Conflict Near and Far

From my heart to yours… Cai Bé floating market – 2008

I can’t let this lie.

Two tragedies (out of the myriad people on our planet suffer regularly) stand out in my mind and grieve my heart:

Gaza and Malaysia Flight MH17.

Many others exist, but these two are the worst for me because they involve unimaginable grief and they fuel the fires of long-standing hatreds. An earthquake or flood can bring people together. These two drive people apart.

Both involve bad political decisions made in the 20th century and both are being used in the 21st century to fan the flames across these two centuries.

Then I reconsider what effect my blunt, certain-to-be-misunderstood-by-many “truth-telling” will have on my ability to continue to do the other things I love that make a real differences to a limited number of very important people.

And I frequently take the post down and pick up the guitar.

N.B. As I feel I must do today, March 1, 2022.

Educating the Young … And the Old… And Quick

Now, if Joe Canuck could only get it…

From an article on Civil Disobedience by Camillo Bica:

We must make clear to young minds that there is objective truth regarding law, morality, and our nation’s behavior in the world, and that the injustices and immoralities — the wars, occupations, torture, assassinations, exploitation, greed, inequality, etc. — are real and not merely the consequence of differences in interpretation, ideology, or perspective. We must inform students that despite what they’ve been told, such laws, policies, and behaviors are neither in our nation’s interest nor legally or morally acceptable whether practiced by our “enemies” or by us and/or our allies. We must instill in them a sense of responsibility for the policies and actions of our political leaders, for how they govern, and for the effect such policies and laws have on human beings and the environment. We must motivate young people to become socially and politically engaged, to speak out, make demands upon their elected officials and not be satisfied with or mislead by deceptive rhetoric and further lies.

Two things I would add to this quote:

• Older minds must also be changed
• There is no time to lose.

By the way, Bica doesn’t like drones any more than I do.