Day of Remembrance …
The international Day of Remembrance has begun in Israel. The day that we remember the 6 million Jews, and many others that went to their deaths in Nazi concentration camps. Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
These – Bad Arolson is where the millions upon millions of files for Nazi records have been kept and for years now been open to the public for research purposes.
Yad Vashem. The Holocaust museum in Israel.
You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes and a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At Home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.
Primo Levi
Survival in Auschwitz
China revokes visa of gold medalist, Darfur activist Cheek
By Chris Chase
Olympic gold medalist and outspoken Darfur activist Joey Cheek has had his visa revoked by the Chinese embassy, hours before the speedskating champion was set to fly to China. And he wasn’t even planning on wearing a mask when he got there.
Chinese officials don’t need a reason to revoke anyone’s visa but, in their eyes, they had plenty of reasons to snatch Cheek’s. He is the founder of Team Darfur, a group of 70 athletes whose goal it is to raise global awareness of the human-rights violations taking part in the Darfur region of Sudan. China’s military, economic and diplomatic ties to Sudan have been well-publicized in the lead-up to the Games.
Said Cheek of his ban in a prepared statement:
“I am saddened not to be able to attend the Games. The Olympic Games represent something powerful: that people can come together from around the world and do things that no one thought were possible. However, the denial of my visa is a part of a systemic effort by the Chinese government to coerce and threaten athletes who are speaking out on behalf of the innocent people of Darfur.
Cheek was going to China to support the athletes on Team Darfur — including soccer player Abby Wambach — and to promote the cause, one that he has championed for years. After winning gold in the Torino Games, Cheek announced he was donating his $25,000 USOC bonus to Darfur and implored his sponsors to do the same. It seems that Joey Cheek is truly one of the good guys.
And now he’s out of China before he even got there. With the Games getting closer (just two days away now), the world seemed ready to forget about all the Chinese issues in order to focus on the Games themselves. Unfortunately, China’s actions make that impossible. In a time when we should be wondering who will light the Olympic cauldron, whether Michael Phelps can break an all-time record and how Liu Xiang will react to the pressure of 1.3 billion of his countrymen hanging on his every step, we’re instead left to discuss the Chinese government’s reluctance to allow any dissension in their country, despite repeated promises that they’d clean up their act when the Olympics came to town.
Photo via Getty Images
Came to Believe…
It is really hard to try and explain to some readers that unless you have walked a day or a week or a month and quite possibly a year in my shoes, NO ONE has the right to judge me or leave nasty comments on this blog, thinking that I would even entertain posting those comments here.
The other night I wrote on the seven deadly sins, as I did a nightly inventory of my sobriety and I prayed for some wisdom in posting that post and I even PAGED it as well so that it can be readily accessed from the front page.
Illness forces one who is ill to grow up, faster than usual. It asks of us to persevere through the illness and to hope and pray that one will live through adversity and come victoriously to the other side. 162 of my friends went into that dark night with me. They are all dead, I am still alive. I must be doing something right.
People who think they know God, come here and tell me about their God and they share with me their warped views of Christianity. They leave nasty comments with vile judgments and accusations. How could I possibly know God, be a Christian and be Gay? My God does not care that I am gay and he doesn’t care that you are straight. My God tells me that I must walk this path, and I must pray and I must respect the station of God, and I do that. I am sure that every Christian who reads this blog has a different conception of God, and you may not agree with me and that’s ok. What a bore it would be if we all agreed on every note of Christianity.
When I got sick, and doctors told me that I had, at best, 18 months to live, that I better make good use of that time, I took that diagnosis home with me and I was alone. Because I would be Coming Out again, and AIDS was the great leveler. It surely separated the boys from the men, and the girls from the women. I tell this story again because it is who I am – what I am – and where I came from.
I had to come to believe that I was going to live, when all of my friends were dying. Against all odds, a group of men rallied round me and forced me to think, they begged me to believe in them, if I could not believe in myself or in God at that present moment. I cried for days. I worked my ass off and I listened to every word that was spoken to me in that first 18 months. I listened to the men who made sense of living. I listened to men encourage me through the toughest time of my life. Were THEY wrong???
The path lies ahead of you. What you choose to do with that knowledge is up to you. I had a choice, I could stay on the path and follow the leader, or I could go it alone. I chose to follow the leader. When Christianity turned its back on the sick and the dying, WE were still there. When the Christians were condemning us, and labeling us, WE were still there, we walked through that hell. I accuse many for what they did to me and my friends. I accuse you for turning your back on so many, families, friends, lovers, churches, congregations, funeral parlors, office workers, hospital workers and doctors and nurses.
You have not a shred of experience on what we lived through. You have not a leg to stand on when you speak your vile accusations and judgments. God as my witness, You have no idea who I am, you did not see with thine own eyes the horror I witnessed. You did not weep at the bodies laid wasted by those who abandoned them. I reckon, you did not shed one guilty tear of remorse for your actions.
And God Wept…
I counted the days, one by one, on paper, in my house, in my heart and in my mind. I sewed my own memorial quilt with the others and when they died I wept for my friends and those who loved them to the end. I worked night and day to care for the sick and the dying. I worked night and day to keep myself alive. And I was sober as well. I experienced rehab and I read my Big Book, I worked my steps and I let go of my resentments and my ego. Because let me tell you, there is no EGO when it comes to mortality. You beg God for one more day, one more week, one more month. You tell me if you’ve ever knelt before God, knowing that your life is in his hands, and you don’t let go of your EGO pretty damned fast.
God does not deal is egos and attitudes, although you wouldn’t know that by the actions of some Christians I run across on this blog. You’d think that God stepped out of his heaven to tell some Christians that it is their duty and responsibility to speak for the almighty!
I beg to differ…
I do not know of any Christian, priest, minister, pastor or the like who has ever heard from the Almighty and has access to the 1-800 number to the heavenly host. Not one day goes by as of late that I don’t think about my mortality. Because we are quickly approaching my diagnosis anniversary. It has been 14 years and counting, and I am still here, 162 of my friends are DEAD!!!
The longer I lived the more I believed that I would make it – the more I walked the path, I learned about me, about others, I learned what true compassion was, because I watched people like you, HUMAN BEINGS become ANIMALS, un-compassionate and uncaring. I witnessed the worst that humanity threw at us, don’t think for one moment that I have forgotten after so many years. I have not…
I know very few noble men and women in my life. I know that the men and women who worked tirelessly to help me and others stay alive, did that because they had to. The believed in us when nobody else did. They hoped that we would survive the medications, the drugs, and or the lack there of. Those men and women stood at the gates of death and protected us to the best of their ability to see that no one would go alone and those who lived would not forget the kindness shown to them in their darkest hours.
YOU who think you know God. YOU who think God has anything to say about me. YOU who think that you can prance around your little churches proclaiming “Jesus Saves” on Holy Sunday and at prayer meetings and revivals, out of one side of your mouth, and from the other you spout such vitriol and hatred!!! How could you possibly be in communion with the same God who created heaven and earth and all that you see before you!
May God have mercy on your souls.
In 40 years of life, I know who I am today. I survived. I lived. I persevered. I broke all the records and markers that my doctors gave me. I survived a family that turned their backs on me. I survived loosing my friends, my fellows, my boyfriend at the time. I survived finding my lovers corpse 5 days after he killed himself, rather than telling me that he was sick. I survived the curse that his mother said to me as I signed his body out of the coroners office to send his rotted corpse home to his family when she spoke those words:
“I Hope that every night when you close your eyes, that you see my dead sons body before you until the day that you die…”
Not a night goes by that I don’t pray for his soul and for mine. Not a day goes by that I am not reminded that this body is but a shell that I happen to inhabit for this lifetime. Not a day goes by that I am not reminded that I could die at any moment because my constitution is not that of a 26 year old boy any more. Not a day goes by that I don’t start my day with prayer and pray during the day and before I go to sleep at night that i don’t thank God for that day and pray that there is air in my lungs when I get up the next morning. It seems that God listens to my prayers, because there is still air in my lungs tonight.
You must concede that I know of what I speak of. You must concede that somewhere in God’s heaven are millions of souls who have gone before me, who speak to God on my behalf. You must concede that Sister Georgette, my sainted Grey Nun aunt, isn’t up there speaking to Mere D’Youville on my behalf. You must concede that after all these years, that I know how to pray. You must concede that probably I have prayed prayers for myself and my friends that YOU have never thought about praying for yourself or your families.
Death and Dying is not just a spectator sport for those who live and die with illness. You look at a child who is sick, and you feel pity for them, yet you spurn the lot of us who are sick and dying. There was no pity on your face, only recriminations and condemnation. Until you face your appointed hour could you ever utter one single word against me, my friends or our family.
We learn a great deal about life in the pursuit of death. We learn a great deal about prayer when the chips are down and we have to utter those “Hail Mary” prayers. I don’t think that YOU could shine a light on my prayer life with the certainty that you think you have. I don’t believe that YOU could even imagine what it is that I pray for on a nightly basis. I don’t believe that YOU could ever know the relationship that I have with God, because of the way you treat others. Humans are imperfect beings.
Religious men and women across the board for centuries have prayed to God, studied the finer points of God and they speak about theologies and religions, and nobody has the definitive word on God, what He thinks and what He believes of anyone on earth. Scripture, Talmud, the Qu’ran, the Bible, the Upanishads and the Vedas all speak of spiritual nature and spiritual truth. Words written by man, inspired by God are open to interpretation by the best scholars and religious leaders. Centuries of collected works are borne into a system of belief for the masses because YOU need to believe in something, and far be it from me to tell you what to believe, and As God as my witness, YOU have no right to tell me what to believe, how to live my life, or who I can love.
Matthew 7:1-5
Judging Others
“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?
You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brothers eye.”
On top of 40 years of lived experience on this earth, and 14 years balancing the fine art of the living and the dead, I have spiritual truth on my side. I have years of sober time under my belt. I have worked to become selfless and ego-less. We have a reading called the Promises in AA that we believe will come to pass if one works the program of recovery to the best of their ability.
“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not.
They are being fulfilled among us – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.They will always materialize if we work for them.”
Every week at my home group meeting we read this passage from the Big Book. And I can tell you that I have come to believe because I have watched God walk into our meeting and rest and I have seen his grace fall on the souls of those who come to that meeting week in and week out. I have seen God move in ways that probably YOU will never see in your lifetime. I have been blessed and my friends have been blessed by God because we come together to learn, to change, to work and to share our message with those who might need to hear it.
