"The truth is kept secret, it's swept under the rug  
If you never know truth then you never know love "

excellent lyrics, sage.  There is no love without truth, the truth being told all around.
That is why history is so so important.
So many times in history, people burning each other's books to bury the truth.
But it can't be done.
There will always be ones like you who  care enough to find it out.

"I have broken babylon's mindshackles"
Can you explain?

Rootsie

Blame America for Conflict in Liberia, Too
« on: Today at 1:16am »      Quote
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by Gerald Caplan  
Friday, July 11, 2003 by the Globe and Mail / Canada  
 
I once drove across West Africa from Sierra Leone to Nigeria, where I was living as director of the CUSO-Nigeria program. Even at the time, it was an extraordinarily reckless venture. Today, the very idea of such a journey is ludicrous. Sierra Leone? Liberia? Ivory Coast? Guinea? All are in turmoil. That's why there's such pressure on President George W. Bush to intervene against Liberian President Charles Taylor, who is responsible for much of the conflict in all four countries. What is less known is that the U.S. is substantially responsible for Charles Taylor.  
 
Tyrants don't materialize out of the blue. They're a product of their circumstances, just as ordinary men and young boys don't turn into sadistic killers unless they've been brutalized. Liberia has been cursed with almost a century and a half of appalling governments that have been actively supported by the U.S. for all but the last decade. That's how a Charles Taylor became possible.  
 
Liberia was created in 1821 by Americans who wanted to rid the U.S. of some of its black slave population. About 20,000 ex-slaves were repatriated to a continent they had never known, where they proceeded to grab the best land for themselves and treat the local Africans as savages. Clearly, even as slaves, they had been Americanized with remarkable success.  
 
Formally, Liberia was one of the rare African states that didn't become a European colony. In a country of perhaps two million souls, the elite descendants of the Americo-Liberian settlers numbered between 20,000 and 40,000 people. Their role was to support whatever American interests wanted. In 1926, in return for generous considerations, they bestowed on the Firestone and Goodrich companies a 99-year lease for the world's largest rubber estate, which was duly protected by the might of the U.S. Navy.  
 
The Cold War gave a renewed lease of life to Liberia's venal and oppressive elite. Even while Firestone methodically looted the country's natural resources and forced labor became the preferred form of industrial relations, American paranoia about Africa falling prey to Soviet blandishments knew few bounds.  
 
The consequences for the entire continent were devastating. For 40 years the U.S. embraced and bolstered a series of vicious dictatorships and nihilistic rebels. In Liberia, America's apparent strategic interest meant a new deal with its Americo-Liberian friends. In return for U.S. generosity, the Americo-Liberians allowed the Americans to turn their little country into a key Cold War outpost in Africa. While the ruling clique thrived in Monrovia, the seedy old capital, the country stagnated and the vast majority of rural Liberians simmered with resentment. Against the ethnic exclusivism of the Americo-Liberians, other Liberians turned in solidarity to their own ethnic groups or, as Westerners prefer saying, their tribes.  
 
In 1980, a little-known, barely educated sergeant named Samuel Doe, who had been trained by the American Green Berets, stormed the president's mansion, disemboweled the corrupt old head of state, turned the country into the preserve of his own small ethnic group, and was promptly embraced by the United States. Samuel Doe was dumb as a door, yet savvy enough to protect American interests as his predecessors had done.  
 
A grateful America responded. Between 1980 and 1985, this brutal, tyrannical, destructive regime received more than $5-billion from the U.S. -- more per capita than any other country in Africa. Mr. Doe's successor, Mr. Taylor, indicted for crimes against humanity, is another benchmark. He is one of many American chickens coming home to roost in Africa.  
 
The Bush administration now believes it needs Africa to combat terrorism, as a giant market for American products, and for its abundance of high-quality oil. It needs Liberia to be stable. But after a century of American-backed regimes and corporations, the Liberian people also need to become a nation again -- an enormously difficult and expensive project.  
 
Mr. Bush should intervene not out of great humanitarian motives, but out of basic accountability. For damages knowingly incurred, his country owes Liberians compensation in full.  
 
