"A BIRD DOESN'T SING BECAUSE IT HAS AN ANSWER, IT SINGS BECAUSE IT HAS A SONG."

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

--Poetry Foundation:

Angelou’s most famous work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), deals with her early years in Long Beach, St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas, where she lived with her brother and paternal grandmother. In one of its most evocative (and controversial) moments, Angelou describes how she was first cuddled then raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was just seven years old. When the man was murdered by her uncles for his crime, Angelou felt responsible, and stopped talking. Angelou remained mute for five years, but developed a love for language. She read black authors like Langston Hughes, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Paul Lawrence Dunbar, as well as canonical works by William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allan Poe. When Angelou was twelve and a half, Mrs. Flowers, an educated black woman, finally got her to speak again. Mrs. Flowers, as Angelou recalled in her children’s book Mrs. Flowers: A Moment of Friendship (1986), emphasized the importance of the spoken word, explained the nature of and importance of education, and instilled in her a love of poetry. Angelou graduated at the top of her eighth-grade class. 

I once saw Maya Angelou on stage, where she was giving a lecture on poetry and retelling her life experience. She was a fascinating and beautiful person, a unique American poet, linguist, a gifted raconteur, and had a remarkable knowledge and appreciation of history. Her presence before us was quite powerful; and her soul seemed to embrace the whole audience. It is a cherished memory for me.

ARE WORLDS ABOUT TO COLLIDE IN EUROPE AGAIN?... WHO IS THE AGGRESSOR?

That morning they lifted above their heads
what appeared to be a doll in a christening gown
and we stood in the blasted haze waiting for long white
plumes to stanch the fires quickening through
carpets and bedclothes, a tea service, a tender curtain,
and we did not turn away, nor did we photograph the child,
—except at the moment of its being raised—
but later we walked to the Place des Martyrs
where a stillness had been created entirely
by small arms-fire that had blistered walls, blackened shops
and taken from the movie-house all but its blank screen,
where once all manner of figures had shone,
wavering, composed of light through what was
now nothing: a country. Or such was the hope.

--Carolyn Forché,  Place des Martyrs

Tholos now marks an anniversary of eleven years, on the 23rd of April. What counts as the result of our labor, and the labor of others like us, has to be measured in terms of awareness across the realm of readers, and  among the ripples that spread from that awareness.

But the war hysteria and thunder being raised against Russia during this month has gone to the heads of liberal and conservative alike, even beyond the usual circles of corrupt media. Eleven years ago, our attention was focused with horror on George W. Bush, and his invasion of Iraq, in which he often sputtered, and struck his warlike poses, to the praises and exultation of a news media that was eager to join him and play their part. This war on Iraq was not undertaken to go after those responsible for the 9/11 attack;  but went to the wild edge of the furious spectacle, whose primitive, bloody urges, and barren language, worked with its criminal abandon and profane show of force. This was the road to American war crime, to  full-throttled, global war making. The empire can be defined, or described now,  by the curse it leaves on the land: all the lasting bitterness, torments and hatred, scenes of murder, and poisoned land, for which it will be remembered.

Neither Americans, nor anyone else, should ever forget what that debacle was about, because it destroyed the nation that was invaded, and ruined as well, the United States, the nation that committed the crime. Iraq is in ruin, still, and is wracked by political killings, if not smoldering urban war. But the US, too, is become a lean shadow, a long spineless shadow, of what it was when we were growing up. The war of absurd rhetoric on "Terror", and the other war of "Full Spectrum Dominance" (to use the language of empire) are two different things. The first is the silly, cartoon version; and the second is the real state of affairs.

Insane and endless war will bankrupt a nation, and our country is no exception. More dangerous, more desperate and foolhardy gambles, are history's messages, scrawled on the walls by dying empires. The diplomacy of Obama and his Secretary of State, Kerry, has a most terrifying logic: the logic of unrelenting confrontation, the bankrolling of mercenaries, stooges, and extremists of various stripes, in the overthrow of elected and legitimate governments, in bribery and blackmail, and targeted assassinations. And then there is the hallmark of aggression, that leads ominously to war: bad faith in negotiations, and signatures on agreements that are soon disowned by the signers. This bad faith and deception has happened twice in a few weeks.