Over the last five years I have worked on my religious truth. I have studied God INTIMATELY. I know who God is and I know who God is not. I have prayed simple prayers in some of the most beautiful churches on the earth. I have walked the staircase to the roof the Pinnacle of the Holy Catholic Church. I have stood in awe of the expanse of Rome and I have looked down into Papal Gardens where I am sure, centuries of Popes have communed with God in their time.
I have spoken to Pontiffs, I have worshiped in the greatest Church that exists on the planet. I have communed with the bones of saints and prophets. I have stood in the place of honor where the disciple Peter’s bones rest beneath the cuppola of the Vatican. I have walked the hallowed halls of the catacombs beneath the Vatican and I have seen the early Christian catacombs on Rome where the first Christians worshiped God.
There is not one egotistical bone in my body. I have worked tirelessly for years to share a message of hope and love with my readers. I have worked with the sick and the dying. I have spent a lifetime learning how to die. I have spent a lifetime studying the path to righteousness. I don’t care one bit for righteousness, I DO care about Holiness. I care that I live a holy and blessed life. I care that those I listen to live holy and blessed lives. I care that the religious authority that I follow RESPECTS me for WHO I am and are not bothered by WHAT I may be.
The world is so caught up in labels. What good have labels done to people in the past? The Nazi’s believed that labeling people and putting them in extermination camps was useful. To route the world of Jews, Gypsies, Christians, (oh yes they exterminated Christians too), homosexuals, the Polish and the sick and dying. MILLIONS of people WERE MURDERED because they were labeled as useless and dirty.
I once believed, as a young person that I wanted to carry a label, but 40 years of experience has taught me that once you label someone, they are as good as dead. Once you label someone, they loose something of themselves. The uniqueness of the soul is tarnished by those who would see them labeled. In centuries of time gone by, we have seen what labels do to human beings. Because if YOU can label us, then You believe that you can separate us from the whole, and section us off from the normal human population. You do not own that power any longer.
My Husband, my friends, and my fellows love me for the man I am today. One who gives freely of his soul every day that I live. One who writes with such passion and strength. One who lives with determination that I can safely say that probably YOU will never see in your lifetime. Because faced with imminent death, I am sure you would not rise to the level of enlightenment that I have seen in my lifetime.
Ah, you might get sick, get cancer, or some other disease, you will say a prayer here or there, and maybe you just might see the face of God before he takes you, but you will still be as judgmental and vile as you are today. Nothing will change.
Because a sick heterosexual is far better in Gods eyes than a sick homosexual.
Because you believe that God will hear and harken your prayer before he does mine. Well, I wonder about that. What do you think? YOU who sputter unchristian words now need God’s grace, because like me, now you are sick and you need God to heal you and make you better. Do you think that you are going to walk a different path than I have? Do you think that your illness might be better than mine? Do you believe that a heterosexual should be pushed up the line of healing before God, before someone like me?
You have no idea what it feels like to face your own death, several times over in my case. And lived to tell the tale. And you think that I am prideful or have one ounce of hubris in my soul? You think that I am arrogant and that I come from a place of ego rather than a place of selflessness???
I have come to believe…
One day YOU will stand before God, and on that day YOU will reckon for all that you have done on this earth, and for me it is this last thought that keeps me going in my pursuit of Christian faith, that at the end of my life when I stand before God I will hear him say:
“Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Will God say the same words to you???
Berlin inaugurates memorial to Nazi's gay victims
The memorial for homosexual victims of the Nazi regime, designed by Norwegian artist Ingar Dragset and Danish artist Michael Elmgreen, seen in Berlin on Monday, May 26, 2008. On Tuesday, May 27, 2008 the monument will be unveiled officially.
By GEIR MOULSON, Associated Press
BERLIN – Germany unveiled a memorial Tuesday to the Nazis’ long-ignored gay victims, a monument that also aims to address ongoing discrimination by confronting visitors with an image of a same-sex couple kissing.
The memorial — a sloping gray concrete slab on the edge of Berlin’s Tiergarten park — echoes the vast field of smaller slabs that make up Germany’s memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, opened three years ago just across the road.
The pavilion-sized slab includes a small window where visitors can view a video clip of two men kissing.
Berlin’s openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit, said the monument was a reminder of the ongoing struggles that still confront gays.
“This memorial is important from two points of view — to commemorate the victims, but also to make clear that even today, after we have achieved so much in terms of equal treatment, discrimination still exists daily,” Wowereit said as he inaugurated the memorial alongside Culture Minister Bernd Neumann.
Nazi Germany declared homosexuality a threat to the German race and convicted some 50,000 homosexuals as criminals. An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 gay men were deported to concentration camps, where few survived.
“This is a story that many people don’t know about, and I think it’s fantastic … that the German state finally decided to make a memorial to honor these victims as well,” said Ingar Dragset, a Berlin-based Norwegian who designed the memorial along with Danish-born Michael Elmgreen.
The commemoration “unfortunately comes too late for those who were persecuted and survived in 1945,” said Guenter Dworek, of Germany‘s Lesbian and Gay Association. “That is very bitter.”
He said the last ex-prisoner that his group knows of died in 2005.
Wowereit echoed his regret over the time it took to honor the Nazis’ gay victims.
“That is symptomatic of a postwar society which simply kept quiet about a group of victims, which … contributed to these victims being discriminated against twice,” he said.
Few gays convicted by the Nazis came forward after World War II because of the stigma attached to homosexuality. The law used against them remained on the books in West Germany until 1969, and Dworek said there were 50,000 convictions under the legislation after the war.
Not until 2002 did the German parliament issue a formal pardon for homosexuals convicted under the Nazis. One reason it took so long was because the legislation had been linked to a blanket rehabilitation of 22,000 Wehrmacht deserters — a move many conservatives opposed.
The effort to get a memorial built started in 1992, and a 1999 parliament decision to build the memorial to the Holocaust‘s 6 million Jewish victims also called for “commemorating in a worthy fashion the other victims of the Nazis.” In 2001, Jewish and Gypsy leaders backed an appeal for a monument to the gay victims.
After lawmakers approved its construction, a jury picked the winning design in early 2006 out of 17 design proposals.
The federal government financed the $945,660 building costs, while Berlin’s city government provided the site.
The designers’ original plan to feature only a video of two men kissing ran into criticism that lesbians were left out. Last year, a compromise was reached to change the memorial’s video every two years, allowing lesbian couples to be shown in the future.
The first film — a repeating clip of two men kissing, shot at the site of the memorial before it was built — was done by photographer Robby Mueller and directed by Denmark’s Thomas Vinterberg.
“It was quite important to have a direct imagery of a love scene, a passionate scene … because that is the main problem in homophobia,” designer Elmgreen told AP Television News. “You can get acceptance on an abstract level, but they don’t want to look at us.”
Germany has allowed gay couples to seal their partnerships at registry offices since 2001, although the law stops short of offering formal marriage. Berlin has a large gay community, as do other major German cities, such as Cologne and Hamburg.
The memorial to the Nazis’ Jewish victims and the new monument will soon be joined by a third memorial honoring the Roma and Sinti, or Gypsy, victims. Some 220,000 to 500,000 Gypsies were killed during the Holocaust.
Work begins this year on that memorial, also in Tiergarten park.
“We stand stunned before the brutality with which the Nazis threatened, persecuted and destroyed all those who did not correspond to their inhuman ideology,” Neumann said.
“The experience of war and Holocaust, state terror and tyranny, puts on us Germans a special responsibility to protect freedom and human rights.”
DARFUR: ON OUR WATCH
CBC cameras follow actress Mia Farrow on an emotionally harrowing journey through the desolate refugee camps along the Chad/ Darfur border.
The United Nations has called Darfur “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.” The United States has called it “genocide”. The death toll estimates for this western region of Sudan range from 200,000 to 500,000, with two and a half million people forced from their homes and the sex crimes too rampant to count.
The desolute landscape outside the refugee camps in Chad.
Photo Credit: Joe Passaretti
“Never Again” vowed the world after the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica brought the “bloodiest of centuries” to a close. But three years into the 21st century a national government was once again aiding and abetting the brutal destruction of an ethnic group within its borders And now in the year 2007, as refugees in the camps of neighbouring Chad attest, the Sudanese government still carries out its grizzly task. The United Nations, an institution charged with making the world a safer place, looks on, virtually helpless to stop the slaughter of black Africans at the hands of Arab horseman known as Janjaweed –devils on horseback.
DARFUR: On Our Watch examines why it took the UN so long to respond to the obvious early warning signs of an horrific ethnic cleansing. It will document in chilling detail how politics, oil, guns and money trumped human rights as powerful interests on the Security Council blocked the world from acting; how the United States, weakened by wars in Somalia and Iraq could not influence the world forum to act.
But a clamorous coalition of ordinary citizens, international activists and major celebrities now offer the one real hope for Darfur. Through the relentless campaigning of a growing band of citizens in schools, universities and corporate corridors, through tens of thousands on the march, and the tireless efforts of Hollywood stars like Mia Farrow and George Clooney, the world and the Chinese government are being shamed into action.
Finding shelter in one of the many refugee camps.
Photo Credit: Debbie Bodkin
Mukesh Kapila, a British doctor and the United Nation’s Humanitarian Co-ordinator for the Sudan, is the Roméo Dallaire for Darfur. He sounded the alarm. People, who had trekked all the way from Darfur, started arriving in his office in Khartoum in early 2003 describing the atrocities that were occurring. Dr. Kapila reported back to his bosses at UN Headquarters in New York.
On December 18, 2003 he wrote to his boss Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Kieran Prendergast, Under-Secretary for Political Affairs, informing them that “the security situation in Greater Darfur continues to worsen… An estimated 670,000 people have been newly displaced, 70,000 fled to Chad, and one million others are directly affected by the war. Our Office receives daily reports of human right violations throughout the region.”
By March 22 2004 he was reporting “ethnic cleansing” to Iqbal Riza, Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s chief aide, in the hopes that action would be taken. Sir Kieran Prendergast explains that the United Nations was late in responding to the crisis in Darfur because peace negotiations to end the 21-year civil war between north and south Sudan were looking promising and the political wing of the United Nations was hesitant about raising the profile of Darfur, for fear of upsetting the peace process.
While the UN was waiting for the comprehensive peace agreement to be signed, Mia Farrow, Eric Reeves and Debbie Bodkin were documenting the atrocities unfolding. In the world’s latest abomination, resolve has come from individuals filling the void left by institutions.
Mia Farrow has visited Darfur seven times since 2004.
Photo Credit: Joe Passaretti
Movie star, activist, UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and grandmother Mia Farrow has traveled to the Darfur region seven times. “My first trip into Darfur was in 2004. Simply put, it changed the way I needed to live my life.” CBC and PBS Frontline travelled with Mia Farrow to the camps in eastern Chad in June 2007 to talk to Darfur refugees and internally displaced people (see her journal of the trip on her website).
