JUST SUPPOSE?

Just suppose you were an intellignet mammal, probablymore intelligent than a lot of human beings and you were kidnapped from your family (pod) in the Puget Sound and held hostage for upwards of thirty years in a small pool when formerly you could roam all the oceans of the world, would you be pissed off?

Should anyone be surprised and angry if you kill an individual or two, who made you dependent where you were free by being the source of your food, who gave you fish which you were so capable of catching for yourselves to do daily shows for talking, gawking animals?

The one justification I would accept for the imprisonment of Orcas, who are intelligent predators who should not be called killers because of the ingenuity that makes them efficient predators, is the threat of man's depredations and destructive tendencies succeeds in making these majestic creatures extinct another one of these viscious circles that is created by agents of coercion determined culture.

The revenge we might take against this creature is to set him free and so create a virtuous circle to replace the viscious circle that our hubris, our overweening hubris the basis of the attitude that our might gives us the right to imprison the animals who share this planet with us for our entertainment.

JUST SUPPOSE?

Just suppose you were an intellignet mammal, probablymore intelligent than a lot of human beings and you were kidnapped from your family (pod) in the Puget Sound and held hostage for upwards of thirty years in a small pool when formerly you could roam all the oceans of the world, would you be pissed off?

Should anyone be surprised and angry if you kill an individual or two, who made you dependent where you were free by being the source of your food, who gave you fish which you were so capable of catching for yourselves to do daily shows for talking, gawking animals?

The one justification I would accept for the imprisonment of Orcas, who are intelligent predators who should not be called killers because of the ingenuity that makes them efficient predators, is the threat of man's depredations and destructive tendencies succeeds in making these majestic creatures extinct another one of these viscious circles that is created by agents of coercion determined culture.

The revenge we might take against this creature is to set him free and so create a virtuous circle to replace the viscious circle that our hubris, our overweening hubris the basis of the attitude that our might gives us the right to imprison the animals who share this planet with us for our entertainment.

BY KIND REQUEST

Could I request that we leave Tiger Woods the hell alone.

For about a decade he has given us great entertainment with his inspiring and excelllent golf play during that period he has been scandal free and gossip free, an amazing achievement for one so rich and so popular.

Now it seems he might have hit a bump in the road, the question in my mind is not whether there is more to this incident than a car crash, it is whether the searchlight of public scrutiny will be constructive or destructive as he tries to overcome proving that he is not perfect just human?

I think this avid scrutiny can only be destructive, and for once the American public should be compassionate, tolerant and understanding instead of exhibiting once again their insatiable, voracious appetite for the prurient and scandalous and believe that he and his wife can without anyone peering over their shoulders use this incident to make their relationship stronger.

Let us believe that love can conquer all without our collective help.

A FITTING MEMORIAL!

I was privileged to witness another beautiful dawn this morning over the skies of South Florida as I read "The Gathering Storm" book twelve in the "Wheel of Time" series as I come closer to the end of my personal journey of discovery, my INDEPENDENT audit of the human condition, my attempt to contribute to creating a world in which incidents of man's inhumanity to his fellow man become the exception and not the rule.

I hope that one day the approach I adopted to this transcendent enterprise of simply telling the truth and doing the right thing will be vindicated and validated, that members of my race will comprehend that this is the only approach that had any chance of producing the accurate description of the existing social reality that is the necessary prerequisite for the solution of the urgent, massive problems we face, the only way to provide the possibility of happiness for human beings.

I am constrained to reiterate that I did not decide to engage in this enterprise driven by pride or ambition but because I refused to accept that innocent children should perish to further the ambitions and lust for power of ruthless, immoral individuals.

I have dedicated my life to constructing an appropriate memorial to the two children who died in the Fire at Orange Lane and during this journey have found within a capacity for love and constructed for myself the possibility of happiness.

Woman targeted by militia

Death video woman 'targeted by militia'

Amateur video apparently showing a young Iranian woman dying in Tehran after she was allegedly shot by pro-government militia on Saturday has caused outrage in Iran and abroad.

The woman, Neda Agha-Soltan, was buried on Sunday.

Her fiance, Caspian Makan, told BBC Persian TV about the circumstances of Neda's death. She was near the area, a few streets away, from where the main protests were taking place, near the Amir-Abad area. She was with her music teacher, sitting in a car and stuck in traffic.

She was feeling very tired and very hot. She got out of the car for just for a few minutes.

And that's when it all happened.

That's when she was shot dead. Eyewitnesses and video footage of the shooting clearly show that probably Basij paramilitaries in civilian clothing deliberately targeted her. Eyewitnesses said they clearly targeted her and she was shot in the chest.

She passed away within a few minutes. People tried to take her to the nearest hospital, the Shariati hospital. But it was too late.

We worked so hard to get the authorities to release her body. She was taken to a morgue outside Tehran. The officials from the morgue asked if they could use parts of her corpse for body transplants for medical patients.

They didn't specify what exactly they intended to do. Her family agreed because they wanted to bury her as soon as possible.

We buried her in the Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery in southern Tehran. They asked us to bury her in this section where it seemed the authorities had set aside spaces for graves for those killed during the violent clashes in Tehran last week.

On Monday afternoon, we had planned to hold a memorial service at the mosque.

But the authorities there and the paramilitary group, the Basij, wouldn't allow it because they were worried it would attract unwanted attention and they didn't want anymore trouble.

The authorities are aware that everybody in Iran and throughout the whole world knows about her story. So that's why they didn't want a memorial service. They were afraid that lots people could turn up at the event.

So as things stand now, we are not allowed to hold any gatherings to remember Neda.

GIVE THE IRANIAN PEOPLE A BREAK!

What some people in the USA want is to encourage the people in Iran to risk their lives to set up a democracy in that country similar to what is the experience here.

I question I want to ask is why?

The USA has been a democracy for three hundred years but what has that meant? It has meant with the most resources available to any country we are unable to educate our children, we have an economy in crisis with a gigantic national debt, we use the most drugs and have the highest rates of crime and divorce.

The city of New Orleans has not yet recovered from the hurricane that struck that city several years ago.

Why do we feel that we have the right to be promoting a way of life that has not worked for us, we are no nearer to achieving a functioning democracy that we were three hundred years ago.

What gives us the right to tell members of another sovereign nation how to solve their problems when we are completely incapable of solving our own?

It is the Dick Cheney attitude, for six years he was in power and made a complete mess of things, of everything but now he knows all the answers?

Give me a break and give the people of Iran a break and the right to work out their own destinies.

The people of America have no right to be telling anyone how to govern because the country is in a complete mess.

We should focus on fixing our own problems and when we got it right then we export it, not the other way round.

Look at the mess we made in Iraq, we can teach the world to dance to the democratic tune after we learn that secret not before.

ISLAND HOME LOST!

Earlier this evening on Facebook, I became a fan of a site with the appellation,"I love Jamaica" and was moved to think about my feelings, my exceedingly ambivalent feelings for my native land, and wrote this poem which may be the best verse I have ever written, not because it is the most imaginative or because it demonstrates the most literary merit of those I have created, but because I utilized language to communicate very accurately my true feelings, and thought I would share it with members of the Black Think Tank.



ISLAND HOME LOST

Some pain is beyond analysis or expression,
Some memories too poignant and private to share,
Some ironies are so capricious, they precipitate despair,
Such are my feelings with regards to my island in the sun.
Like a woman fantasized about, idealized and loved too much, now no longer fun,
When lost she fell below the radar of emotion, beyond nostalgia.
What remains is an empty, sterile zone of non being.
A spatial gap, an experience frozen in suspended animation, a period of personal history repressed beyond regurgitating.