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.

ADVISE FOR DICK CHENEY

For two full terms Dick Cheney served as Vice President, arguably the most influential and powerful VP ever, it may well be that he is not defending the record of President Bush but his own mistakes and inadequacies.

He had eight years to make his mark on this nation, and the results are all round us, an economy in ruins as evidenced by unprecedented increases in unemployment and housing foreclosures.

Perhaps the economy was not the strong point of his administration he claims to have done better on national security, where he engaged in a naked act of aggression against the people of Iraq with contrived justifications which attack killed over a hundred thousand Iraqis, a very, very conservative estimate, made half a million Iraqis refugees, and, destroyed the infrastructure in that country while strengthening the hand of extreme Muslim Fundamentalist factions throughout the region.

Mr Cheney, you were as good at you job as Vice President as I am a great singer, I am tone deaf but love karaoke.

When you were in office you maintained a comparatively low profile, perhaps you did not want to overshadow the President, which would have been very easy considering that he was an unmitigated idiot, now you have a very high profile and I cannot for a moment imagine why you obviously have nothing to contribute or you would have made that contribution when you had the chance.

Perhaps, you have too much time on your hands and you are doing this to stave off boredom and ennui.

If that is your problem I would suggest that you go around the country and find people to shoot accidentally, and, then also find very, very stupid people who will believe your version of these accidents.

I cannot advise you to put up or shut up, because you have already put up to the degree that would make you the most unpopular VP in the history of this nation, so can I prevail upon you to SHUT UP.

Support the Moats Family

It is my view that the Police Officer who pointed a gun at members of the Moats Family should be fired out of hand.

Taking thirteen minutes to write a ticket is one thing and stopping those individuals from being with a dying relative by some stretch of the imagination could be considered bad judgment, drawing and pointing a gun at citizens for running a stop sign is something else.

This Police Officer needs to be terminated and never be again be put in a position of being authorized to carry a firearm and point it at anyone.

I PERSEVERE

I PERSEVERE

Fur Elise, a composition for piano,is and always will be to me,

A piece of transcendent, incalculable, inestimable beauty.

Yet it was composed by someone losing his hearing,

Who, as a consequence, was never permitted to fully appreciate

The artistic immensity, ethereal majesty and awesome symmetry

He had brought into being.

So I dare not flinch from grappling with

The ultimate paradox and consummate irony of human existence,

I must from somewhere garner the will and spiritual resiliency

To persevere.

WILLIAM E. VIRTUE

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