In Chad, Mia Farrow meets Fatih Younnis a former chief or Omda for the district of Mukjar in western Darfur (ground zero in the Darfur crisis), who fled into Chad in the summer of 2003 with 4,500 other refugees. And she reunites with Khadeiga Abdullah whom she had met on previous visits. Abdulla survived the attacks, but was raped and one of her children was killed on her back as she fled her village. Today she lives in a refugee camp with seven children, in desperate poverty. Abdulla Idris Zaid is 27. He tried to collect his harvest before fleeing his village and his eyes were gouged out. Today he sits in a lawless land waiting (see photo at top).
Mia Farrow struggles to comfort the afflicted and alert the world to their pain. With Eric Reeves, her celebrity voice has helped shame the Chinese Government to action on the Darfur crisis. They started a campaign called the “Genocide Olympics” to raise awareness about China’s role in the crisis in Darfur.
Activist Eric Reeves has been raising awareness about the atrocities in Sudan for eight years on his website and he doesn’t withhold his exasperation at the international community: “It’s almost impossible for me to describe the scale of the international failure and how dismaying it is and how obvious it is we’ve learned nothing. I’m given to saying that in the wake of Rwanda it’s as though the gods of history looked down on us and said your failure was so appalling… we’ll give you another chance and we’ll give you a lot of time and we’ll call it Darfur. And we failed just as badly as we failed in Rwanda.” If anyone has turned the whisper of “never again” into a relentless tapping at the world’s conscience it is Eric Reeves. Eric Reeves is also a professor at Smith College in Massachusetts and author of A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.
UN soldiers arrive at a refugee camp.
Photo Credit: Debbie Bodkin
Sergeant Debbie Bodkin is a 20-year-veteran of the Waterloo regional police in Ontario. She has served in the homicide, the sexual assault and the drug squads. She thought she’d seen everything until the summer of 2004 when she used her vacation time to travel to Chad as a member of the Atrocities Documentation Team for a US State Dept inquiry. She and colleagues interviewed 1,136 victims. Then in November 2004 she joined another investigation team. This one authorized by the UN. She suffered from post-traumatic stress due to her experiences, but she continues to move people to action through her lectures.
In 1994, General Dallaire commanded the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR)—he explains that states are reluctant to risk casualties if there is no self-interest. Samantha Power, author of “A Problem from Hell: American and the Age of Genocide” adds that there are few repercussions if states don’t get involved, but many if there are casualties and that is why all US administrations throughout the century have shied away from action. Alex de Waal, puts Sudanese history in context. He is the author of Darfur: A Short History of a Long War with co-author Julie Flint. Sudan’s U.N. Ambassador Abdalmahmood Abdalhaleem presents the government of Sudan’s perspective on Darfur.
The children in Chad can only hope for a better future.
Photo Credit: Joe Passaretti
But there is hope. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, says the Security Council referral of the situation in Darfur to the International Criminal Court, was a result of public pressure. And he argues that the worst perpetrators of the violence in Darfur will eventually be brought to justice, it is just a matter of time. And on July 31 2007 there is unanimous agreement to send 26,000 troops to Darfur by the end of the year with a mandate to protect civilians. Peacekeeping troops for Chad have also been agreed upon. Whether troops will arrive fast enough only time will only tell, but Mukesh Kapila, Samantha Power, Eric Reeves, Roméo Dallaire, Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Mia Farrow all agree that without the strong activist voice applying pressure on the governments of the world, Darfur would be in a much worse situation today.
This riveting one-hour documentary was filmed in high-definition and is a co-production with CBC TV and PBS Frontline. It is written, produced and directed by Neil Docherty, one of Canada’s foremost documentary filmmakers, narrated by writer and actor Ann-Marie Macdonald, with an original musical score by Andy McNeill.
A Holocaust mystery finds some answers
By ARTHUR MAX and MONIKA SCISLOWSKA, Associated Press Writers
BAD AROLSEN, Germany – Deep in Shari Klages’ memory is an image of herself as a girl in New Jersey, going into her parents’ bedroom, pulling a thick leather-bound album from the top shelf of a closet and sitting down on the bed to leaf through it.
What she saw was page after page of ink-and-watercolor drawings that convey, with simple lines yet telling detail, the brutality of Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp where her father spent the last weeks of World War II.
Arrival, enslavement, torture, death — the 30 pictures expose the worsening nightmare through the artist’s eye for the essential, and add graphic texture to the body of testimony by Holocaust survivors.
“I have a sense of being quite horrified, of feeling my stomach in my throat,” Klages says. Just by looking at the book, she felt she was doing something wrong and was afraid of being caught.
Now, she finally wants to make the album public. Scholars who have seen it call it historically unique and an artistic treasure.
But who drew the pictures? Only Klages’ father could know. It was he who brought the album back from Dachau when he immigrated to America on a ship with more than 60 Holocaust orphans — and he had committed suicide in 1972 in his garage in Parsippany, N.J.
The sole clue was a signature at the bottom of several drawings: Porulski.
Klages, 47, has begun a quest to discover who Porulski was, and how her family came to be the custodian of his remarkable artistic legacy. The Associated Press has helped to fill in some of the blanks.
What unfolds is a story of Holocaust survival compressed into two tragic lives, a tale with threads stretching from Warsaw to Auschwitz and Dachau, from Australia to suburban England, and finally to a bedroom in New Jersey where a fatherless girl makes a traumatic discovery.
It shows how today, as the survivors dwindle in number, their children and grandchildren struggle to comprehend the Nazi genocide that indelibly scarred their families, and in the process run into mysteries that may never be solved.
This is Shari Klages’ mystery: How did Arnold Unger, her Polish Jewish father, a 15-year-old newcomer to Dachau, end up in possession of the artwork of a Polish Catholic more than twice his age, who had been in the concentration camps through most of World War II?
None of the records Klages found confirm that the two men knew each other, though they lived in adjacent blocks in Dachau. All that is certain is that Unger overlapped with Porulski during the three weeks the boy spent among nearly 30,000 inmates of Dachau’s main camp.
“He never talked about his experiences in the war,” said Klages. “I don’t recall specifically ever being told about the album, or actually learning that I was the child of a Holocaust survivor. It was just something I always knew.”
As adults, she and her three siblings took turns keeping the album and Unger’s other wartime memorabilia.
The album begins with an image of four prisoners in winter coats carrying suitcases and marching toward Dachau’s watchtower under the rifles of SS guards. It is followed by a scene of two inmates being stripped for a humiliating examination by a kapo, a prisoner working for the Nazis.
One image portrays two prisoners pausing in their work to doff their caps to a soldier escorting a prostitute — intimated by the seam on her stocking. Another shows a leashed dog lunging at a terrified inmate.
The drawings grow more and more debasing. Three prisoners hang by their arms tied behind their backs; a captured escapee is paraded wearing a sign, “Hurray, I am back again”; an inmate is hanged from a scaffold; and, in the final image, a man lies on the ground, shot dead next to the barbed-wire fence under the looming watchtower.
The album also has 258 photographs. Some are copies of well-known, haunting images of piles of victims’ bodies taken by the U.S. army that liberated the camp. Others are photographs, apparently taken for Nazi propaganda, portraying Dachau as an idyllic summer camp. Still others are personal snapshots of Unger with Polish refugees or with American soldiers who befriended him.
Barbara Distel, the director of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, said Porulski probably drew the pictures shortly after the camp’s liberation in April 1945. He used identical sheets of paper, ink and watercolors for all 30 pictures, she said, and he “would never have dared” to draw such horrors while he was still under Nazi gaze.
“It’s amazing after so many years that these kinds of documents still turn up,” Distel told the AP. “It’s a unique artifact,” and clearly drawn by someone with an intimate knowledge of the camp’s reality, she said.
Holocaust artwork has turned up before, but Distel and Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum, who is with the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, say they are unaware of any sequential narrative of camp life comparable to Porulski’s.
“I’ve seen two or three or four, but never 30,” said Berenbaum.
In Coral Springs, Fla., where she now lives, Klages showed the book in 2005 to a neighbor, Avi Hoffman, executive director of the National Center for Jewish Cultural Arts. Hoffman immediately saw its quality and significance. The two became determined to uncover its background and find out if the artist had created an undiscovered body of work.
In August, Klages, Hoffman and Berenbaum went to Germany to begin their hunt. They hired a crew to document it, hoping a film would help finance a foundation to exhibit the book.
They began chipping away at the album’s secrets at the Dachau memorial, outside Munich, where they found an arrival record for Michal Porulski, which listed his profession as artist, in 1941.
They learned that Unger hid the fact that he was Jewish when he reached Dachau three weeks before the war ended. “That probably saved his life,” Hoffman said. They also discovered a strong likelihood that the album’s binding was fashioned from the recycled leather of an SS officer’s uniform.
Unger, an engaging youngster, became an office boy and translator for U.S. occupation authorities at Dachau, which was turned into a displaced persons camp, and obtained a U.S. visa in 1947.
Research by Klages’ group and the AP has begun to pull together the scattered threads of Porulski’s life from long forgotten records at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, a tiny museum in Warsaw, Auschwitz and Dachau, the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial archives in Jerusalem, Australian immigration records and data from England.
Porulski enrolled in the Warsaw arts academy in 1934 after completing two years of army service. Attached to his neatly written application is a photograph of a good looking young man with light hair and dreamy eyes.
It says he was a farmer’s son, born June 20, 1910, in the central town of Rychwal, although in later records Porulski said he was born five years later.
Chronically poor, he left the academy after failing to secure a loan for his tuition but was later reinstated. After Germany invaded in 1939, he made some money painting watercolor postcards of Nazi-occupied Poland, two of which have survived and are now in the Warsaw Museum of Caricature.
In June 1940, he was arrested in a Nazi roundup “without any reason,” he wrote many years later in an appeal for help from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
Two months later, he and 1,500 others were the first Poles to be shipped from Warsaw to Auschwitz. He spent eight months there, then was sent to the Neuengamme camp and finally to Dachau, near Munich, in May 1941.
In Dachau, according to a brief reference in a Polish book on wartime art, he painted portraits, flowers, folk dance scenes and decoration for a clandestine theater.
In 1949 he sailed to Australia and tried to work as a painter and decorator but mostly lived off friends. He returned to Europe in 1963 and lived in England and France. He visited Poland in the early 1970s for several months, and stayed with his sister, Janina Krol, in Gdynia on the Baltic coast, and another relative outside Warsaw, Wanda Wojcikowska.
