Thursday, February 10, 2011

An Open Letter to the People of Egypt

This is what I recommend you tell your government, and I believe this should be the official US position:


When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,[72] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

... and so on. 

Godspeed to you in your quest for liberty. 




Thursday, February 3, 2011

Rain (Rapa Nui)

... excerpt from  Rain (Rapa Nui) 

...
Bury your twin-burning breasts in my mouth,
and let your head of hair be a small night for me,
a darkness of wet pefume enveloping me.

At night, I dream that you and I are two plants,
that grew together, roots entwined,
and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,
since we are made of earth and rain.  Sometimes
I think that with death we will sleep below,
in the depths at the feet of the effigy, looking over
the Ocean which brought us here to build and make love.
...

Pablo Neruda