Gerald Caplan is the author of 'Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide'.  
 
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0711-10.htm  

In the scientist’s observation, what is unchanging decays.
‘Happily ever after." The cost of investing in the idea
of a static state of content? Torment.
Our ideas of paradise are opposed to the reality.
Our Christian conditioning, which we receive whether or not we set foot
in a church, keeps us yearning for that place of perfect peace
at the end of the journey. We misapprehend peace,
and so miss it when it comes. Peace comes through right conduct.
There is no point at which this ends.
Peace is not a state. It is a process.
We can rest in peace only as we engage the work.
Peace can attend us in all we do when we always do our best.

No one can come and take the cup from us.
Not even God.
And there is no point of repose
at the ‘end’ of this journey.

‘Happily ever after." is not an ending.
It is the beginning.
Dynamic being,
endless becoming,
recalibrating
and fine-tuning.
Picking up the highest vibrations
on every one of our stations..

Put down anger.
It is an empty cup.
Put down trying
to puzzle it all through.
You’re not supposed to work at this-
what is true
is effortless.
Put down your armor-
it is worse than useless here.
What would you defend
against the Friend?
Lay down your heart.
It’s the trump card.
Fear has no place at this table.
You think in terms of cost
and benefit-
but no such analysis
avails you here.
Simply be willing
to remember
what you have always known.
and allow yourself to be shattered.
What is real will remain.
I accept.
I embrace the unknown.
I do not seek to draw conclusions
but allow creation to unfold.
I know that I do not know-
sadnesses come over me-
I accept.
Like storms they blow in
and out.
Someday they won’t.
You can’t fit the ocean through
a faucet, and then try to turn it off..
Nothing stops.
You can try to use words to pin it
but they’re all blown away
the next minute.

Well Give Thanks, Ras.
Please share your insights.
Rootsie

You do not preen at my florid words.
Not one of my old moves works
to move you.
You do not allow me to sacrifice myself
on your altar,
or content me with lies
or half-truths.
You have no use for my brokenness.
In fact you challenge my insistence
that it exists at all.

I feel at a loss because all I once believed
and lived by
lies shattered at my feet,
all but the things that are real:
my courage, my patience,
my willingness to learn and be new.
And this love, this one love,
which is not particular,
which seeks to possess nothing,
which in-forms the beauty of What Is,
what always has been,
what forever will be,
this love a newly polished mirror
reflecting my new face
in this new place and time,
this new wine
which only a new skin
can hold.

Thank you for this, Carol. It really turns the 'affirmative action' debate on its ear, doesn't it?
Rootsie

are you
every man?

I see my ancient mariner
my true lover from ancient times
your eyes grave and far and full of sea
Olokun rock me endlessly.

I smile and all at once you grin,
you are the green man, the goat man
you lead me with your merry twinkle
right off the cliff

the Eros love shot
to the heart eternal boy!
all muscle and shine I call you down
to my garden divine.

Sorrow passes like cloud shadows
over your flickering face,
yes my love these are terrible days
and we give thanks
for a moment of grace.

You are the awful angel who guards
the tree of life with your sword
pacing back and forth,
your manliness an imprint
three million years old!
You hold so dearly
what is yours to hold.

You are the shepherd, the husbandman
       who tends
and then Shiva
       who rends
so that all may be made new again.

My sturdy boat
       my king!
Sometimes your crown slips down
over one eye, the pirate who takes
and then it is his.
I am lost in swan down pinned by mighty wings,
impaled on the great bull's horn,
my Zeus drawn down from Olympus,
a certain scent, a curve, a swell
that catches
his breath
that calls him home.

All down the ages
the goddess descends
to be flayed, burned to ash,
dis-membered, pricked,
she loses her naivete quick.
Sometimes it's just stale, flat, dark,
others the agony so sharp.

And always she ascends,
re-membering everything,
a sudden sseeing
and being received
with new eyes:
a world in bloon,
certain ideas beginning
to take hold,
gifts for the world.