He brought his sister paintings of Dachau, his niece, Danuta Ostrowska, now 75, recalls. But her mother threw them away, saying “I can’t look at them.” The family still owns 10 of his mostly prewar paintings.
He was robbed of his money and passport, and Poland‘s communist authorities wanted Porulski out of the country, Wojcikowska’s daughter, Malgorzata Stozek, recalls. “My mother even found a woman willing to marry him, to help him stay in Poland,” she said. But he already had borrowed money from his sister and left.
His letters from England said he found work maintaining bridges, Stozek said. “He wrote that the moment he finished painting a bridge over some river, he had to start again.” It could have been a metaphor for a life going nowhere.
“One day I came to see my mother and she was crying because he wrote to her that he had no money, he was hungry and was sleeping on park benches. He lived in terrible poverty,” Stozek told the AP.
He was so lonely, she said, he had considered suicide.
In 1978 he sent a request for war compensation to the International Tracing Service in the central German town of Bad Arolsen, which houses the world’s largest archive of concentration camp records and lists of Holocaust victims.
“I have no occupation of any sort. I was unable to resume my studies after all those years in the camps,” he wrote. “I am just by myself, and I live from day to day.”
The ITS replied that it had no authority to give grants, but was sending confirmation of his incarceration to the U.N. refugee agency to support his earlier reparations claim.
Unger also shows up in the Tracing Service, in a 1955 two-page letter he wrote recounting his ordeal that began when he was 9.
Unger’s father had a prosperous furniture business near Krakow. “Then the infamous horde of Nazis overran our town, disrupted our life, murdered my parents and little sister, and robbed us of all we had.” He was the only survivor of 50 members of the Unger family.
Christian friends hid him for a while, but he ended up imprisoned inside the Krakow ghetto, then was moved to a series of concentration camps.
His daughter says that after he immigrated to America, he told a cousin with whom he lived in New Jersey that his job at Dachau had been to tend the ovens. The Nazis commonly used inmates for such purposes — it was one of the few ways of surviving.
Newly arrived in America, Unger spoke to Newark newspapers of his years of torment, saying he escaped three times during marches between camps but was always recaptured.
At one point, he told the Newark Evening News, he was herded into a gas chamber at Natzweiler camp with 50 other prisoners, but they were spared at the last minute because some of them were electricians whom the Nazis needed for their war effort.
The two lives, briefly intertwined by the Holocaust and an album of photos and paintings, ended 17 years apart — Unger by hanging himself in 1972, Porulski in 1989 in St. Mary’s Hospital near Hereford, England, of pneumonia and tuberculosis.
The death certificate gives his age as 74 and his profession as “painter (retired).”
Shari Klages was 12 when her father died.
He had just been laid off from his 18-year job in the aeronautics industry, and his wife had been diagnosed with brain cancer. His suicide is given added poignancy by the image of the hanged inmate in the album, and Klages believes it was his Holocaust experience that weighed most heavily on him.
“I have no doubt it was the most significant contributor to his death,” she said.
___
Associated Press investigative researcher Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report. Arthur Max reported from Bad Arolsen, Germany, and Monika Scislowska from Warsaw.
On the Net:
Pope speaks of Europe's tragic past
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria – Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged Europe‘s tragic past and warned of its uncertain future Friday as he honored Jews killed in the Holocaust and urged the continent to accept its Christian heritage.
Abortion must never be considered a human right, Benedict said, and urged European political leaders to encourage young married couples to have children and the continent’s graying population “not to become old in spirit.”
“Europe cannot and must not deny her Christian roots,” the pope declared, saying that Christianity has “profoundly shaped this continent.”
Benedict opened a three-day pilgrimage to Austria, once the center of a Roman Catholic-influenced empire and now a wealthy but small nation that has seen considerable dissent against the church, as in much of Europe.
In an evening address to Austrian officials and diplomats in the former imperial Hofburg Palace, Benedict spoke of the “horrors of war” and the “traumatic experiences of totalitarianism and dictatorship” that Europe has undergone.
The pope, born in neighboring Bavaria, Germany, began his visit by paying tribute to Holocaust victims.
He stepped out of his popemobile in a driving rain and joined Vienna‘s chief rabbi, Paul Chaim Eisenberg, in prayer before an austere stone memorial honoring the 65,000 Viennese Jews who perished in Nazi death camps and others burned at the stake in the 1400s after refusing to convert.
He made no public remarks during the seven-minute stop but told reporters aboard his plane from Rome that he wanted to extend his sense of “sadness, repentance and friendship to the Jewish people.”
In 1938, the city’s vibrant Jewish community numbered 185,000 members. Today, there are fewer than 7,000.
Alluding to the nation’s past complicity with the Nazis, President Heinz Fischer conceded in a greeting to the pope that Austria had “dark hours in its history.”
Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, Austria’s top churchman, noted Christianity’s roots in Judaism and urged his countrymen never to forget the atrocities committed against the capital’s Jews.
“It is part of the tragedy of the city that here, of all places, this root was forgotten — even denied — to the point where godless will destroyed the people to whom God gives his first love,” he said.
Benedict, who visited and vacationed here often as a cardinal, faced a challenge: Many Austrian believers, disgusted by clergy sex scandals and deeply resentful of a government-imposed church tax, have grown cold — and tens of thousands have left the church altogether.
Benedict’s trip underscored the difficulties the Vatican confronts across Europe, where cathedrals are empty as disillusioned believers question the relevance of faith in the postmodern era.
The pope defended the vitality of Christianity today, saying Christians throughout history have been examples of “hope, love and mercy.”
In his condemnation of abortion, Benedict said he was speaking out “for those unborn children who have no voice.”
He also urged Europeans to ensure humane care of the elderly, assailing “actively assisted death,” a reference to euthanasia and assisted suicide.
In a reflection of anti-pope sentiment held by some Austrians, about 300 young demonstrators marched through central Vienna on Friday to protest the pontiff’s conservative stance on homosexuality, gay marriage and other issues.
“I think the pope represents a system that has repressed people and other religions for hundreds of years. It’s simply antiquated,” said Ludwig List, 19, holding a banner that read: “Papa Don’t Preach.”
Security was heavy for Benedict’s visit, with more than 3,500 police officers and soldiers and 50 aircraft deployed to protect him. The Interior Ministry said the measures were taken even before this week’s thwarted terrorist plot in Germany.
On Saturday, the pope holds an open-air Mass to commemorate the 850th anniversary of the founding of Mariazell, a famous shrine to the Virgin Mary about 60 miles southwest of Vienna.
The Vienna Archdiocese said 33,000 pilgrims had received tickets for the event and that 70 bishops, mostly from Eastern Europe, would join in. Benedict called the anniversary “the reason for my coming” and said he would go as a simple pilgrim.
Benedict’s visit concludes Sunday with a Mass at Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral and a visit to the Heiligenkreuz abbey outside the capital.
___
Associated Press Writers William J. Kole and Veronika Oleksyn contributed to this report.
Religions of Tibet
More on this topic later this evening.
The Class is amazing. Many of my friends from last term are in the class as well. I really like my professor, because he brings real life stories from his visits to Tibet and surrounding areas of that far land to the classroom, so this isn’t just class, but it is a real life educational trip to a real place not only read about in a text book.
I’m tired so I shall write some more later. I don’t have class on Friday’s so we are back to regular schedule now. I get my 3 day weekend now, with Friday being cleaning day at home.
Talk to you soon…
Labels … Let us Reflect on them …
Krystalnacht – The Night of the Broken Glass…
The Beginning of The Holocaust
Work Makes You Free …
A Survivor from Buchenwald
Yad Vashem – Jerusalem Holocaust Memorial
Auschwitz – Concentration Camp
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The Red Ribbon – Synonymous for AIDS
The Pride Flag – Proud Symbol for all things Gay
The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt – For all those who died from AIDS
My friends,My family, My brothers and sisters…
The JEW – The Star of David used during the Holocaust …
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You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes and a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At Home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.
Primo Levi
Survival in Auschwitz
The Homosexual – Also Used during the Holocaust …
A Young Man – Hungarian Jewish Boy -
From Fateless, the Motion Picture
The Label Chart Used By the Nazi Party within
the Death Camps and Concentration Camps to
Identify people…
Location, Ethnicity, Area, Orientation, Religious Affiliation
There weren’t only Jews in the Camps…
The ACT UP slogan for Gay and AIDS circa 1980
What Would Jesus Do???
This is my Label – I earned every hour of it, with Pride…
We Should Be Proud, but we should remember what labels have done to millions world wide over the Decades. I think it is time to move past them, to stop labeling and Outing people. I think we need to learn to live together PEACEFULLY in order to stop the killing of ALL people around the world…
THAT WE SHOULD REMEMBER – SO THAT WE NEVER FORGET!!
Should Suicide be a Sin??? Discuss…
Originally read on: Neil McKenty Blog.
“Today a 26-year old Vatican police officer named Alessandro Benedetti commited suicide in the bathroom of his barracks near the Pope’s private quarters. He left a suicide note which referred to the fact his girl friend recently left him.
A papal spokesperson said the Holy Father was grieving and he “trusts the young man’s soul to the compassion of God.”
The 1997 Cathechism of the Catholic Church says suicide is one of the gravest sins and results in damnation. When I was growing up a Catholic suicide could not be buried in consecrated ground.
However, the Catechism also says a person who suicides “may not be fully culpable if suffering grave psychological disturbance, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering or torture.”
Wouldn’t it be better to drop all this mumbo jumbo and simply admit that suicide is not a sin?”
This question is asked within the context of Catholicism, not Evangelical Christianity.
China frees 3 Canadian activists after Tibet protest
Canadians, all from British Columbia, were demanding China pull out of Tibet
Three Canadians arrested by Chinese police following a protest at the Great Wall against China’s presence in Tibet have been released.
Melanie Raoul of Vancouver was arrested Tuesday in China.
(Courtesy of Freya Putt)
The British Columbian activists — Lhadon Tethong, Sam Price and Melanie Raoul — left China after their release on Wednesday and flew into Hong Kong.
“It was draining, exhausting, psychologically traumatizing, although we weren’t physically hurt,” Raoul, 25, told CBC News from Hong Kong.
Raoul and Price, both of Vancouver, were arrested Tuesday after they unfurled a 42-square-metre banner reading “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008″ in English and Chinese from the Great Wall.
The banner adds three words — “Free Tibet 2008″ — to the official slogan of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which began their one-year countdown on Tuesday.
Tethong, 31, was arrested Wednesday. She was not involved in the Great Wall protest, but she spent her time in China writing a blog and posting videos and photos online about what the group calls China’s “propaganda campaign” leading up to next year’s Olympic Games.
