Dayle in Limoux – Day #72

Limoux’s waning moon.

By asking “Whom does my soul serve?” we learn to turn our attention to the deeper purposes of what we do. We enlarge our vision of what’s possible and gradually learn to root our actions in soul.

Bill Plotkin

︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶

Could it be that this earthly realm, not in spite of but because of its very density and jagged edges, offers precisely the conditions for the expression of certain aspects of divine love that could become real in no other way? This world does indeed show forth what love is like in a particularly intense and costly way. But when we look at this process more deeply, we can see that those sharp edges we experience as constriction at the same time call forth some of the most exquisite dimensions of love . . . qualities such as steadfastness, tenderness, commitment, forbearance, fidelity, and forgiveness. These mature and subtle flavors of love have no real context in a realm where there are no edges and boundaries, where all just flows. But when you run up against the hard edge and have to stand true to love anyway, what emerges is a most precious taste of pure divine love.

Cynthia Bourgeault, author, ‘The Meaning of Mary Magdalene’

︶⁀°• •° ⁀︶

From author and scholar Jean Houston:

Once you answer the call to a larger life, there is no turning back. Indeed, each of us might usefully consider where we find ourselves right now on the cycle of our own particular journeys. Have you heard a call to the larger life? Have you refused it, and if so, why? Have you accepted the call but then met with monsters of recalcitrance who refused to let you pass across the threshold to your own deeper capacities and possible life? Did you finally outwit these monsters and get across? Are you caught in the belly of the whale through despair, depression, or just plain sloth? Have unusual allies or helpers shown up? A telephone call at the right time? A book falling open at an important passage? Do you find yourself in the midst of the road of trials, and if so, do you experience it as full of adventures or as just one damn crisis after another? Is there awaiting you a sacred marriage or a transformational friendship? Do you feel the yearning for the inner beloved of the soul? Are you seeking atonement or attunement with your father or mother . . .? Are you finding a boon, an insight, a project that may bring some healthy solution to your own and the world’s problems? . . . Or perhaps you find yourself, like the rest of us, in several different stages of the journey at the same time.

From the Center for Action & Contemplation, ‘experience a version of this practice through video and sound.’ Turn it up so you can hear the birds. :)

Being in a different country, immersed in a second language and culture, the grail journey is seemingly more acute…magnified. Yet, these journeys are available to us anywhere…time or place. The calling is profound. Listening, imperative. And then, time seemingly elongates…expands…where the stories we once carried seem so much quieter, smaller. Maybe it isn’t that life is short, but that we live it fast…choices and consequences and ‘next.’ As Cynthia shares, it’s the ‘density and hard edges’ of this iteration in time that gives us the grace and possibility…mercy?…to examine the most exquisite dimensions of love within the constructs we create with fear, rage, and violence, the dimensions of

• steadfastness
• tenderness
• commitment
• forbearance
• fidelity
• forgiveness

As Cynthia reminds us, “That’s our business down here. That’s what we’re here for.”

Saint-Martin’s in Limoux, for Ukraine.

À bientôt.

🌻

Dayle in Limoux – Day #10

Bastille Day!

After days of revelry leading up to le 14 juillet and a local military parade with dignities early this morning, the village of Limoux was quiet. And hot. So hot. 39 C which is 102 Fahrenheit. Another solid week of heat coming up, too. The planet is burning. And the leaders dance, and the Buffetts and Kochs double down on oil. Don’t look up. ‘This is what we call a planet killer.’

This from inews.co.uk:

“Early models indicate a ‘heat dome’ is building over Europe that would trap the continent into high temperatures into August and could create the conditions for a record-breaking summer of blistering heat to rival that of summer 2003.”

https://inews.co.uk/news/more-heatwaves-hit-uk-july-august-met-office-warns-1738108

You might want to do some research on this one.

‘We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.’

-R. Buckminster Fuller

From Seth Godin, contributor in the book:

“On Saturday, in dozens of countries around the world, the volunteers behind the Carbon Almanac will be holding book signings to celebrate the launch of this project. I’ll be doing three, and I hope you’ll stop by and say hello if you can. It’s a world record signing because it’s the only world we’ve got–and we are all authors of our future.”

