Both Sides the Tweed

Dublin-born singer Mary Black

Being an American hybrid mutt, with genes from the north of England, Scotland, Eire, Germany, Yakama, Nez Perce and various Old Viking-days anonymous Scandinavians, I can resonate with any of them. This day my heart cries out for healing, both of our land and of our world ~ and also for various people and families I love who are in need of healing.

"Both sides the Tweed" is a re-working by singer Dick Gaughan of a traditional song from 1707 attributed to James Hogg about the Treaty of Union between Scotland and England. It is in contention for a new Scottish National anthem.

Both Sides the Tweed

What's the spring-breathing jasmine and rose ?
What's the summer with all its gay train
Or the splendour of autumn to those
Who've bartered their freedom for gain?

Let the love of our land's sacred rights
To the love of our people succeed
Let friendship and honour unite
And flourish on both sides the Tweed.

No sweetness the senses can cheer
Which corruption and bribery bind
No brightness that gloom can e'er clear
For honour's the sum of the mind

Let virtue distinguish the brave
Place riches in lowest degree
Think them poorest who can be a slave
Them richest who dare to be free

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Whistleblower in Jeapordy

Free Bradley Manning!
Wikileaks video leaker nabbed by creepy snitch
by Justin Raimondo, June 09, 2010 in AntiWar.com

We are coming to resemble the former Soviet Union, in which every whistlebower was seen as the enemy of the state, and to be silenced by any means necessary. America is hosting a nest of vipers, which needs to be routed out entirely, and many of them are in charge.

The Green Fields of France (Willie McBride)

Memorial Day 2010

"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."



Do you know someone who needs to talk? Help is here:
Iraq Veterans Against the War

The Flowers Of the Forest...

Willie McBride (also known as No Man's Land and The Green Fields of France)
Performed by The Dropkick Murphys
[Originally by Eric Bogle]

Oh how do you do, young Willy McBride
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done
And I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great falling in 1916
Well I hope you died quick
And I hope you died clean
Or Willy McBride, was is it slow and obscene

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

And did you leave a wife or a sweetheart behind
In some loyal heart is your memory enshrined
And though you died back in 1916
To that loyal heart you're forever nineteen
Or are you a stranger without even a name
Forever enshrined behind some old glass pane
In an old photograph torn, tattered, and stained
And faded to yellow in a brown leather frame

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

The sun shining down on these green fields of France
The warm wind blows gently and the red poppies dance
The trenches have vanished long under the plow
No gas, no barbed wire, no guns firing now
But here in this graveyard that's still no mans land
The countless white crosses in mute witness stand
To man's blind indifference to his fellow man
And a whole generation were butchered and damned

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

And I can't help but wonder oh Willy McBride
Do all those who lie here know why they died
Did you really believe them when they told you the cause
Did you really believe that this war would end wars
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing and dying it was all done in vain
Oh Willy McBride it all happened again
And again, and again, and again, and again

Did they beat the drums slowly
Did they play the fife lowly
Did they sound the death march as they lowered you down
Did the band play the last post and chorus
Did the pipes play the flowers of the forest

A Magical Mystery Tour Into The Recent Past

I have just finished reading Skinny Dipping in Reality (A coot's account of the great hippy LSD enlightenment search party) by Joe Bageant and wish to share it with the world. Those who know me know that I am and have been from my earliest youth devoted to the dear Lord Jesu Christos, but what most likely don't know is that the heart-opening peyote vision quest direct experiences of my teenage searchlight years (operating a searchlight in the dark for truth, for God, for enlightenment, for peace, for face-to-face encounters with the Creator) left me madly in love with the King of Kings, God and Man. And the sense of brotherhood which was opened up, with all humanity, which he describes at the end of the essay, I still bear witness to today. Enjoy.