So here's what it all comes down to,
Easter 4.20.03:
it all comes down to me
        you see.
So not only isn't it
        all about you
        in reality
it's all about me.
 
        be what I know I am
        be what I dream I am
        be what I say I am
                   I am.

This ain't no Ayn Rand philosophy,
throwin my ego around carelessly,
because what I am exists in unity,
what I am is One:
the only way to see there is no 'me'
is by makin it all about me.

I am here to reveal my identity:
rootsie rasta cynthia yemenja
and none of these-please bear with me,
allow I to explain-
like everything in nature,
exquisite and singular,
and one among a myriad,
a single thread that completes the tapestry,
and myself complete,
creation expressing itself endlessly-
I see everything
relative to me
so I am in relation with everything I see:

all my relations.
Earth Sky and Sea.

If I'm all about me,
you can be all about you.
We tread so light this way,
we bring no disturbance,
no calamity.
Disturbance is the sign
I'm not toein the line:
        like they say no way to be disturbed
        if you are livin in the Word.

We are Word made flesh
and we dwell among each other
and we deal strictly here
with the remission of sins-
it makes us squirm,
but we are here to forgive
and be forgiven endlessly
so that one of the Names
can be Mercy,
the tapestry woven seamlessly.
Nothing without reason-
without reason what are we?
And without mind and heart in synchrony?
As you see. This heedless absurdity,
gumming ourselves all up in each other
needlessly.
War, famine, and poverty.

I'm not all gummy
if it's all about me.
I am slick and slippery,
frictionless,
effortless.

If the Christians were christian,
if the peaceniks wanted peace,
the warriors freedom's guardians,
queens queenly, kings kingly,
priests priestly, ministers ministerial,
presidents presidential...

but you know the funny thing is,
           the oppressors ARE oppressive,
           the beasts beastly,
           the butchers bloody.
In our stupidity
           we feed THEM faithfully-
you get me?
Our collective nightmare stalks the earth
because we choose this.

"Forgive them
               they know not
                                what they do..."
just does not cut it anymore.

We can know what we do
because we can see
what we have done.
Notice I say 'can', a choice,
and the obvious one,
when it's all about me.

I bring my brokenness to love,
and love heals me.
I bring my questions
and love answers them.
I bring my fear
and am made fearless.
My weariness
love refreshes.
I bring my blindness
and love gives me eyes to see.
Ears to hear.
A voice to sing
and say.
I went forward foolishly,
and love saved me.
I lept off the cliff
and love caught me.

When I doubt love
I am most lost.
Love is all finding.
Every nightmare is of
some imagined failure of love,
but love does not fail.
Love lost?
Love is never lost.
I get lost but love does not.

I have faltered again and again in love
and still love pursues me.

I bring my brokenness to love
and love heals me.

Zion lover,
Rasta brother,
leavin Babylon together,
laughin through the boneyard
'cause the I and I know how this one ends.
Leave the sufferin on the tree.
Sufferation done for you and me
and all with eyes to see.

Zion lover,
Rasta brother,
we were made for joy.
When sorrows laid thick at our doors,
the I and I know
what they was for.
For this.
Kiss.
Of bliss.
Go forth. And cry no more.
Not that griefs won't come again,
just that we know now where they tend
so the joy never ends.
And hope dies into faith.
There is no hope,
no harbor,
no protected place,
just this bold vivid living
and your glance
of grace.

Zion lover,
Rasta brother,
you are for after,
forever after
the end of the world!

"You cannot buy it,
You cannot sell it,
You cannot cheat it,
You just must Become it."

Here’s an Invocation                        

Tend the garden-
     don’t just say ‘wake up people
     this is eden
     this is Zion.’
Live! In the joy of beholding
     the unfolding
     the becoming and what’s become
     of these myriad seeds of everything
Praise! The beauty.
Delight! The glory.

Walk this way.
Who you are
in truth
so that all
re-member.
un-learn
the trash of the past.
All dry husks
Dead skin
All green
All new
Again.
The glory
When all
Are tenders
Attenders
Praising all.
Razing walls.
Babylon fall.
The grand deception
Unmasked at last.