[To learn more visit thecarbonalmanac.org.]

Back to Bastille and note from Pete at Radical Tea Towel.

‘For centuries before 1789, politics in the Kingdom of France concerned itself with kings and noblemen.

The common people, on the other hand, were counted as nothing – and the same was true across Europe.

It wasn’t that the masses were blindly submissive to their exclusion. Bread riots and peasant revolts – like the French jacqueries – were a regular occurrence.

There were even a few organized political movements by the working classes, like the Levellers and Diggers during the English Revolution.

But it wasn’t until the Parisian masses stormed the Bastille prison that the people entered into European politics in such a way that they could never be expelled again.’

‘Things weren’t going to plan for the King.

He had wanted the three Estates – clergy, nobility, and commoners – to rubber stamp his fiscal measures and go home.

But the Third Estate – the common people – wanted something in return.

In June 1789, members of the Third Estate began to call themselves the ‘National Assembly’ – they did, after all, represent the vast majority of the French population.

They also took the famous Tennis Court Oath, a promise not to disband until France had a new constitution.

Reactionary nobles close to the King became nervous.
He had wanted the three Estates – clergy, nobility, and commoners – to rubber stamp his fiscal measures and go home.

But the Third Estate – the common people – wanted something in return.

There were mass protests in Paris on the 12 July, attacking royal offices. The French soldiers in the city did nothing to intervene – perhaps because they supported the revolutionaries. (Sound familiar? 1.6.21 during the insurgency. -dayle)

The next day, a citizen’s militia was formed, and the Marquis de Lafayette elected its commander.

It was not by the hired soldiers of some foreign aristocratic elite, but by the French people themselves.’

Longue vie à la France❗️

It starts to cool off–oh, you know, to about 90–around 10 pm. So, although getting dark, went exploring along the river Aude. More captures!

Le Pont Neuf is the oldest in the town of Limoux that connects the two cities, being the villa is completely divided by the river Aude. Dating back to the 1400’s, it originally was made entirely of wood. Often, the Church of Saint Martin in its view.

▲ More history on this capture soon. :)

And the tour! Starts to head west after the teams climbed Alpe d’Huez today. Incredible beauty in this country. Why can’t we just stop everything, pas plus, and save the planet. Nothing else matters if we don’t. I mean, nothing. What are we doing.

Choose your life. 💛

Amidst everything, Just a few countries away, Ukraine. And loosing Liza.

‘Her name was Liza.
She was 3 years old.
Her mother survived but her leg was blown off and she is fighting for her life in intensive care.’

[Social media post.]

The picture of Liza on the left was taken about an hour before Putin’s missile strike  killed her.

Borders, power, and evil. When does this stop?

“Terrorist attacks, infrastructure destruction and civilians massacre. […] Cannot defeat Armed Forces in battle, so it resorts to barbarism.”

-M. Podolyak, Adviser to the Head of the Office of President of Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Pas plus.

Monday, May 2, 2022

Today, sources with the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights are reporting 3,000 civilians have died in Ukraine. Understandably, “the real toll is likely to be considerably higher, citing access difficulties and ongoing corroboration efforts.”

‘The metaphysical basis, the stable core must be with Divine Union or it always bounces bock to the

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core of human behavior.’ [R. Rohr] Indeed.

‘Everything in our lives is another lesson in the one continual school of conscious loving.’

And we fail. Humanity fails again and again and again…

Father Richard Rohr at the Center for Action and Contemplation:

“To be clear, it is inconceivable that a true [believer of any faith] would be racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, homophobic, or bigoted toward any group or individual, especially toward the poor and vulnerable, which seems to be an acceptable American prejudice. To end the cycle of violence, our actions must flow from our authentic identity as Love.

One of the reasons I founded the Center for Action and Contemplation was to give activists some grounding in spirituality so they could continue working for social change, but from a stance much different than vengeance, ideology, or willpower pressing against willpower. Most activists I knew loved Gandhi’s and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s teachings on nonviolence. But it became clear to me that many of them had only an intellectual appreciation rather than a participation in the much deeper mystery. The ego was still in charge, and I often saw people creating victims of others who were not like them. It was still a power game, not the science of love that Jesus taught us.