Five other activists — two from the U.K and three from the United States — were also arrested and released.
All the activists are part of Students for a Free Tibet, a New York-based group for which Tethong serves as executive director.
Tethong said the group knew their actions on the Great Wall weren’t legal and that arrests were a possibility.
Lhadon Tethong, one of three Canadian protesters released by Chinese authorities, is seen at a Buddhist temple in Beijing in this undated photo.
(Beijing Wide Open/Canadian Press)
“We knew that was the most likely scenario, but it’s not like it was the goal of what we were doing,” said Tethong, a Tibetan-Canadian who was born and raised in Victoria, but now lives in New York.
“The goal was to raise the issue.”
“Some people might think that’s sort of extreme, but we would say China violating the fundamental human rights of Tibetans and their own people and the cultural genocide of Tibet is extreme.”
Police surrounded Tethong in front of an Olympic merchandise store in Beijing and demanded to see her passport. They brought her into a police station, where they showed her printouts of her blog.
“They definitely took jabs at me for being Tibetan,” Tethong said. “They were saying I have an an accent like a Chinese and I have blood from China.”
We were scared for her
Tethong’s sister, Deyden Tethong, told CBC News that she and her family were scared while Tethong was in custody.
“It was nerve-racking for us,” Deyden said at 12:15 ET, about 15 minutes after learning that her sister had boarded a plane out of Beijing.
“We were very scared for her, but at the same time she keeps saying, ‘I have a Canadian passport, so I know people are looking out for me.’”
Sam Price, 32, was one of six activists arrested Tuesday in China.
(Courtesy of Freya Putt)
Deyden said she was surprised her sister was detained, since she was not part of the group of activists on the Great Wall.
“The activists that were taken off the Great Wall, that made sense,” Deyden said. “It was pushing the boundaries and it was illegal, but my sister, all she was doing was blogging about her feelings … and talking about what she saw and what she felt.”
Raoul’s mother, Valerie, said she is excited to see her daughter again.
“We don’t know when they’ll be coming back to Vancouver, but they know they’ll get a really big welcome,” she said.
Harper Promised to Help
The incident drew international attention, with videos of the Great Wall protest posted on YouTube. Prior to news of the activists release, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday that his government was working to gather information.
“We’ll be doing everything we can do to help and of course pointing out to the Chinese government — as we’re entitled to do — that such expressions of opinion are a natural part of the human rights that Canadians do expect in this country,” Harper said.
The Students for a Free Tibet group wants Tibet freed from China and say the Chinese government is using the Games to gain international acceptance.
The group also wants the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to push the case for Tibetan freedom.
China invaded Tibet in 1950, and in 1999 declared it to be an “inseparable part of China.” In 2004, a government policy paper said Tibet had always been part of China, and before the Chinese imposed direct rule, Tibet was “even darker and more backward than medieval Europe.”
With files from the Canadian Press
To Boycott or Not ???
Tonight CBC News started a series of reports on the 1 year celebration in Beijing beginning today – the 8th of August. What will the world say to Beijing over the next year? We know that China’s record on Human Rights violations is something that can not be ignored.
Secondly, China’s support of the Sudanese government and the fact that China could make serious progress in helping the Darfur region conflicts. That China could save lives and chooses not to, just speaks volumes of how it sees the world not only in Darfur, but in their own back yards, and in Tibet. I think a release of Tibet and the acknowledgment of this sacred land would be monumental on China’s attitude towards the world. The widget will remain on my blog for the next year as we discuss this question in greater depth.
Our question today
and for the next year will be simple
Should we go to Beijing
Or should we Boycott
The Summer Olympic Games in Beijing China???
08-08-08
One World One Dream
From the Beijing Olympic site
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The Official Beijing Olympic Website
“One World One Dream” fully reflects the essence and the universal values of the Olympic spirit — Unity, Friendship, Progress, Harmony, Participation and Dream. It expresses the common wishes of people all over the world, inspired by the Olympic ideals, to strive for a bright future of Mankind. In spite of the differences in colors, languages and races, we share the charm and joy of the Olympic Games, and together we seek for the ideal of Mankind for peace. We belong to the same world and we share the same aspirations and dreams.
“One World One Dream” is a profound manifestation of the core concepts of the Beijing Olympic Games. It reflects the values of harmony connoted in the concept of “People’s Olympics”, the core and soul of the three concepts — “Green Olympics, High-tech Olympics and People’s Olympics”. While “Harmony of Man with Nature” and “Peace Enjoys Priority” are the philosophies and ideals of the Chinese people since ancient times in their pursuit of the harmony between Man and Nature and the harmony among people, building up a harmonious society and achieving harmonious development are the dream and aspirations of ours. It is our belief that peace and progress, harmonious development, living in amity, cooperation and mutual benefit, and enjoying a happy life are the common ideals of the people throughout the world.
“One World, One Dream” is simple in expressions, but profound in meaning. It is of China, and also of the world. It conveys the lofty ideal of the people in Beijing as well as in China to share the global community and civilization and to create a bright future hand in hand with the people from the rest of the world. It expresses the firm belief of a great nation, with a long history of 5,000 years and on its way towards modernization, that is committed to peaceful development, harmonious society and people’s happiness. It voices the aspirations of 1.3 billion Chinese people to contribute to the establishment of a peaceful and bright world.
The English translation of the slogan is distinctive in sentence structure. The two “One”s are perfectly used in parallel, and the words “World” and “Dream” form a good match. The slogan is simple, meaningful, inspiring, and easy to remember, read and spread.
In Chinese, the word “tongyi”, which means “the same”, is used for the English word “One”. It highlights the theme of “the whole Mankind lives in the same world and seeks for the same dream and ideal”.
What's on my Bedside Table
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The Power and the Glory,
Inside the Dark Heart of John Paul II’s Vatican by David Yallop.
This Huge Text is what I am reading. John Paul II ranks a lot higher on my read list than a Monk who sold his Ferrari. I wanted to get this read done before classes commence. So we shall break with Discovering your Destiny for now…
Prayers for John Paul II –
“You brought to many comfort
True shepherd of your flock.
Hallmarks of your wisdom shone
With kindness entwined -
A loving knot.So many on our planet loved
Your charity of ways.
Your path through life
Showed us well -
How not to fall astray.Let’s take the teachings from your reign
Let’s not forget the lessons.
Let’s ever remember your inspirations
Came directly from -
Our Father in Heaven.”Prayer by Susan Kramer
We Have Failed to Remember …
Writing along the lines starting at my last post, “Custodians of a Living Earth,” we take a more serious look at the past for guidance for the future. With all the wars in the world and all the conflict in many areas of the world like the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Iraq and Afghanistan:
“We have Failed to Remember and We have Failed in Never letting this Happen Again.”
I have updated my header with images from that period of time. I happen to have spent an entire semester last Fall 2006 studying the Holocaust. We watched film after film, looking at raw data and Nazi history. I read “Night” by Elie Wiesel and “Survival in Auschwitz” by Primo Levi and I visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum here in Montreal and these numbers come from research notes from our class. My goal here is to remind you that we may not call it Holocaust today, Some use the term “Genocide” and millions of people are dying all over the world by war, conflict, division, famine, disasters and so forth and so on…
It Falls to Us to make a Difference, I Wonder if We are Able???
And do We care to even Try? We Must DO there is no Try !!!
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The largest Nazi extermination camp.
- Location: Oswiecim, Poland
- Established: May 26th1940
- Liberation: January 27th, 1945, by the Soviet Army.
- Estimated number of victims: 2,1 to 2,5 million (This estimated number of death is considered by historians as a strict minimum. The real number of death is unknown but probably much higher, maybe 4 millions)
Belzec
From march 1942 until early 1943, it is estimated that about 600,000 Jews were murdered in Belzec extermination camp.
Chelmno:
Chelmno, also known as Kulmhof, was a small town roughly 50 miles from the city of Lodz, Poland. It was here that the first mass killings of Jews by gas took place as part of the ‘Final Solution’.
Majdanek
The killing operations began in Majdanek in April 1942 and ended in July 1944. Majdanek also provided slave labor for munitions works and Steyr-Daimler- Puch weapons factory. The estimated number of deaths is 360,000, including Jews, Soviet POWs and Poles.
Sobibor
Sobibor was the second extermination camp to come into operation in the Aktion Reinhard program. Estimated number of deaths: 250,000, the majority being Jews.
Treblinka
Opening for “business” on July 23, 1942, with the beginning of the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto, some 245,000 Warsaw Jews and 112,000 Jews from other places in the Warsaw district were murdered in Treblinka by September 21. 337,000 Jews from the Radom district, 35,000 from the Lublin district and 107,000 from the Bialystok district also met their death in Treblinka with 738,000 Jews who had been residents of the General Gouvernement. From outside Poland many thousands of Jews were transported to and killed in Treblinka: 7.000 from Slovakia, 8,000 from Theresienstadt concentration camp, 4,000 Jews from Greece, and 7,000 Jews from the Macedonia portion of Bulgaria. In addition to the Jews, some 2,000 gypsies were killed in Treblinka.
Custodians of a Living Earth …
I’m reading again, “I Heard the Owl Call My Name” and I am in the mindset to write about the custodianship of the living earth. The earth is in a shift, I think we can all agree on that – and attention is now on prevention and maintenance of the earth as it exists today. I have written recently about the fact that many people in my own community are not “Being Maintained” by anyone, they are lost among the crowd, banished to sidewalks, doorways and shelters. What can I do to change that? Write…
What if the governments of the world decided to stop warring and fighting amongst themselves? How much money would we have to spend on other things like food, shelter and water? I heard a comment on late night radio last night that
“There will be wars fought over drinking water!”
I am sure that there are some who think about the Order who seek to bring down the number of earths inhabitants by the millions. There is a surplus in population in certain areas of the world, and for some that is too much, and they would rather see them eradicated than to house and feed them.
The earth is sputtering on its axis. Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Hurricane, Oceanic changes to salinity and food source and the cooling of warm water fisheries all over the globe are causing catastrophic changes to major areas of the worlds oceans. How many more signs do we need from Mother Earth to tell us that something is wrong? And if we don’t stop with our preoccupation with war, division, killing and ignorance, that when “IT” happens we will not survive whatever IT will unleash.
I know better than to sit in my what if’s and coulda, woulda, shoulda! I can look out my windows from here and see trees and grass and the mountain off to the North. We can look out at our world and know that there are forests and people and animals who live amongst that forest. Forests are burning – trees are dying – infestations of beetles are killing swaths of forest across Canada, borne on the winds moving West to East. But I wonder what haven’t we done as custodians of the earth to try and mitigate these things from happening.
