December 31, 2007 My 70 Year Old Husband Who Has Never Voted Wants Me To Post This

How sweet, as sweet as the taste of victory. Published by dailypaul.com. A fantastic way to start the year. Ron Paul is truly invigorating and brings hope to this great country.

My 70 Year Old Husband Who Has Never Voted Wants Me To Post This:
Posted December 31st, 2007 by dgn4paul

My husband is nearly 70 years old and has never registered to vote (until now - he just sent in his paperwork for voting registration). These are his words (with spelling & grammar corrected):

I'm seventy years old and never voted, I can't say I'm proud of it, but our politics are so corrupt and no President ever does what they say. I finally saw some hope with Ron Paul. But I guess Iowa, New Hampshire and all the news people are going to make sure he doesn't have a chance. It looks like to me that all candidates should have the same time in the debates, not the one the big corporations, New Hampshire and Iowa want. I am a veteran and I feel sorry for the soldiers coming from Iraq. I dare any high politician, congressman, or the President or the media to go unannounced with me to the VA. There would be some change if they did. It is time to take this country over and stop these rich politicians from running our lives.

(Please excuse my English and the way I worded things. I'm not very educated. I had to work all my life (since I was about 9 years old) and didn't get to finish school. My wife put this on the internet for me.)

Sincerely,
Stephen A. Nevil
Seagoville, TX

November 11, 2006 Manhattan Madonna & 9/11

Picture and excerpt from article published by Media with Conscience. A later related article can also be found here. The Manhattan Madonna is a very interesting art work and pleasant at first view.

Manhattan Madonna & 9/11

MANHATTAN MADONNA is a huge painting that I have recently completed as part of a series of Madonna and Child paintings based on major cities. The Manhattan Madonna has a fundamental message that the most profound beauty and truth in our world is that of Mother and Child and that this beauty and truth transcends the greatest works of Man.

This truism for decent people must be endlessly re-stated because it is so blatantly ignored in our present globalized, Bush-ite-led Spaceship Earth in which 10.6 million under-5 year old infants die every year, 29,000 daily and about 90% avoidably due to man-made deprivation and First World greed.

The 9/11 tragedy took the lives of 3,000 ordinary people like ourselves. Unlike other homicide events, in this case the culprits (Muslim-origin terrorists, Americans, Israelis?) have not yet been apprehended, tried and punished. Instead the world has been treated to years of hysterical propaganda, anti-Arab anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia and horrendous war and suffering imposed on the Middle East and Central Asia. However the Bush War on Terror that followed 9/11 has been associated with a total of 3.0 million post-invasion excess deaths (avoidable deaths, deaths that did not have to happen) in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories, 0.9 million excess deaths in Occupied Iraq and 2.1 million excess deaths in Occupied Afghanistan (see MWC News).

Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984)

First read this quote attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller while visiting the Holocaust Museum in Boston, actually walking through the New England Holocaust Memorial, photo above. It has been in my mind ever since.

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

December 28, 2007 Bhutto Assassinated in Attack on Rally

Early morning news for the US, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. A bit amazing to learn about her with a history of "events." Just wonder what is the right that makes people like Mrs. Bhutto risk the lives of others? Does her message warrants the lives of others?
On a more positive note is the work of her niece Fatima Bhutto, additional info about her here. A very nice article by her is These are Strange Times where links to four other of her articles are found. Here is a lovely paragraph from her article titled Welcome to Tehran.

A man on the road held out two pomegranates in his palms, one was sliced open. He shouted out the price for a piece of fruit. Cars slowed down to bargain with the pomegranate seller and I looked at my taxi driver, trying to find a common language in which to ask why this man was selling only what he could hold in his hand. The taxi driver nodded his head and pointed a few feet ahead of the pomegranate man - there were families sitting by the road, on the hoods of their cars, eating pomegranate and drinking tea. There was a truck full of the fruit parked by the picnickers. The taxi driver nodded again towards the truck, "For you?" he asked. I put my hand to my heart and shook my head, touched, "no thank you."

Another very human paragraph is found in her article titled Welcome to Tehran.

After a pleasant Iran Air flight I landed at Mehrabad International Airport. A sign greeted me: Welcome to Tehran, Fati. I am not a nervous flier, but I am a nervous traveler. As I walked towards the departure gate at Karachi's Jinnah airport, my mother kissed me and sensing my apprehension at the journey ahead held my face and said, "You're going to your country, safe travels". She was not wrong. As I sat in the taxi and drove off towards North Tehran, I felt wholly at home. The foothills of the Alborz mountains were laced with snow, but there was a warmth in Tehran I could not have imagined.

And to add to the repertoire of Fatima Bhutto, the articles include a couple photos that are most telling:
Fatima (left) with interpreter Samira (right) posing with Shah's boots at Sa'ad Abad Palace in Tehran.
Girl selling flowers on the way to Behesht Zahra (photo 2002, Ali Moayedian).
And a different photo of her from Nasi Khan blog. Her facial features more serious offer a contrast to her smile in the first photo.