When we begin by connecting with our inner experience of communion rather than separation, our actions can become pure, clear, and firm. This kind of action, rooted in one’s True Self, comes from a deeper knowing of what is real, good, true, and beautiful, beyond labels and dualistic judgments of right or wrong. From this place, our energy is positive and has the most potential to create change for the good.”

‘It is normally three steps forward, two steps backwards, and, as Lady Julian of Norwich says, “Both are the mercy of God.”

(I wish I could see the mercy in the backward momentum of this Universal equation.)

New Moon

🌑

❁

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

I often contemplate, particularly now, where our country would be without the influences of Rupert Murdoch and the state media he has created in the U.S. He began his residency in 1974 and became a U.S. citizen in 1985 after relinquishing his Australian citizenship, the legal requirement for US television network ownership. He established the FOX News Channel in 1996, the same year former president Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act, overhauling 60 years of regulation. Murdoch thrived. And he is destroying us.

Astute and true:

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said her country doesn’t have to deal with the “rage of older white men” because “we’ve never allowed Rupert Murdoch to set up a media outlet here.”  

The veracity of the quote is being questioned. Regardless, he shouldn’t have been able to start his media empire here, and Clinton shouldn’t have sold us out. Cue Roger Ailes and Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh. And here we are.

•DT
•Insurgency
•Plague
•Climate Crisis
•War

Our existential soup. Could we please hold off on adding any more ingredients? Maybe let this batch simmer for awhile.

Gen. Mark A. Milley on the Russian invasion of Ukraine: “We are witness to the greatest threat to peace and security in Europe – and perhaps the world – in my 42 years of service in uniform.”

Ukainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (C) speaks to the press in the town of Bucha, northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, on April 4, 2022. – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on April 3, 2022 the Russian leadership was responsible for civilian killings in Bucha, outside Kyiv, where bodies were found lying in the street after the town was retaken by the Ukrainian army. (Photo by RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP) 

Anne Baring, The Dream of the Cosmos-A Quest for the Soul:

p. 273

“Evil has its origin in this deeply unconscious predator-prey pattern of behavior. I think that, in relation to the harm we are capable of inflicting on the human beings, evil may be defined as the act of inflicting terror, suffering, humiliation, torture or yeah on an individual or group of individuals ranging in kind from the murder of a child to the atrocities currently taking place in Syria (2012) to the viciously cruel attacks on others on Facebook and Twitter. One of the most difficult things to recognize is that each one of us in capable of acting in a hateful cruel or evil way, or of being complicit in these ways of behaving, whether as an individual or as the member of a government, institution, corporate body or nation. […] The fact that an International Court of Justice now exists to try those who commit such crimes against human unity is evidence of collective progress in moral awareness. But this progress requires perpetual vigilance lest we slip back into old unconscious habits. [2013]

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to the United Nations Security Council today. Here is the link to watch his speech and listen to the statements by various countries after he spoke. There were technical issues with the video he wanted to share with the council, at about 1:15:00 into their remarks, the video was shown. We want to look away, we can not. Ever.

From The Hill:

‘If Russia is not removed from the council, Zelenskyy said the body should just be dissolved.

“If there is no alternative and no option, then the next option would be dissolve yourself altogether,” he said.

The Ukrainian president proposed a global conference to convene in Kyiv to discuss reforms to the United Nations.

“It is now clear that the goals set in San Francisco in 1945 for the creation of a global security international organization have not been achieved, and it is impossible to achieve them without reforms,” he said.’

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“I don’t know where we fall in the legacy of life.”
-Sean Penn

We crave leadership, and authenticity.

---

Matthew Fox, a spiritual theologian.

“Rabbi Heschel teaches that a prophet’s primary task is to interfere. Julian of Norwich, by calling us to interfere with patriarchy and heal the wounds that it has wracked upon human history and the human soul and the earth, beckons u from folly to wisdom. Are we listening?”