Coincidence? No way.

History has proceeded so madly during the Bush and Obama years, that in terms of the hell we're in, looking forward and looking back seem almost indistinguishable now. And the lies that have lodged in the mouths of  corrupt leaders and news people, give consent to the architecture of military aggression, which is the central point of the empire. We live in a basically fascist oligarchy, in an airtight surveillance society; and we are practically suffocated during this Ukrainian crisis by the most childish propaganda.

Some fools, such as U.S. Senator John McCain, are saying that we should already be in military conflict with Russia.

When the United States appears with its European sidekicks, small nations start dropping like flies. And nations like Iraq and Afghanistan, in which the US exhausts itself with long military occupations, are not fixed ever, but are left in chaos, and finally just abandoned in the hands of warring militias, or in the care of armed drug cartels, or under the protection of white slavers, --or for instance-- in the case of the coup government in Kiev, under the thumb of fascist street thugs.

 The Obama administration mirrors the interests of the Central Banks and the blood-sucking IMF, that methodically rapes entire nations, with its  debt-schedules and predatory interest rates. But the real muscle behind the shakedown comes along later, when economic sanctions are not persuasive enough.

Of course, economic sanctions in the hands of an American president, adds up to an act of war by itself.

Nothing else is revealed by our exaggerated image of ourselves, except our moral collapse as a society, in our trance-like  fingering and thumbing of the infernal cell phones, as Obama, the president, boasts that our army can lick Russia's army.

It was Robert Louis Stevenson who wrote:

 "Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences."

Americans and Europeans, we are still in the prison of our own device, this empire that is bankrupt now. Where is our sense of humility, in consideration of our nations' crimes? Where is our sense of history as we approach the 100th anniversary of World War One?

copeland morris HORSES WATCH MY DREAMS

 

There were millions of years, at least
Of petite horses, slipping inconspicuously

Beneath primordial fronds, hiding in
The ground cover, peeping from under
Bromeliads, almost as shy as chameleons.
When did their articulate little hooves begin
To thunder?--filling out their long strides?

We inherit some movement known to them,
Their noble way of standing idle, gazing
Into the pasture. Their need to dream exists,
A fragrance of grass on which they feed.
May they watch your dreams, my dear one,
As they have watched mine. And may they ever
Approach your open hands, in peace. 

REFERENDUM IN CRIMEA MAKES HISTORY

People sing the Russian national anthem as they celebrate in Simferopol's Lenin Square on March 16, 2014 after exit polls showed that about 95.5 percent of voters in Ukraine's Crimea region supported union with Russia (AFP Photo / Dimitar Dilkoff)

The celebrations were widespread throughout the Crimea today; and despite the claims by nations in Europe, backed  with the threat of consequences to Russia by the US, their spirits were not dampened. They voted for association with the Russian Federation. Those in favor numbered around 93%.

The White House is  scowling today, declaring that a principle of self-determination which is set down in the United Nations Charter should be ignored; and that instead, we are to respect a rump, illegal clique of fascists, who overthrew a legitimate, elected government, in Kiev. But it is madness to satisfy the greedy ends of a small collection of neocons and central bankers. These seem to be the people who are using the military muscle of the US , and presidents, who are nothing but hollow creatures, who will willingly murder anyone and overturn any society, if there is a profit down line for this morally decrepit Empire.

This recent crisis which forced Russia into a defensive position, next to its coastline, and its primary naval defense installation, in the Crimea, is something that concerns the essential Borderland, in Ukraine, that reaches back to the foundational beginnings of Russia, deep into its history. But our public has been told lies about this crisis. Those lies have been told and repeated in almost every major US and European news media. They will tell the people that the coup is not crawling with fascists at all. They don't tell the people about the horrific fascist sympathies embedded in the World War II history of the region of Western Ukraine. American audiences didn't get to hear about how, during the recent coup d'etat,  the sniper shootings of both police and protesters, turned out to be the work of the same snipers.

