I believe in the future
We shall suffer no more
Maybe not in my lifetime
But in yours I feel sure
Song dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm
And these streets
Quiet as a sleeping army
Send their battered dreams to heaven
For the mother's restless son
Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
Who denies his urge to break and run
Who says: hard times?
I'm used to that
The speeding planet burns
I'm used to that
My life's so common it disappears
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears
-Paul Simon
Maybe somewhere there’s a place so fair, with streets in mid air lit up like Christmas
Where there is no big business or white man hubris
Or a need for a military or mistrust of kindness
Or religious blindness or towering wastes of resources
Or cowardly racist police forces
Or bloated international banks
Fill in the blanks
And maybe we can live there someday.
But I guess that’s unlikely
So if lightning doesn’t strike me
I’ll take some time once in a while
And listen to my Plug-Nickel box of Miles
And realize that paradise does exist
If only...
If only we could get out of the way.
Tend your garden.
-Mike Keneally
"Naturally, the common people don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of their leaders.
Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and endangering the country. It
works the same in every country."
-Reichsmarschall Herman Goering at the Nuremberg Trials
I never betrayed you, and I never betrayed the revolution
I just didn't want to die alone, I needed you to see me home
And if I could save you, and if I could find a solution
I'd die a thousand times, to get you out of here
-Johnny Clegg
"If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, then something automatically opens your inner door. Through that, you can communicate more easily with other people. And that feeling of warmth creates a kind of openness. You'll find that all human beings are just like you, so you'll be able to relate to them more easily. That gives you a spirit of friendship. Then there's less need to hide things, and as a result, feelings of fear, self-doubt, and insecurity are automatically dispelled."
-His Holiness The Dalai Lama
The mongrel cat came home holding half a head.
Proceeded to show it off to all his new found friends.
He said 'I been where I liked. I slept with who I liked.
She ate me up for breakfast and screwed me in a vice.
And now I don't know why I feel so tongue-tied.'
-Thom Yorke/Radiohead
Overhead aliens hover
making home movies for the folks back home
of all these weird creatures
who lock up their spirits
drill holes in themselves
and live for their secrets.
-Thom Yorke/Radiohead
For all of us who like to stay out late in the cafe,
And all of us who do not want to go to bed,
And everybody here who needs a light for the night
as an insulation against the darkness.
-Paul Kantner, embellishing Ernest Hemingway
"Art is never finished. Only abandoned."
-Michelangelo
"To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense."
-Picasso
"Art completes what nature cannot bring to finish."
-Aristotle
Three quotes from the documentary accompanying Brian Wilson's Smile.
"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay [...] I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances.
Now, senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq, which killed a million Iraqis, most of them children. Most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis, with the misfortune to be born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq.
And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies. I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims, did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to Al Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11/2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.
Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong. And 100,000 people have paid with their lives, 1,600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.
If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac, who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we're in today.
Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth. Have a look at the real oil- for-food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months, when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Halliburton and the other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayers. Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where. Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it. Have a look at the real scandal, breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee, that the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians; the real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own government."
- British MP George Galloway, accused of profiteering in Iraq, addressing Republican Senator Norm Coleman before the U.S. Senate's committee investigating the Iraq oil-for-food scandal, May 17, 2005
"His Holiness decreed that the said Galileo is to be interrogated with regard to his intention, even with the threat of torture, and, if he sustains [i.e., answers satisfactorily], he is to abjure de vehementi [i.e., renounce a vehement suspicion of heresy] in a plenary assembly of the Congregation of the Holy Office, then is to be condemned to imprisonment as the Holy Congregation thinks best, and ordered not to treat further, in any way at all, either verbally or in writing, of the mobility of the earth and the stability of the sun; otherwise he will incur the penalties for relapse. The book entitled Dialogo de Galileo Galilei is to be prohibited. Furthermore, that these things may be known by all, he ordered that copies of the sentence be sent to all Apostolic Nuncios, to all Inquisitors against heretical pravity, and especially the Inquisitor in Florence, who shall read publicly the sentence in the presence of as many as possible of those who profess the mathematical art."
- Papal decision entered into the record of the Holy Office, 1633
The North Wind Sounds Like Freezing Rain
Sailing Through the East Wind
And the East Wind Has Winding - Unwinding Strings
South Wind Sounds Like Skin on a Drum - Skin on Skin
But the West Wind Echos Like Metal Wings
Like a Weather Vane Whining Through the Night
Iron Wheel Turns in Front of the Sun
Four-Prong Metal Cuts the Sky - Man Must Fly
Man Must Fly!
- Grace Slick
"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."
- John Steinbeck
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