Fr Richard Rohr:

“Stage One people: At this level tend to be preoccupied with the pleasure, security, safety, and defense of their material state. And that extends to their morality: If it makes me feel secure, it is moral. Life is largely about protecting myself. This is seen in the endless need for war and guns, but little need for education culture, the arts, and spirituality. Stage One people are mostly dualistic, either/or thinkers, and frankly represent a rather sizable minority of humans. Their morality largely has to do with maintaining their group, and regarding their group as superior.”

🌻

‘For never was a horror experienced without an angel stepping in from the opposite direction to witness it with me.’

-Rilke

This is an incredible time where the opportunity to bring in miracles and magic is strong.

Power comes from spirit and your essence and is fed and supported by the elements and energies more powerful than you such as the sun, the earth, nature, the stars, your imagination etc. You can be empowered or allow yourself to be disempowered through a trauma, karma or lessons, but another person cannot truly give or take away your power as they cannot ever truly give you any.

We have a tremendous opportunity to move through this and access the amazing landscape of love.

-Power Path

Krista Tippett reflecting on her time with poet and Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver.

Life had moved forward, as it does. It was now composed of ingredients, as it always is, that neither she nor I would have been able to imagine.

‘We’re in yet another moment in the life of the world where we might unsee the beauty or imagine it overshadowed, defeated, or simply less powerful than what would steal it from us, blot it out. What a gift to re-summon Mary Oliver’s presence for this time. I hope you feel that, too.”

Listen.

Mary Oliver — “I got saved by the beauty of the world.”

From Global Citizen ⭕️

APRIL 8TH, 2022

Center for Action & Contemplation

‘Our fears offer us an invitation to engage with the discomfort of the inner places. Will you give your fear a chance to speak to you?  

Ask, What is this trying to show me? or What else might be going on? Give yourself some time, and delve into the fear.’

Catastrophization

And it’s exhausting. Catastrophe fatigue sets in, and we end up losing interest and drifting away, until the next emergency arrives.

Catastrophization ends up distracting us from the long-term systemic work we signed up to do. It’s a signal that we care about what’s happening right now, but it also keeps us from focusing on what’s going to happen soon.

The best way to care is to persist in bending the culture and our systems to improve things over time.

-Seth Godin

Friday, March 25th, 2022

‘The patriarchal heart, the reptilian brain, myst dominate and subjugate, at least until it undergoes a conversation experience.’ -Matthew Fox

Still waiting.

Business Insider

‘Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in her final op-ed before her death Wednesday recalled her unease after her first meeting with Vladimir Putin when he took power 20 years ago. 

In the piece published in the New York Times on February 23, the day before Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, Albright recalled her first impressions of the new Russian leader after meeting him in 2000.

He had just taken over from Boris Yeltsin as Russia’s leader, and was acting president. At the time, Albright was President Bill Clinton’s secretary of state.

“Sitting across a small table from him in the Kremlin, I was immediately struck by the contrast between Mr. Putin and his bombastic predecessor, Boris Yeltsin,” recalled Albright. 

“Flying home, I recorded my impressions. ‘Putin is small and pale,’ I wrote, ‘so cold as to be almost reptilian.'”

In the essay, Albright went on to warn that if Russia invaded Ukraine it would be “an historic error,” and described the consequences Russia would likely face, including a determined Ukrainian resistance, crippling economic sanctions, and a galvanized NATO alliance.

https://www.businessinsider.com/albright-described-putin-as-almost-reptilian-in-final-op-ed-2022-3

‘Julian (of Norwich) is a truth-teller who shines a bright light on the need for feminine wisdom.’

#DissolveThePatriarchy

“Suffering and death are everywhere, from roadkill to mass shootings to tsunamis: We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now, and not only creation, but we ourselves . . .” (Romans 8:22–23). Labor pains implies that suffering is woven into the process of creation from the very start, and it continues through the birth of the new creation.”

-Father Richard Rohr

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🕊

Thursday, March 24th, 2022

Slava Ukraini

‘Perhaps Sartre was not far wrong in saying that where freedom is abused, society itself turns into hell.’