President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and all the pusillanimous  leaders of the Empire's vassal states, will tell you with one voice, that it's only the Ukrainian Constitution that matters now, without mentioning how those fascist freaks of the Right Sektor and the Svoboda have crashed the party. The United States can now apparently void diplomatic agreements within days after the paper is signed. The February 21st agreement, said that the Ukrainian president would remain in office for an interim period, as those from the Maiden Protest and the opposition were eased into a power-sharing arrangements, pending a scheduled election. All the parties to this document were responsible for its implementation.

But what happened? Ukraine's president had to run for his life, people just came into Parliament, tossing the regulars out of their seats; and in an undignified haste they didn't even follow constitutional procedures for impeachment. When Russia asked the US about its responsibility for seeing that the party in power live up to the agreement, whose ink was still virtually drying, the US position was, "different facts now on the ground, forget it".

One astonishing fact after another came to light. Victoria Nuland (who is married to a bona fide PNAC neocon) and who is, herself, Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, has admitted  that $5 billion from our US Government had been the seed money for this "revolution".

And John Kerry rattles on about consequences. There will be consequences for this and that, and consequences over the referendum.

 But there will be no consequences for Russia that will not also land heavily on the backs of Americans and Europeans. And this has been the most desperate overreach and the most wicked foreign policy initiative thus far, by the Obama Administration, one which might have led to the mutual destruction we have always feared, if it had been further bungled.

So all hail the Constitution of a country, the poor Ukraine, whose broken legitimate government, the United States had a big hand in breaking. This is not the first country that has been broken and brought to despotism, chaos, or ruin, by the CIA and those fraudulent NGOs who provide cover for acts of subversion. Nothing Obama or Kerry has done has been for the benefit of Ukraine's people. And people in the US are beginning to wise up. They are not interested in this kind of absurdity any more. All of us who understand are beginning to hate all this hollow military posturing, this repulsive war making, which is ever advanced by the deception of our corrupt President and Secretary of State.

Hooray for the people of the Crimea today! At least they have the freedom of the ballot box, and can decide and celebrate their choice, one at which they have freely arrived.

copeland morris SWEET RESOLUTION

Repair is going on under moonlight.
But what is the moon?--her holiness now
Linked to imagination? Fireflies flash;
But where is the fine control of my instinct
While this wildfire burns my heart?

From sparks of appreciation, light expands
Upon this moon that has risen at dusk.
From such cold fire comes flame.
She is the bride that holds white roses;
And when she wanes I still see
The dark of her. Forever her precise,
Hurried words, explain the tide going out,
Where I dreamt I knew what peace meant.

copeland morris EARLY SNOW

Soon Eurydice, there is early snow,
When the nightingale puts down her head.
Whenever bobbie pins mark the places in Auden,
A suitcase is snapping shut. A taxi signals.

Ribbons of narrow cursive begin to print,
A sleepless cigarette in your other hand,
The snow, my ghostly sense of falling back,
Jumping overgrowth with wheels on my feet.

Later, in your arms, I have dreamed of skating;
And where we turn into autumn, words appear,
A poem beside a sidewalk buried in snow.

IT'S ALSO A GRAVEYARD SMASH, A CASCADE OF BLOOD, AND EMPTY PLACES AT THE TABLE

If we are not transformed for the better in our hearts, how can all the political theater in the world save us? If we are not able to do better as individuals to prevent the hurt that is being inflicted on helpless humans; then desperate, last ditch appeals to common sense will not be enough to save us, either. For if human beings can not, or will not, prevent the poisoning of their own bodies, the genetic damage being done to their children,...and if people remain apathetic when shown the ruinous and reductive effect of war on their own society; then all that's been shown is a stupid acceptance of war as an integral part of capitalist organization, and the future holds nothing good for any of us.

But a change is coming, whether any of us likes it or not. Even the scandals now, that have taken over the headlines, concerning the unbridled power of the state or empire to spy on everything and everyone, is only a symptom of our dull bondage to the present system. We are collectively the prisoners of a throwaway society, in which human beings are thrown away, in which the rule of law is thrown away, in which decency toward others is increasingly forgotten and discarded.

And once the storm is over, you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about. --Haruki Murakami

The miracle has happened if you are no longer afraid. And the healing of the world is in your hands.