Excerpt ~
QUOTE And often the soft presence of a gentle and loving Christ would fill the air with a sense of transcendent peace. Despite my many personal conflicts with the Police Court Jehova of Christian fundamentalism, it was becoming clear that Christ was a guy whose actions were worth deep consideration, even if you considered yourself an atheist. Police Court Jehova be damned. Other times would come zappy symbolic glimpses of quasi cosmic order: Aha! The upright bar of the cross represents the onrushing spirit and mind of man through eternity, and the horizontal crossbar stands for undifferentiated matter. And where they meet one another all we know is made manifest -- all pain, all ecstasy and everything in between. Pure existence. Years later I related this to one of the numerous Asian Buddhist masters who passed through Boulder. He crinkled up his face and laughed in recognition. This mysticism, if that's what it is, was clearly not new. UNQUOTE

Hepburn's Great Peace Speech

Kate the great delivering a few choice words to her character's sons (Eleanor of Aquitane in The Lion in Winter, a wonderful old film) on the prospect of peace and the origin of wars.



Prince Richard: A knife! He's got a knife!!

Eleanor of Aquitaine: Of course he has a knife. He's always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183 and we're barbarians. How clear we make it.

Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war -- not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing.

We are the killers.

We breed wars.

We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten.

For the love of God can't we love one another just a little?

That's how peace begins.

We have so much to love each other for.

We have such possibilities, my children.

We could change the world.

~~~~

Vatican Calls Gaza a "Concentration Camp"

OK, that's quite unambiguous. To the point. And both sides are called to end all attacks. And I am amused that people are shocked at this stance. C'mon, people, the Vatican is for peace. Peace for all peoples. It's what they do.

You know, they represent a fellow who has been known for 2000+ years as the "Prince of Peace"...

From AntiWar.com

QUOTE Echoing Pope Benedict XVI’s repeated calls to end the ongoing bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, Vatican Justice and Peace Minister Cardinal Renato Martino urged both the Israeli government and Hamas to show more willingness toward peace talks and for the world to help them come an agreement that would end the ongoing Israeli invasion.
He also expressed concerns about the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, saying “let’s look at the conditions in Gaza: these increasingly resemble a big concentration camp.” UNQUOTE
~~~

Iraq Veterans Against the War

You need to see this video. This is what a police state looks like, decorated veterans being subjected to this.

Pope: Stop Fighting

Pope calls for immediate end to military action in Georgia

By Catholic News Service

BRESSANONE, Italy (CNS) -- QUOTE Pope Benedict XVI appealed for an immediate end to military operations in Georgia and its breakaway province of South Ossetia.Citing reports of heavy civilian casualties and a large number of refugees, the pope called on the international community to act quickly to bring Russian and Georgian leaders to the bargaining table."It is my fervent wish that military actions cease immediately," the pope said Aug. 10.He urged both sides to "refrain, also in the name of a common Christian heritage, from further confrontations and violent retaliations that could degenerate into a wider conflict." UNQUOTE

click here for whole story...

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Blog Claims Massive Armada Headed Towards Iran

If this is true, and it may or may not be, since I have no actual verification and it is a unknown souce, then several countries - the US and likely Britain and France, or perhaps Turkey and Israel to boot - are bearing down on Iran. Citizens of the world, cry out ENOUGH WAR! in a loud enough voice that your governments hear you. We will never prepare for Peak Oil & climate change this way, we will destroy ourselves, the world God made and likely our grandchildren's futures trying to wrest the hateful black goo from each other's backyards. Idiocy.

QUOTE Operation Brimstone ended only one week ago. This was the joint US/UK/French naval war games in the Atlantic Ocean preparing for a naval blockade of Iran and the likely resulting war in the Persian Gulf area. The massive war games included a US Navy supercarrier battle group, an US Navy expeditionary carrier battle group, a Royal Navy carrier battle group, a French nuclear hunter-killer submarine plus a large number of US Navy cruisers, destroyers and frigates playing the "enemy force".The lead American ship in these war games, the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN71) and its Carrier Strike Group Two (CCSG-2) are now headed towards Iran along with the USS Ronald Reagon (CVN76) and its Carrier Strike Group Seven (CCSG-7) coming from Japan.They are joining two existing USN battle groups in the Gulf area: the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN72) with its Carrier Strike Group Nine (CCSG-9); and the USS Peleliu (LHA-5) with its expeditionary strike group. UNQUOTE

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We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. - Edward R. Murrow

The government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them. - Mark Twain

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us. - William O. Douglas

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” Howard Zinn

DISSENT IS THE HIGHEST FORM OF PATRIOTISM.

Mommy's Home!

What a world we live in. May all the mommies and daddies the world over be home soon, and safe, and doing what really matters ~ taking good care of their wee ones. God save us.