L’enfer c’est les autres.

Richard Rohr, Center for Action and Contemplation:

“When you say you love God, you are saying you love everything (being Gaia). That’s why mystics can love the foreigner, the outsider; in fact, they cannot not love them, because they see truthfully and fully!”

“Return of the Divine Feminine (Mary Magdalene). As the late physicist David Bohm put it, ‘Something more than siren is needed.’ Values are needed, as well as the passion and courage to live them and put them into practice.”

-Matthew Fox

“Meister Eckhart, “Nature is grace.” Creation spirituality. A return to love.

Gnostic gospels of Thomas, Philip and Mary, right practice v. right behavior, the Canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopalian priest:

‘Mary Magdalene’s place of honor is so strong that even the heavy land of a later (300 years), male-dominated ecclesiology cannot entirely dislodge it. […] The high position she held among the close followers of Jesus is more explicitly shown in the Gnostic Gospels where Mary Magdalene is seen as “First among the the Apostles”, not because she was the first on the scene at the ressurectioin but in a more fundamental way: because she gets the message. Of all the disciples, she is the only one who fully understands what Jesus is teaching and can reproduce it in her own life. Her position of leadership is earned, and it is specifically validated by Jesus himself.’

Again, it’s right belief v. right practice. Spiritual Creation is practice. “When you love god, you love everything. That’s why the musics can love the foreigner, the outsider; in fact, they cannot not love them, because they see truthfully and fully” (Richard Rohr).

“The world will only change as we change.”

[Now on Netflix]

Marianne Williamson:

“America has lost its capacity to respond to an emergency. Materialism and consumerism have made us dense and sluggish and unable, or unwilling, to collectively respond to even dangers in our midst.” ❁

Slava Ukraini 🌻

‘You can cut all the flowers,

but you cannot keep spring from coming.’

-Pablo Neruda

Wednesday, March 16th, 2022

[Church of the Voyager, Coronado, California.]

Ukraine’s colors remind us of light, in so much darkness.

Marianne Williamson:

Pave a way for me out of darkness into l i g h t. 

‘Great people are not those who have never fallen down. Great people are those who, when they do fall down, dig deep within themselves and find the strength to get back up. Today may I be someone who rises from the ashes of (the) past.’

#StandingWithUkraine

‘I’m with Meduza’

Defend the Truth

Independent Russian news.

From Meduza:

“We need your help. Right now.

The Kremlin is doing everything in its power to hide the truth about its war against Ukraine. Russia is under military censorship. The authorities prohibit the press from calling this full-scale invasion of Ukraine a war, and they threaten journalists who publish independently verified information about the conflict with up to 15 years in prison.

Meduza was launched in Europe in 2014, shortly after Russia annexed Crimea. For eight years, we have worked to produce independent journalism under the most unfavorable conditions. Millions of people in Russia now rely on our reporting. But a few days ago, our journalists were forced to leave the country.

Since the outbreak of this war, transferring money from Russia to Europe has been impossible. We lost 30,000 donators. At the moment, we get no money from Russia at all.

In this situation, we turn to you. We ask you to take the place of our dedicated supporters in Russia. Save Meduza for our Russian readers — and for yourself.

We have a duty to tell the truth. We have millions of readers in Russia who need us. Without independent journalism, it will be impossible to stop this monstrous war.”

https://support.meduza.io/en

“We are, like Dante, lost in a dark forest, with no sense of orientation. An increasing process of abstraction has demolished our human values, leaving in total command that ultimate abstraction which is the general exchange value for all goods and services: money.

And it may well be that, like Dante, we will have to go through hell and purgatory in order to access our true nature, which is, all wisdom traditions teach us, love.

It will not be an easy journey. It is our collective spiritual task and It will require that we recognize not just the evil which is out there, visible and obvious, but the subtler forms of its inner counterpart, the subtle ways in which we are all partaking of the collateral damage.

We need to be inner and outer warriors, so that pure love may shine, l’amor che muove il sole e l’altre stelle (the love which moves the sun and the other stars).”

Shantena Sabbadini, Director

The destruction and murder deepens today.