NELSON MANDELA, MAY HE REST IN PEACE

 “During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

Mandela and his organization suspended the armed struggle only once the apartheid regime conceded to democracy. He was no pacifist; on the contrary, he never hesitated to pick up arms when he perceived his people were confronted with the choice between submission to tyranny and armed resistance. But nor was he a militarist: He never hesitated to take the political path when that presented itself. And in that example, he has much to teach the world. --Tony Karon

 Nelson Mandela opposed racial injustice, apartheid, colonialist, and imperialist power, with his whole being.
And his struggles on behalf of his comrades in arms and his people in South Africa required a lot of sacrifice.

Mandela became a man of his people, the father of modern South Africa. This implied a solidarity with diverse people in the armed struggle, and a wider and equally profound support from peaceful demonstrators from across the world. For the fight to liberate South African people, black people, all people, from the oppression of minority rule, was one of the greatest tests and victories of moral conscience that we have seen in this world.

Mandela became the symbol of the resistance during his long imprisonment. Reflecting upon this history, not all that he wanted to achieve has been realized; but apartheid, compulsory racial segregation, and minority rule, was defeated; and every South African can be proud of that. And the world celebrates that, as it celebrates his life.

PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ON FREE INQUIRY AND SECRET SOCIETIES

And there is President Kennedy's important speech about peace:

GETTING OFF THE ROAD TO PERDITION,--OR IS THAT FUKUSHIMA?

Each of us is capable of being the weakest or strongest link in this present struggle for our world. At issue, is whether this world's affairs will be arranged on any principles of moral agency and compassion ; or,  if we are so irresponsible, that we will tolerate our own subservience upon a Global Plantation, under an unlimited, and eventually armed surveillance, where everything rests finally on the blood and misery of slaves. And yes, this implies our blood too, our misery. Our slavery.

In the American-administered empire, everything continues to run on war, or the threat of war, or by those economic wars that presidents call sanctions. We are held by a paramilitary shadow government that includes organization steeped in criminal underworld business, and in the laundering of billions of dollars of crime money by major banks, and the collusion of our elected leaders in criminal wars, leaders who are amenable enough to a whole spectrum of other criminal activities that are run off the books.

How we come to this sorry situation must be obvious at this point, since the control of the power to issue money and to effectively regulate banking, is not really in the purview of the people or those we elect to run the government; and the transnational corporations have slowly but certainly gained the upper hand. These globalist powers have gone from seducing local government officials with money and the elixir of power, to that of obtaining the power to write the laws themselves, which they submit to the forgone approval of those who are bribed, and stay bribed.

And the regulation of campaign financing is a shambles.

If we allow this situation to continue; then it will have the effect of destroying us. It's possible to see how this new business model is working on the grounds of Fukushima Daiichi, in northeastern Japan, site of the world's immediate and devastating nuclear catastrophe. After two years the cleanup is still left to the corporation TEPCO, that is proven to lack the resources to deal with what has happened. The corporation has continually lied to the Japanese public about the extent to which the radiation has spread; and the most crucial immediate information about the meltdowns of three reactors has been filtering out only over time. As a story, we are left to our own curiosity and tireless alternate media; but the corporate news organizations and cable networks pontificate, with nothing better to do most of the time than to amuse their audience.

What is important to the leadership in both the corporate world and the governments they control, is to protect their investments. The public interest and safety is a distant concern to them. Corporate heads will ask government to change the rules about what level of radiation is mandated as safe in the food we eat, and it is done. That's all there is to it, as the sloshing over, and spills of radioactive waste water in Japan have continued, week after week, for two years.

The Fukushima story is indeed about the physical meltdown of reactor cores and the precarious position of over ten-thousand highly radioactive, and deteriorating fuel rods, which could mean sickness, or result in a terminal condition for tens of millions of people over the northern half of the world.

Well honestly, such a disaster is also about the broader story that ought to be told as well. There is a way in which corporate powers are trying to become immune to the established legal process of sovereign states.

The Japanese government, like the American one, is beholden to corporate interests; and it has papered over the insufficiency of this TEPCO operation to deal with the magnitude of the crisis at the reactor site. The government has been covering for the company and its lies, by the repetitions of those same lies; and it has worsened the disaster with its own propaganda and diversions. We can expect the same government performance here because the reactor design, by General Electric, exists in several instances in our own country; and under the same circumstances we would see the same feckless government cover up. In fact, we are seeing a diversion here too, in the way the story remains unreported.

