"FREEDOM....FREEDOM"..."NO WAR...NO WAR"

DemocracyNow! rebroadcast this performance by Richie Havens in 2003.
He sang Freedom in New York City on February 15th, as part of worldwide protests against the Iraq War.

You may recall the song from Havens’ performance at Woodstock, where he was the first act to take the stage, and did so quite dramatically. After a nearly 50-year career, Havens died Monday at age 72 in his New Jersey home after a sudden heart attack.

At Tholos we say our goodbyes and express our thanks for the great music and life of Richie Havens.

So far, 2013 has been a time that is full of new shocks to the conscience. A long hunger strike by our prisoners at Guantanamo has been going on for two three months already. The latest reports from RT show that the deepest grievance among hunger strikers is mostly in response to the unchanging reality of indefinite detention itself. There is no day in court for these men: no habeas corpus, no trial, no real review of any kind. This treatment amounts to the worst kind of psychological torture.  Those resisting the horrible reality are being force fed right now; and the military, the administration, and our big media have been repeatedly downplaying these events, or not bothering to report at all. Some men whose innocence has even been conceded are still not about to be released. Prolonged incarceration without trial is nothing less than a nightmare.

From RT on March 22 :

It’s going to take the American people to demand Guantanamo Bay prison facilities be closed, former Gitmo prison official Ret. Col. Morris Davis told RT. Until the issue catches the public’s attention, there is little hope for improvement, he says.

"A majority of the men at Guantanamo -- 86 of the 106 who have been cleared for transfer -- have been in confinement now for more than a decade in some cases," Davis said. "So to them... the only way to potentially call attention to it is to do something drastic like a hunger strike."

In Washington, several weeks ago, a White House source claimed that President Obama was monitoring the situation.

Ten years of war up to now, including word on Friday from President Obama, of his willingness to use military force against Syria, shows that our leaders have learned nothing in all these years. Just the day before, Obama and the rest of our living presidents were observing a ceremony in Dallas,  to dedicate to that war criminal, George W. Bush, his very own Presidential Library and "Museum".

If Richie Havens had been able to join the protest of a couple of hundred people, taking place just across Central Expressway from Bush's new monument to Empire, he would have gladly celebrated the occasion, taking the stage with Phil Donahue, with Medea Benjamin and the women of Code Pink, with Cindy Sheehan and other survivors who lost sons or daughters, parents or siblings, in these dreadful wars; and he would have sung out to activists and ordinary people, rallying all of us to inspire one another and hear his cry again...

"Freedom...Freedom"...

"No War...No War"

PS: 

This month marks the tenth anniversary of Tholos; and I should take this opportunity to thank our readers for their kind attention.