“More bodies will come, from streets where they are everywhere and from the hospital basement where adults and children are laid out awaiting someone to pick them up. The youngest still has an umbilical stump attached.”

From British journalist Carole Cadwalladr:

Oh my god. You can see the words written perfectly clearly, both in front & back of the building: “DETI” = “CHILDREN”

From AP News:

By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV, EVGENIY MALOLETKA and LORI HINNANT

MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — The bodies of the children all lie here, dumped into this narrow trench hastily dug into the frozen earth of Mariupol to the constant drumbeat of shelling.

There’s 18-month-old Kirill, whose shrapnel wound to the head proved too much for his little toddler’s body. There’s 16-year-old Iliya, whose legs were blown up in an explosion during a soccer game at a school field. There’s the girl no older than 6 who wore the pajamas with cartoon unicorns, among the first of Mariupol’s children to die from a Russian shell.

They are stacked together with dozens of others in this mass grave on the outskirts of the city. A man covered in a bright blue tarp, weighed down by stones at the crumbling curb. A woman wrapped in a red and gold bedsheet, her legs neatly bound at the ankles with a scrap of white fabric. Workers toss the bodies in as fast as they can, because the less time they spend in the open, the better their own chances of survival.

“The only thing (I want) is for this to be finished,” raged worker Volodymyr Bykovskyi, pulling crinkling black body bags from a truck. “Damn them all, those people who started this!”

More bodies will come, from streets where they are everywhere and from the hospital basement where adults and children are laid out awaiting someone to pick them up. The youngest still has an umbilical stump attached.

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-mariupol-descends-into-despair-708cb8f4a171ce3f1c1b0b8d090e38e3

From Pope Francis:

Tuesday, March 8, 2022

“We’ve all seen the heartbreak that people are experiencing. We can’t assume that if we just provide the shelter and the food and the clothing that people will be fine. As they always do when they’re forced to flee their homes, people need mental health and psychosocial support, and that’s something we’re especially focusing on.”

America

The Jesuit Review

THE PLIGHT OF UKRAINE’S WOMEN

by, Kevin Clarke

A Ukrainian volunteer Oleksandr Osetynskyi, 44 holds a Ukrainian flag and directs hundreds of refugees after fleeing from the Ukraine and arriving at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, Monday, March 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)

“As they escape from the war, refugees will face different threats. The escalating scale of the crisis has left responders at the border struggling to keep up. Tracking new arrivals has been especially challenging. More than 1.2 million have fled into Poland; a vigorous response is being joined there and in other border nations by a number of Catholic humanitarian relief organizations, including Catholic Relief Services, Caritas, Jesuit Refugee Service and Malteser International”

https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/03/08/international-womens-day-unprecedented-refugee-crisis-ukrainian-women

Please consider Global Giving for your humanitarian support of Ukrainian refugees. -dayle

https://www.globalgiving.org

Ukraine 🇺🇦

International Women’s Day

Posted on social media by Kristina Berdynskykh via Oleksiy Sorokin, Kyiv Independent

March 1, 2022

[Revolutionary Love]

It’s amazing to see the West discover Ukrainians for themselves—and fall in love.

-Julia Ioffe, Journalist, Puck News

G L O R Y T O U K R A I N E!

G L O R Y T O HEROS!

Find President Zelenskyy’s address to the UN from this morning, and listen. -dayle

Do you hear the people sing?

Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom
In the garden of the Lord.
They will walk behind the plough-share,
They will put away the sword.
The chain will be broken
And all men will have their reward.

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes…
Tomorrow comes!

[Les Miserables]

🇺🇦

“We are here.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

Ukraine citizens in the Donetsk wave their flag and sing the national anthem before the Russia war

The whole world is watching. It’s unraveling quickly for Putin’s war. Former Ambassador to Russia under Obama Dr. Michael McFaul:

“I’ve watched and listened to Putin for over thirty years. He has changed. He sounds completely disconnected from reality. He sounds unhinged.”