What if, The Almighty came down from heaven and told warring factions to lay down their arms, and those in power were removed and power was granted to the masses to govern themselves and the wars stopped all over the earth, not just in certain areas. All the warring areas on the globe. What if we heard from on high that “they” believe that wars fought over ideologies and factions needed to end today, right now, for us to stop killing each other and become custodians to one another. How would that change the face of the earth?
Is there a way for the world to get up and state unanimously that the wars should end? Can we impeach presidents around the world, in countries that are sponsoring, funding and are waging wars on other peoples? Do you see what I am asking here?
We truly need to depose several key world leaders, and the American President AND his entire cabinet need to be removed from office, sooner than later. Because America has been hijacked and “Nazi Control” is becoming an adjective to explain George W. Bush.
Mr. Bush, we are not With you -
And We Stand Against You!! It is time to leave Office…
DO WE want to maintain another Hitler in office? Do we want this man making law and imposing unconstitutional amendments upon his people and the world? Because if he does it – the world is watching and you know, the only reason Hitler was so successful at what he did in the Holocaust, was because the people listened to him, and if the American President can do what he is doing, that gives free reign to other leaders to do the same!!! Bush still has the ears of many world leaders, who are not MAN or WOMAN enough to say NO! We will not follow you. So what do we do?
There are some in power who would see people determined to be locked down and subjugated. That is already happening all over the globe, in many countries. Darfur, Sudan and in other areas of Africa, people are corralled into camps, with no water, electricity or better yet SHELTER. People are being slaughtered by militia men. We need to stop them and the killing needs to end. Genocide is happening in OUR time once again, and on many fronts, we must stop the genocide because:
“We Have Failed to Remember
and We Have Failed to Never
Let It Happen Again”
In the Middle East, the most contentious area of the globe, not to mention Iraq and the Fertile Crescent area of the world including Afghanistan, the militias and the Taliban are trying to eradicate (on a mass scale) entire peoples akin to the likes of Adolf Hitler. If we prayed for the savior to come again and save us, this would be the time and the place.
We must now act, decisively and verbally. We need to lobby those who are in power to do the right thing. We need to Impeach the President. We need to stop the killing in Darfur, we need to stop the wars in the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan. We need people on the ground who can be trusted to help reconcile the factions that are fighting with each other and those factions who have fighting going on within themselves. We need ambassadors to get in the game and negotiations must be made to end the worlds strife and wars. If we don’t start this now, WHO is going to take our place later to hold those in office accountable for
“Crimes Against Humanity”
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It’s not about who – but What is in this photo, read on…
There are too many people around the globe, being ignored. There are entire continents and nations of people that need to be cared for, not to forget those people in warring countries who need to be fed, re-housed and repatriated back to where they came from, those who had to flee to save their own lives. Rich countries sit back and say “we are doing all we can for those inside our borders.”
Yet on the European continent we know for a fact that there are disenfranchised peoples, in the millions, who are not being cared for properly because of the arrogance of status, ethnic superiority and ignorance to accept everyone for who they are not what form of dress or religious affiliation they identify with.
It comes down to the people to start the tide of Anarchy and Dissension. It is time to take back our land and our government from those who have taken it from us. They have been poor stewards of the land, the environment and of peoples. We must stop this – there is too much conflict in the world, so much that any “other” needs are being ignored at the expense of the whole, for a chosen few.
It Is Time to:
Bring the Soldiers Home – Stop the Wars. You either follow certain prescriptions here: (1) You bring ALL warring leaders to Justice, (2) Let them kill each other and save us the headache, or (3) You bring ‘Just’ Diplomatic Solutions to Warring Factions and Areas – and Sit Down and HAMMER out Peace Agreements and Co-Existence Clauses.
Isn’t it time to sit down and think and come to the realization that what war has done for the last 4 years has NOT worked, so let’s allow the Diplomats to work on Peace.
The Mission is NOT Accomplished.
Peace and Democracy has not been attained and WON’T be attained with the present course of action. WAR does not create Democracy – it Breeds Contempt, Rancor, Hatred and brings Division instead of creating Unity.
In Stopping Wars, Governments Agree to Equal care to all Soldiers repatriated home and for their families. And Agree to Rebuild war torn areas with the funds used to carry out war, and Care for those most affected by the war in their Respective regions.
This applies to Canada and the United States and All Countries involved in wars worldwide. It is NOT Unpatriotic to stand against WAR!! It is NOT Unpatriotic to stand against a President or a sitting Prime Minister.
Democracy is built on the premise of government for the people by the people !! Well People need to start speaking out for Change…
The ‘People’ are being AND have been hugely ignored, save those who support the puppet in office and his cronies he protects. The Ship is Sinking – and is Going down. Who is going to save us? It comes down to us, those of us who are writing around the world, to speak up and ask each and every one of our readers to join this movement. To call your leaders and rulers to task, to make them accountable not only to you the citizens of the country that you reside in, but also to the immigrants who have resettled there as well. Leaders need to be accountable to the earth as well.
Or We Shall Pay when Catastrophe Occurs
We cannot remain self absorbed and self centered. We must step beyond the borders of nationalism and ethnic superiority. We all must be made equal, in that we must begin to love and take care of each other and to become custodians of the world at large, and it begins with me. It begins with you. It continues with US. We must, with a resounding voice say “we have had enough of this…” It is time to end this.
Before We Kill Each Other Trying to create Peace !!!
We must become better custodians to the earth. If we stop the raping and pillaging of the land, we must stop the wars, we must stop the killing of innocents. We must stop the tide of suicide bombers. West and East must come together. The West and The East must agree NEVER to wage war again, however possible that is… We must find peaceful and RIGHT means to the future sustaining of the worlds populations. We MUST find an earthly solution, if we must, a heavenly solution.
“We Have Failed to Remember
and We Have Failed to Never
Let It Happen Again”
You who live safe
In your warm houses,
You who find, returning in the evening,
Hot food and friendly faces:
Consider if this is a man
Who works in the mud
Who does not know peace
Who fights for a scrap of bread
Who dies because of a yes and a no.
Consider if this is a woman,
Without hair and without name
With no more strength to remember,
Her eyes empty and her womb cold
Like a frog in winter
Meditate that this came about:
I commend these words to you.
Carve them in your hearts
At Home, in the street,
Going to bed, rising;
Repeat them to your children,
Or may your house fall apart,
May illness impede you,
May your children turn their faces from you.
Primo Levi
Survival in Auschwitz
Pope renews call to end all wars
By TRISHA THOMAS, Associated Press Writer
LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy – Pope Benedict XVI called Sunday for an end to all wars, describing them as “useless slaughters” that bring hell to Earth.
Benedict, speaking from this small mountain town where he has been vacationing, recalled that 90 years ago his predecessor Pope Benedict XV urged a similar end to the first World War, then ravaging this part of northern Italy.
“While this inhuman conflict raged, the pope had the courage to affirm that it was a ‘useless slaughter,’” Benedict said. “These words — ‘useless slaughter’ — contained a fuller prophetic value that can be applied to so many other conflicts that have cut off countless human lives.”
Benedict did not cite any particular conflicts in his comments to several hundred faithful who gathered in Lorenzago di Cadore’s main piazza for his traditional Sunday blessing.
“From this place of peace, where one still senses how unacceptable the horrors of ‘useless slaughters’ are, I renew the appeal to pursue the path of rights, to strongly refuse the recourse to weapons and refuse to confront new situations with old systems,” he said.
He reminded the faithful that God put man on Earth to take care of his “paradise,” but that man sinned and began making war.
Benedict has been stepping up his peace appeals, issuing a major call June 17 in the hillside town of Assisi, known for St. Francis’ message of peace. A week earlier, Benedict told President Bush he was greatly concerned about the fate of Christians in Iraq — a concern he repeated in subsequent audiences and speeches.
Benedict’s blessing Sunday was attended by several top prelates as well as Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen, an outspoken critic of China’s treatment of Catholics in the underground church. Last month Benedict issued a letter to China’s 12 million Catholics, urging them to unite under his authority.
Enter the Inquisitor to Baltimore …
Cleric Who Led Witch Hunt for Gays Named Baltimore Archbishop
by The Associated Press
(Baltimore, Maryland) The pope accepted the resignation of Cardinal William Keeler as archbishop of Baltimore on Thursday and named Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, who leads the U.S. military archdiocese, as his successor.
Keeler turned 76 in March, a year past the normal retirement age for bishops.
O’Brien, 68, served as an auxiliary bishop in New York before taking over the Archdiocese for the Military Services in Washington in 1997. He coordinated a major evaluation of U.S. seminaries in 2005-2006, ordered by the Vatican in response to the clergy sex abuse scandal.
The seminary review, completed last year, gave special attention to what seminarians are taught about chastity and celibacy. It also looked for evidence of homosexuality in the schools.
In a 2005 Associated Press interview, O’Brien said that most gay candidates for the priesthood struggle to remain celibate and the church must “stay on the safe side” by restricting their enrollment. The Vatican reaffirmed that year a longstanding church policy of keeping men with “deep-seated” homosexual tendencies from becoming priests.
O’Brien, a New York native, said he would be leaving his Washington post with mixed emotions.
“I just loved the military,” he said. “The service has taught me so much.”
Keeler, a native of San Antonio, was appointed archbishop in Baltimore in 1989 and marked his 50th anniversary in the priesthood in 2005. He submitted his resignation last year to the Vatican when he turned 75, as required by the church.
In May, Keeler said he planned to remain in Baltimore as head of the Basilica Historic Trust after his successor was named. He oversaw the restoration of the historic church.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore serves 510,000 Catholics in Baltimore and nine counties in central and western Maryland, according to the archdiocese Web site.
The Archdiocese for the Military Services serves about 1.5 million Catholics, including all in the military and their families.
©365Gay.com 2007
Pardon me Doctor, but "Are you a terrorist???"
Prior to 9-11, terrorists embedded into Western society. They got piloting lessons and then with a group of men, flew two airliners into the Twin Towers. One hit the Pentagon and a third plane crashed in Shanksville, P.A. And they got in undetected but the U.S. did nothing to screen them out nor at the airports.
Now, lookout terrorists from the East have come to the West and they are trained in the medical field. Doctors who took the Hippocratic Oath to help the sick and to do no harm. And now we see in the U.K. how many of these suspects worked as doctors and lab technicians in places of healing of the British population. “Pardon me doctor, but before you treat me, I need to know if you are a terrorist?”
Are we going to start religiously profiling our doctors at hospitals around the world? Do we need to fear those who work in the medical profession, because I rely on these medical professionals to help keep me alive. And I fear that in the U.K. people are going to think twice about seeking treatment in hospital because of these developments that are listed below in the BBC News Report.