Most Americans remain unaware that the crisis over there in Japan, around Fukushima Daiichi, is poised right now to become a catastrophe of global proportions. They are not even aware that the three melted radioactive cores are gradually driving a stake into the heart of Tokyo, which has over 10% of Japan's population, and which was tallied at over 13 million, in 2011.

There is a bigger story now that Americans had better wake up to. It was a story covered up by the mindless and economically self-destructive tirades of the budget-in-captivity, and the government shutdown of meat inspection, national monuments, public buildings, and other things.

For one thing, October had been earmarked for the passage through Congress of the TPP bill, and the certain signature of the president, whose administration has been pushing this treaty. The Trans-Pacific Trade Pact is notable as being a well kept secret, from the public; but in a more global sense of the word secret, than we have heretofore known. It has been from stem to stern (except for a few leaks) over a long period of foreign and corporate negotiation, a thoroughly secret law. Yes, a secret law in the United States. And when it's finally nudged under the noses of Congress, it will be too huge to read in a timely manner, and the members of Congress will have had no forewarning or previous chance to know much about it.

The very transnational corporate business model is being changed by treaty, in a way that will be fundamentally hard to undo; and the essence of the treaty is that it will upend and nullify national and local government authority to control, to regulate, or fine transnational business, whenever and wherever these companies might wreck havoc on local communities,-- for instance--polluting water, poisoning the citizenry, or doing anything that proves unlawful or dangerous to the public welfare. Undoubtedly, this breaks the covenant between the people and their government, it also blows democracy to smithereens; and it finally gives the powers of finance, through their henchmen, the power to nullify national, regional, and municipal control over anything those elites might wish do in the name of "the invisible hand of the market place".

Because legal liabilities would come into play, and there would be court proceedings, if a corporate entity was in any way responsible for a nuclear power core melting down in this country, no one should be  surprised that the corrupt mainstream press does the bidding of Washington's political class, and is as quiet as the grave when it comes to the Fukushima story.

The largely unreported story from Fukushima is about the worsening of the situation there. This goes far beyond the existential threat to the City of Tokyo, and its millions of souls, the danger that is caused by the molten, and radioactive cores that are burrowing into the Earth's crust, an event which is bound to contaminate the city's water over time. No, it is the whole safety of all people in the Northern Hemisphere, those who are bound together and implicated in the unspeakable event that could happen if Reactor Building #4, or specifically the tank holding thousands of fuel rods, should collapse.

Beginning in early November, an operation to remove these rods, the ones that have already been damaged by excessive heat, is scheduled. The operation, if it goes without a hitch, is estimated to take about a year. But neither the US government or any of its big Media Dogs has explained the grave danger to the people, should there be a mishap, or another severe earthquake near Fukushima. If the Building #4 or the part that holds the fuel rods collapses,--what then?

TEPCO has not consistently been able to keep the rods from overheating, and the special metal cladding on them has become brittle. If the whole thing tips over somehow; then the rods burst into flames and burn fiercely. The compound in them contains Plutonium; and if this burns and goes into the atmosphere and circulates on the winds, we will learn what the word catastrophe means, to be sure.

In the worst case scenario, the entire Northern Hemisphere of the planet will be gradually irradiated with deadly isotopes. Instead of confronting this crisis, a threat to all humanity, an existential threat, our national leaders remain busy, tediously focused on bullying other nations, threatening some others with war, economic sanction, and violent regime change.

copeland morris THE WHITE GOOSE

When my heart hangs low, how the white goose rises;
And brings to a hush, the careless, languishing sky.

In the shimmer of time that buoyant body is shaped;
Though how perturbed is its effort no one can say.

It enfolds the sacred language of blessing and loss,
And foretells the ripples where the river must fork.

And even a child can praise those joyous pursuits
In white flowing feathers as someone's good news.

And each stroke of wings, all strenuous and satin,
Must jar the four winds of yearning and caution.

Dreams are so pure enfolding the years before
Winter and summer bright in the white goose.

 The summer left like a ghost and the city fades;
But the children raise their hands to celebrate.