Give Peace a Chance

December 8, 2007 > MAUI TODAY, > Maui Yesterdays No Comments
Aloha    

Click for Kahului, Hawaii ForecastBuddha’s Enlightenment
Day 342 of 2007
23 days left in this year
HAWAIIAN WORD OF THE DAY — Pono:  Goodness, hope
 HAWAIIAN PROVERB OF THE DAY — “Break off the point of the spear.”

REMEMBERING JOHN LENNON
December 8th, 1980: Twenty-seven years ago, former Hawaii resident Mark David Chapman murders John  Winston Lennon, shooting him dead in front of his New York City apartment. Lennon sang of peace and tolerance. Americans adored him, and still do.

A month earlier, a has-been bad actor, Ronald Reagan, is elected president of the United States and proceeds to ruin the country with debt, mean-spirited policy decisions and senility-induced scandals, including trading arms to terrorists for hostages and to fund an illegal CIA war. Americans adored him anyway.

The hope and promise of the 1960s and 1970s are officially dead.

HISTORICAL EVENTS ON THIS DAY – December 8th
      1587: 20 years after her arrest, Mary Queen of Scots is executed at Fotheringay Castle
      1776: George Washington’s retreating army crosses the Delaware River during the American Revolution 
      1854: Pope Pius IX proclaims Immaculate Conception, which declares the Virgin Mary free of Original Sin 
      1863: Abraham Lincoln announces a plan for the Reconstruction of South 
      1886: American Federation of Labor (AFL) is formed by 26 craft unions
      1902: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr becomes an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court 
      1931: Coaxial cable is patented 
      1941: The United States (and Britain) declares war on Japan:      
      1966: The U.S. & USSR sign a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space  
      1968: Graham Nash announces the formation of “Crosby, Stills and Nash”, three days after he quit “The Hollies” 
       1992: Operation Restore Hope begins landing on the beaches of Somalia
      1993: President Clinton signs into law the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
      1995: Four months after the death of lead guitarist Jerry Garcia, and 30 years after the group formed, The Grateful Dead announces it is breaking up 
      1998: The Supreme Court rules that police cannot search people and their cars after merely ticketing them for routine traffic violations 
      1999: In a lawsuit filed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s family, a Memphis Tennessee jury finds that the civil rights leader had been the victim of a vast murder conspiracy, not a lone assassin 
BORN ON THIS DAY – December 8th
      65: (BCE) Horace, Rome, lyric poet/satirist
      1708: Francis I, Holy Roman emperor
      1765: Eli Whitney, inventor (Cotton Gin) 
      1865: Jean Sibelius,  composer
      1881: Padraic Colum, Irish poet/novelist/poet
      1886: Diego Rivera, Mexican muralist
      1894: James (Grover) Thurber, humorist 
      1898: Emmett Kelly, circus clown
      1906: Richard Llewellyn, Wales, novelist
      1911: Lee J Cobb, NYC, actor
      1925: Sammy Davis Jr, singer/dancer/actor 
      1930: Maximilian Schell, actor/director
      1933: Flip Wilson, comedian
      1936: David Carradine, actor
      1939: James Galway, flutist
      1939: Jerry Butler,  rock musician
      1943: Jim Morrison,  rock singer
      1944: Neil Innes, musician
      1946: John Rubinstein, Los Angeles, actor/composer
      1947: Gregg Allman, singer
      1952: Richie Morales, drummer
      1952: Sam Kinison, comedian/actor 
      1953: Kim Basinger, actress 
      1953: Roy Firestone, sportscaster
      1959: Paul Rutherford, vocalist
      1966: Siñead O’Connor, singer

Fools for Power

December 8, 2007 Raphael O'Suna No Comments

There is an inevitable end to political and military madness. It doesn’t really matter what type of misadventure — dynastic, imperialistic, militaristic — eventually the pawns and peasants, peons and sacrificed military lose their enthusiasm and gain a bit of sense. After all, propaganda, appeals to patriotism and manufactured threats eventually come face to face with reality.

Unless an invading force rapidly achieves the capitulation of its enemy, the mission and the exploit will fail. Deceit, fabrication and ignorance have shelf lives. People will remain passive and acquiescent, massed under the banner of tribe or nation, for a limited amount of time.

This brings both good news and bad. The good news is that hubris and failure often compel the transference of power. The bad news is that power is transferred to another member of a ruling class, economic or military clique or bloodline. The powerful, governing institutions of state are more concerned with the maintenance and transference of power than with collective welfare.

Great institutions and organizations of state, capital, religion and armed force, never question the assumptions which brought them into being. Science seems to move progressively forward. Power, however, would rather decorate a saddle, than create a car. Unless, of course, the car will increase power, profit or control.

The power-wielders, the controllers of natural resources and the receivers of great fortunes in unearned income from absentee ownership, care not one whit about those who ignorantly support, emulate and celebrate them.

– Raphael O’Suna, Haiku