As a Religion Major, I am told to stay on the middle ground and not pass judgment on those of Muslim faith, that not all Muslims are bad people, that we should not profile religiously nor ethnically. This latest terror plot in the U.K. has forced me to rethink my position on Muslim extremism. When husband and wife teams are plotting to wreak havoc on the general public, we are forced to look at them more fiercely. To regard them more closely. To scrutinize them even closer. It seems that Terrorists have found new avenues to infiltrate populations to gather intelligence, to form cells of connected peoples to do horrific things to law abiding citizens.
Now we do not know where the next “cell” of extremists are lying in wait, to start another round of terrorist attacks somewhere in the world. I think we all need to consider how we are going to move forward. There are a lot of factors in reasons that the West is so reviled in the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent.
The Muslim extremists want to wipe out the infidels and kill all those who are not of the Muslim faith. To convert the infidel to the life of a Muslim, but not everybody can walk into a mosque and become a Muslim. It doesn’t work that way. But they are angry at the West, so killing as many as possible on a “single go at it” deprives the just of life, and brings the Muslim extremist closer to his 72 virgins and a free ticket to paradise. Martyrdom is the second option. Because “Martyrdom” is “in” in the Middle East. It is a way of life, a religious act, that brings paradise to those who would die for the extremist cause.
It is a fact that Muslims who emigrate West are not being treated fairly in many European countries because of the ethnic and religious divide and this only furthers the anger and the cause for terrorism and violence as we have seen in Spain, the UK and France. But the more acts of terror these people perpetrate on foreign soil just furthers the divide between them and US. Act responsibly, follow the law of the country you live in and assimilate without forgetting what you are religiously.
I’m just disgusted with terrorism and those who perpetrate such carnage and terror on those who are innocents. May they rot in hell … You don’t like where you live, well we can surely deport you and repatriate you to the country of your origins.
If you are so god damned angry – then get the fuck out !!!
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Terror suspects all linked to NHS
Police made two arrests at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley |
Eight people arrested in connection with failed car bombings in Glasgow and London all have links with the National Health Service, the BBC has learned. Seven are believed to be doctors or medical students, while one formerly worked as a laboratory technician.
A suspect in hospital after the Glasgow attack has been named as Khalid Ahmed, who is believed to be a doctor.
A man arrested in Liverpool on Sunday has been named as Sabeel Ahmed, 26, who trained as a doctor.
Airport chaos
Two men have been arrested in Blackburn under terror laws but police have not confirmed a link with the car bombs.
The pair were detained on an industrial estate and are being held at a police station in Lancashire on suspicion of offences under the Terrorism Act 2000.
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Controlled explosions were carried out on a car in Glasgow
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Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 4 has reopened after a suspect bag sparked a security alert.
BAA said the departure lounge was partially evacuated and departing passengers are being rescreened, leaving thousands of people facing delays.
Tube trains on the Piccadilly Line were not stopping at Heathrow Terminal 4, but the station serving terminals one, two and three remained open.
Seven doctors or medical students have been arrested in England, Scotland and Australia in connection with the attacks. All worked in NHS hospitals.
Australia arrest
Australian media have identified a man arrested at Brisbane Airport as Dr Mohammed Haneef, 27, who has worked at Halton Hospital in Runcorn, Cheshire. He was detained while trying to board a plane to India.
On Wednesday morning, the Metropolitan Police said a counter-terrorism officer was travelling to Australia to liaise with authorities.
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ARRESTS TIMELINE
30 June Two men arrested at Glasgow airport after burning car driven into doors of main terminal 30 June A 26-year-old-man, Dr Mohammed Asha, and a 27-year-old woman arrested on the M6 near Sandbach, Cheshire 30 June/1 July A 26-year-old man arrested near Liverpool’s Lime Street station 1 July A 28-year-old man and a 25-year-old man arrested in Paisley 2 July A 27-year-old male doctor is detained in Australia, and a second doctor is questioned 3 July Second doctor questioned in Australia is released without charge
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Dr Haneef worked at the Gold Coast Hospital in Southport, eastern Queensland, and was previously based in Liverpool.
A second doctor who was being questioned in Australia over the failed attacks has been released without charge.
Marwah Dana Asha, 27, who was arrested on the M6, is thought to have worked as a lab technician at an NHS hospital in Shrewsbury.
She was arrested with her husband, Dr Mohammed Asha, 26, who worked at North Staffordshire NHS Trust’s University Hospital.
Armed guard
Iraqi doctor Bilal Abdullah, arrested at Glasgow Airport on Saturday, and two men, aged 28 and 25, arrested at accommodation at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley on Monday have been handed over to the Metropolitan Police. Dr Abdullah was employed as a locum at the hospital.
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A forensic team was at the scene of the Glasgow Airport attack
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Enlarge Image
Khalid Ahmed, detained at Glasgow Airport along with Dr Abdullah, suffered severe burns and remains in a critical condition under armed police guard at the Royal Alexandra.
The man arrested in the Lime Street area of Liverpool trained as a doctor at the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences in Bangalore, India, the same place as Dr Haneef.
Six of the eight people arrested are now being held at London’s Paddington Green police station.
Sian Thomas, deputy director of NHS Employers, said she wanted to reassure the public there were “thorough and robust checks” in place before doctors were employed by NHS trusts.
In other developments:
Gas cylinders
A green Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders crashed into the doors of Glasgow Airport’s main terminal and burst into flames on Saturday afternoon.
The previous day two Mercedes containing petrol, gas cylinders and nails were found outside a nightclub in London’s Haymarket and at a vehicle pound after being towed from a nearby street.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said 19 locations had been searched by police including premises in Houston near Glasgow, Merseyside and Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.
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Trio fuelled al-Qaeda propaganda
Three men have become the first people to be convicted in the UK of inciting terrorist murder via the internet. They helped conduct a propaganda campaign for al-Qaeda. They distributed films of beheadings and bomb-making instructions which were to be used for attacks on non-Muslims.
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Clip seen in court
Al-Qaeda has its share of propaganda specialists who stoke up the violence with their incessant exhortations to “good Muslims” to obey the call to martyrdom and their twisted version of “jihad”.
Tariq Al-Daour, Younes Tsouli and Waseem Mughal ran such an operation in the UK and were brought to justice at Woolwich Crown Court on Wednesday. They all admitted inciting terrorist murder. They also admitted conspiring to defraud banks, credit card companies and charge card companies.
They ran a series of Islamist extremist websites and also made videos in support of “jihad”.
Suicide vest
When police raided Mughal’s flat in Chatham, Kent in October 2005 they found a Powerpoint slideshow entitled The Illustrated Booby Trapping Course.
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THE GUILTY MEN
Younes Tsouli, 23, from Shepherds Bush, west London Waseem Mughal, 24, from Chatham, Kent Tariq al-Daour, 21, from Paddington, west London |
It had details about constructing a suicide vest, including making the explosive charge and attaching ball bearings to act as shrapnel.
All three men wanted to be “in the trenches” fighting the British and Americans in Iraq.
In one cyber chat Tsouli, whose online nickname was Irhabi007 (Arabic for Terrorist007), told Mughal: “It sucks we are here and not there. But I suppose someone has to be here.”
Mughal urged him to continue with his “media work” which was “very, very important”.
‘Important media work’
The “media work” involved producing and editing video clips of beheadings by insurgents in Iraq, instructions on how to make bombs and other advice for budding terrorists.
In on exchange Mughal said: “A lot of the funding that the brothers are getting is coming because of the videos. Imagine how many have gone (to Iraq) after seeing the videos. Imagine how many have become shahid (martyrs).”
Tsouli told Mughal he had been asked by “AQ” (al-Qaeda) to translate their official “e-book”, known as Thurwat Al Sanam, or the Tip Of The Camel’s Hump, into English.
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Mark Ellison, prosecutor |
It led to a close affiliation with al-Qaeda in Iraq by a man known as Zarqawi (pictured) who gained notoriety for the gruesome killing of those it branded disbeliever enemies 
Mark Ellison, prosecuting, said the three men were closely affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Zarqawi, who was later killed by a US air strike, was the man responsible for the beheading of British hostage Ken Bigley.
Tsouli and Mughal had Ken Bigley execution footage as well as film of US journalist Daniel Pearl being beheaded.
Mr Ellison said: “Since the coalition forces entered Iraq each of the defendants developed a particular interest in the application and promotion of ideology and the call to join it in Iraq and to some extent Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda logo design
“It led to a close affiliation with al-Qaeda in Iraq by a man known as Zarqawi who gained notoriety for the gruesome killing of those it branded disbeliever enemies.”
Tsouli reportedly helped design a logo for al-Qaeda in Iraq.
But it was not just Iraq that the trio’s message was being delivered.
In October 2005 a Swedish national called Mirsad Bektasevic was arrested at a house near Sarajevo in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The authorities also found 18kg of explosives, electrical wiring, timing devices and detonators and a suicide bomber’s belt loaded with explosives.
A video found at the house had been prepared by the three men and they were also in a “buddy list” on Bektasevic’s computer.
‘Prepared to attack’
A voice-over on the video says: “Here are the boys preparing for the attacks.
“They are showing us the stuff they are going to use for the attack. These boys are prepared to attack and Inshallah (God willing) they will attack kuffar (non-believers) who are killing our brothers and Muslims in Iraq, in Afghanistan, Chechnya and many other countries.”
All three were charged under the 2000 Terrorism Act of possessing documents or records likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.
Tsouli, 23, from west London, and Mughal, 24, from Kent, changed their pleas to guilty halfway through the trial but Al-Daour, 21, from west London, changed his plea to guilty on Wednesday.
Tsouli, who was born in Morocco, had been granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK only shortly before his arrest.
The three men will be sentenced on Thursday.
UNESCO committee renames Auschwitz
By RAY LILLEY, Associated Press Writer 21 minutes ago
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – UNESCO officially renamed the Auschwitz death camp in Poland Thursday to reflect the German Nazi role, and added seven new sites to its world heritage registry, including ancient ruins in Iraq.
The U.N. agency’s World Heritage Committee did not mention the war in Iraq but said it had listed ruins in the city of Samarra as “in danger.” Considered a holy city by Shiite Muslims, Samarra has been the target of attacks. Earlier this month insurgents blew up the minarets of its Askariya shrine.
Auschwitz now will be known as “Auschwitz-Birkenau. German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945),” said Roni Amelan, a spokesman for the committee. Previously the camp was listed on UNESCO’s world heritage registry as the “Auschwitz Concentration Camp.”