From former German Chancellor Angela Merkel,

“who has had more experience with Putin than any other Western leader during 16 years win power & could also converse with/him directly in Russian: Russia’s war of aggression marks a profound turning point in European history after the end of the Cold War” [AFP].

W A R

Will we not ever leave behind the most deadly century in human history?

“The 20th Century’s atrocities of war (42 million persons killed in the Second World War alone), of nuclear power (Hiroshima and Nagasaki as curtain raisers on this) and of ecological degradation, were not caused by evils forces ‘out there’ or ‘abroad somewhere.’ These happened and are happening at the hands and minds of university graduates and our university intelligentia. The 20th century accomplished mass slaughters of our species…90 million killed in military conflict and another 80 million killed in social pogroms by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and others. Zbigniew Brzezinski calls this the ‘politics of organized insanity.’ These numbers are, as Brzezinski observes, ‘more than the total killed in all previous wars, civil conflicts, and religious persecutions throughout human history.’ Friedrich Nietzsche, as James Garrison points out, intuited a century earlier that human rationality was heading towards an ‘orgy of violence.’ We have passed through that orgy. What now? What is education’s role in all of this?  It is time for some morality. For some choices. For some wisdom. It takes ethics and morality to use power humanely. It takes wisdom to curb knowledge, to steer it for the greater good, to turn the lead of power (knowledge) into the gold of wisdom. […] If our species cannot move from knowledge to wisdom, we are doomed (pp.59-60). 

-Matthew Fox, 2006

War. Death. Annihilation. 

One. Man.

One.

Again. And again. And again.

“War means pain, mud, blood and the death of thousands…tens of thousands of deaths.”

-Journalist based in Moscow for the NYTimes, Anton Troianovski

Photograph by Pierre Crom / Getty

“When Putin encounters Ukrainian resistance, he will respond the only way he knows: with devastating force. The loss of life will be staggering. Watching it will make it impossible to live and to breathe.”

-New Yorker writer Masha Gesson

The Crushing Loss of Hope

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-crushing-loss-of-hope-in-ukraine

Lieutenant Igor Demischuk of 🇺🇦 Ukraine’s 95th Airborne Brigade.
Killed in action in Donbas on February 21.
He was 29.

Posted on social media by Illia Ponomarenko @IAPonomarenko 🇺🇦 Defense reporter with The Kyiv Independent. “A village guy from Donbas in a crusade for something better.”

War, 
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing.

Doctrine of Infallibility

National Review

Jonah Goldberg

Trump’s Defenders Have Adopted a Doctrine of Infallibility

As with so many words and ideas, “cult of personality” in the modern sense probably begins with Karl Marx, who used “personality cult” in a letter to a friend in 1877. Nikita Khrushchev cited that passage (and several later ones by Marx) in his famous 1956 “secret speech,” formally titled “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences.

‘A cult of personality that replies “Trump’s right” or “his enemies are worse” before the question is even asked is the only place to hide. A doctrine of infallibility is the only defense of this deeply fallible man.’

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/trump-defenders-have-adopted-a-doctrine-of-infallibility/

“If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder!” —Rep. Barbara Jordan, 1974

Free Press/Fourth Estate: Ukraine

[A college newspaper broke this story.]

The State Press:

Executive Director of the McCain Institute Kurt Volker resigned from his position as the U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine Friday, following reports he collaborated with Ukraine and President Donald Trump.

An ASU official confirmed Volker’s resignation Friday, and said the University could not speak about his future at ASU because the University does not comment on personnel matters.

Volker met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Friday to announce he would be resigning, the official said.

Volker’s name was mentioned in the recent whistleblower complaint, which has sparked an impeachment inquiry for Trump. Trump has defended his actions, including a phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky where Trump requested dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden.

The complaint details that Trump told his staff to cut aid to Ukraine unless they helped find information on presidential candidate Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

According to the complaint, Volker helped organize meetings with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Ukrainian officials.

The complaint also alleges that Volker went to Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, to help guide Ukraine officials on how to handle Trumps’s demands.

Editor’s Note: This is a breaking story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Reach the reporter at ajhowar6@asu.edu and follow @andrew_howard4 on Twitter.

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