the third fret when playing along.
From Golf to the Lusitania?
While watching The Open Golf Tournament this morning the rich voice of the former Irish golfer, announcer Ewan Murray, reminded me of a visit Anita and I made to Cobh early in our 11-day Ireland and Northern Ireland tour in 2019.
While visiting this lovely seaport town, on Eire’s south coast, we chose to visit the marvelous Lusitania Memorial, where we opted to watch a small TV screen and listen for a few minutes to another deep, dubbed Irish voice representing Martin Mannion, a passenger on the ill-fated RMS Lusitania who survived. The ship had sailed from New York on May 1, 1915 carrying 1962 passengers and crew… and 173 tons of munitions.
Six days later the Lusitania was sunk by a U-boat torpedo 11 miles from the South coast of Ireland on May 7. Only 761 people surived. Over 60 per cent perished!
A post I read today showed that the newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic had mentioned the weapons prior to the sailing.
Here is that post about the Lusitania sinking… in which Winston Churchill’s name comes up… if you’re willing to scroll about 16 pages down…
One Planet III
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My 1983 pro-environment anti-nuke song has gained new, urgent relevance.
Back in 1983 the situation was so scary that I wrote two songs on the nuke issue.
Note on March 7, 2022: even more perilous.
In 2016, I replaced the old One Planet video with a much better video produced using new equipment and software. It contained new, HD photos taken by me with the same great, old, quotations from gifted female and male thinkers on world issues.
Having done a very small editing of the 2016 version II I now call the video,
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Dr. Vandana Shiva, author of the above photo’s quote, born in November, 1952, is a brave, brilliant agricultural activist from India, known as the Seed Lady for her successful securing of seed banks of key, traditional plants against their extinction. Traditional seeds are now threatened by the patenting of seed for profit perpetrated by powerful corporations like Monsanto. This article from 2019 indicates that the valiant seed battle continues. The older ways are sometimes less threatened by flooding and the “food crusaders” are fighting hard to preserve India’s heritage of a vast variety of plants and seeds.
An Offer to “Help”
One doesn’t need much intelligence to form a picture of how thin the film is between our two “nations” – pesky, sometimes frustrating, Canada and our hugely-important U.S. trading “partner.”
PM Trudeau and Ontario Premier, Doug Ford, “fiddled” like Nero and will now possibly be seen as only having acted after this “offer to help” that, unveiled, might translate as: “If you don’t figure this out fast, we will…” forced them. I can see this crisis, worsened by the lack of a timely response by our above leaders, producing a shift to harsher Canadian governments run by the planet’s all-powerful “zero-point-oh-oh-oh-one-per-cent,” a precious few – mostly foreign – who run the Planet and are much less concerned about the average citizen than about their personal wealth. Hmmm… maybe we already are?
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I also expect that (following the current, fast-growing and sad losses endured by important major industries, innocent farmers and many already struggling trade-dependent business owners) greater capitalist “wins” will, in the long term, be made by the planet’s super-wealthy – who would, with their loved ones, fit inside just one of those trailers currently lined up at Windsor, Ontario or Coutts, Alberta.
Two possible examples of likely winners: the auto industry (in producing new, docile, driverless commercial vehicles and the construction industry in building more routes and mechanisms for goods to flow between the US and whatever remains of us, their neighbours.
And, perhaps the saddest human loss is our inability to appreciate that forcing a trucker, who spends most of the time in his/her cab, to either get vaccinated or fired is, in virtue of its uncertain worth, divisive, harsh and out of proportion to the good that it might do, in view of our lack of understanding of both human nature and the virus. It misses the big picture on which I hope I’ve shed a little light.
Trumpeter Swans
Sighted and photographed three trumpeter swans at the North end of Upper Parr Lake in Brampton at about 3:20 P.M. on Feb. 6th. There were many mallards and Canada geese as usual in the small section of open water but his was my first ever sighting of this species of swan.
Frosty Feathered Friends on Feb Five
Upper Parr “Lake.”
Majority geese, minority ducks, one human, one iPad, one Sun.
A Mild Winter
My youngest daughter’s young pup, “Saint” George, was with us for a few precious days earlier this month and later with her from Christmas Eve until yesterday.
He’s welcome any time.
The above ducks came over to hear him preach. He and my iPad tested my hands this day. The photos below are from a lovely solo walk yesterday. The geese are more plentiful than the ducks this year for some reason…
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A Sign of Hope
Something to remind us that Spring hopes eternal…
mightyturk 