Poland requested the change to ensure that future generations understand it had no role in the camp established by Adolf Hitler‘s forces during their brutal occupation of the country.
Polish officials have complained that Auschwitz is sometimes referred to as a “Polish concentration camp,” a phrase they fear may be misleading to younger generations who may not associate the camp with Nazi Germany.
The Nazis killed more than 1 million people at the camp outside the city of Oswiecim and nearby Birkenau, the site of the main gas chambers and crematoriums.
Most of those killed were European Jews, although Poles, Gypsies and others also were gassed or died from starvation, disease and forced labor during its roughly five years of operation.
The camp was made a World Heritage site by the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 1979.
The ruins in Samarra stretch along the eastern bank of the Tigris river and include the 9th century Great Mosque with its 170-foot-tall spiral minaret.
Measuring about 26 miles long and 5 miles wide, the huge site “testifies to the architectural and artistic innovations that developed there and spread to the other regions of the Islamic world and beyond,” the committee said.
The other sites include the Lope-Okanda landscape of Gabon, the Richtersveld mountainous desert of South Africa, the rock carvings of Namibia’s Twyfelfontein region and 1,800 fortified tower houses in China’s Guangdong province.
Three natural sites — the Teide National Park on the island of Tenerife, ancient beech forests in central Europe and Switzerland’s high Alps site of Jungfrau-Aletsch Bietschhorn — also were named.
The committee, meeting this week in the New Zealand city of Christchurch, was considering dozens of other applications for additions to its list of natural and cultural treasures.
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On the Net:
Pope changes rules for papal elections
** Thou shalt never post any images of the current anti-Christ pope **
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI has changed the rules for electing popes, making it potentially harder to name a successor but ensuring that when the white smoke rises from the Sistine Chapel, the new pontiff will have broad support among cardinals.
Benedict issued a one-page document in Latin on Tuesday requiring that two-thirds of the cardinals in a conclave agree on the new pontiff. The move was a return to Vatican tradition and reversed Pope John Paul II‘s 1996 decision to let an absolute majority of cardinals decide on the next pope if they remained deadlocked after 33 rounds of balloting.
Some analysts had argued that with John Paul’s rules, the majority bloc in a conclave could push through a candidate by simply holding tight until the balloting shifted from the two-thirds requirement to an absolute majority.
In the document, Benedict said his predecessor had received a number of requests to return to the former system after he issued his 1996 document.
“It would seem that Pope Benedict wants to ensure that whoever is elected pope enjoys the greatest possible consensus,” said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi.
The new document — essentially an executive order called a “motu proprio” — came as something of a surprise, since the main public criticism of the Vatican’s voting process to date has concerned the exclusion of cardinals over age 80.
There was no explanation about why the pope, who turned 80 in April, made the change now. It came just before he goes on vacation and the Vatican essentially shuts down for the summer.
Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was elected pope April 19, 2005, in one of the fastest conclaves in modern history. In an unauthorized account of the secretive balloting published in 2005, an anonymous cardinal revealed that Benedict was elected after four ballots with 84 of the 115 votes — seven more than necessary.
The diary, published by the respected Italian foreign affairs magazine Limes, was significant because it showed that Benedict didn’t win with a huge margin. Pope John Paul II and Pope John Paul I are believed to have garnered 99 and 98 votes respectively, and that was when there were 111 voting cardinals.
John Paul II instituted the simple majority in part to avoid a deadlock like the one in the 13th century, when negotiations over choosing a new pope lasted three years. Angry locals in Viterbo north of Rome, where the conclave was held, removed the roof of the cardinals’ meeting hall and threatened to slash food rations unless they picked a winner.
In 1623, eight cardinals died of malaria during a summer conclave in Rome that lasted 19 days.
But no conclave in the past century has lasted more than five days, and the 1978 election of John Paul II took eight ballots over three days.
The Rev. Michael Fahey, a theology professor at Boston College and a specialist in papal elections, said conclave norms had shifted over the years, and that Benedict’s change merely corresponds to the reality today where a conclave lasting weeks or months just isn’t likely.
John Paul’s norms “did create the possibility for tension and jockeying whereby you could have a group of cardinals holding out until the bitter end so that they might be able to get a simple majority, but the chances of that happening were remote,” he said.
He called the switch a “minor adjustment” that carried no real significance.
“You could write an encyclopedia in the way cardinals elected popes over the centuries,” he added in a telephone interview.
The Rev. Jesus Minambres, a professor of canon law at the Opus Dei-run Santa Croce University in Rome, said popes over the centuries have adjusted conclave norms — and that their successors have changed them at will.
He noted that John Paul II frequently surpassed the limit on the number of voting-age cardinals set by Pope Paul VI — 120. Benedict has said he would respect the number, and with Tuesday’s document, he is also going back to Paul VI’s norms concerning the two-thirds majority.
Minambres said Benedict was acting “perhaps out of great respect for the laws of the past.”
Why is Faith so weak – Ending the War in Iraq…
Speaking on the subject of Deitrich Bonhoeffer…
A discussion was entertained in class about faith in action, as a model of discussion after viewing a film on Bonhoeffer and his thoughts on church and discipleship.
“Cheap grace is grace without the Cross of Christ, Costly grace is earned through the Gospel. Nothing can be cheap that is costly bought.”
What is the Word of God? Answer: What is it we are called to do? Ethics are an act of faith. The old ideas of ethics are out the window as times have changed. Sometimes we must compromise our understanding of ethics to do the right thing. The purpose of ethics is to change the world for the better. Nothing in the scriptures of Christ compels one to destroy the world.
So one of my classmates asked “Why is faith so weak?” My answer to that question was this. In today’s fast paced – got to have it now – the quick fix path please – how many men and women of faith are actually going to invest ample time, talent and treasure to the works of strong and active faith? There is no economic win fall in active faith. There is no economic payout for the work of active strong faith. And if there’s no win in it for me – then why bother.
NOT MANY would invest in Strong Active faith.
Another classmate speaks up and says – the Evangelicals have money and they have active faith. Yes, they go to church, they get their literal judgment and they give A LOT of money to political parties to get them elected and maybe some will sponsor a child in a third world country or better yet, they might do something small “in town.”
YOU WANT TO END THE WAR IN IRAQ…
The Evangelicals and the Fundamentalists will pray and pay and elect their chosen ones to office AND then they send their children to Iraq to fight the war for George W. Bush. Because George W. Bush is a faithful Christian Man who knows best, RIGHT!!!
I PROPOSE that we ENLIST every Evangelical and Fundamental Christian MAN in the United States (EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM) and we send THEM along with their children to fight in Iraq.
Sure as Shit this war would end – and very quickly.
We could clear out the Red States of all of their men and when they start dying by the thousands you know their wives and daughters will STOP this WAR outright…
You want to see Strong Active Faith, Send all the men who voted for Bush INTO harms way and see how long the killing lasts!!!
Ethics… Do you think Bush thinks about Ethics as he sends our young people to die, do you think he thinks about ethics in killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and occupies their country? Does this war sound a little Hitlerian to you???
The only reason Hitler succeeded in doing what he did was because people listened to him. Even today the people of Great Britain and the United States are listening to a Mad Man. We are killing generations of people and we are killing our own in this needless war. So there is massive killing on both sides. Is this Ethical, I ask you!!!
And Hitler was found in a ditch, covered in Petrol… burned to death…
Stop the Genocide in Darfur
On Tonight’s Democratic Debate from New Hampshire, questions were asked about Darfur and ending the genocide. The answers were interesting. ONE major suggestion from the panel was to BOYCOTT the Summer Olympics in Beijing China and force the Chinese to stop doing business with Sudan. Since they obtain large amounts of oil from Sudan, this is an important issue. China has repeatedly been called on their record of Human Rights Abuses.
Democratic leaders feel that China could get involved in the issues of Darfur/Sudan and stop the Genocide – by ending their huge demands and their use of huge amounts of Sudanese Oil. They are not the only country who could do something today about Darfur, the world needs to sort out its priorities.
Should we (the World) take that great step and Boycott Beijing in 2008? For more than one reason?
SHOULD the WORLD BOYCOTT
The Olympics in Beijing, China
The Games of the XXIX Olympiad…
Summer 2008 to stop the genocide in Darfur?
Should we hold China accountable as a World Participant
and should we as well, hold world leaders accountable
for their inability to stop World Genocides
all over the Earth!!!
The Tea Ceremony
“When tea is made with water drawn from the depths of mind, whose bottom is beyond measure, we really have what is called
cha – no – yu.”Toyotomi Hideyoshi
15th century
Gay marriage evil, abortion terrorism: Vatican
By Philip Pullella – Reuters Online
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican’s second-highest ranking doctrinal official on Monday forcefully branded homosexual marriage an evil and denounced abortion and euthanasia as forms of “terrorism with a human face.”
The attack by Archbishop Angelo Amato, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was the latest in a string of speeches made by either Pope Benedict or other Vatican officials as Italy considers giving more rights to gays.
In an address to chaplains, Amato said newspapers and television bulletins often seemed like “a perverse film about evil.” He denounced “evils that remain almost invisible” because the media presented them as “expression of human progress.”
He listed these as abortion clinics, which he called “slaughterhouses of human beings,” euthanasia, and “parliaments of so-called civilized nations where laws contrary to the nature of the human being are being promulgated, such as the approval of marriage between people of the same sex …”
Amato spoke at a time when the Vatican and Italy’s powerful Roman Catholic Church are at loggerheads over plans for a highly controversial law that would give unmarried heterosexual and homosexual couples some form of legal recognition.
The Church and Catholic politicians, even some in Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s centre-left coalition, see the proposed law as a Trojan Horse and say it could lead to gay marriages.
Amato, who is said to be very close to Pope Benedict, criticized the media’s coverage of ethical issues.
After denouncing “abominable terrorism” such as that carried out by suicide bombers, he condemned what he called “terrorism with a human face,” and accused the media of manipulating language “to hide the tragic reality of the facts.”
“For example, abortion is called ‘voluntary interruption of pregnancy’ and not the killing of a defenseless human being, an abortion clinic is given a harmless, even attractive, name: ‘centre for reproductive health’ and euthanasia is blandly called ‘death with dignity’,” he said in his address.
Gay rights group have criticized the Pope and Catholic Church officials in the past over such comments, accusing them of interfering in Italy’s domestic affairs.
Groups opposed to gay marriage and recognition of unmarried couples are planning a national rally in Rome next month.
Italy’s Roman Catholic Church, set up on diocesan and parish levels, has the organizational machinery to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people. A huge turnout, which is expected, could be a major embarrassment for Prodi’s government.
