Source: Give me peace
Give me peace
Source: Give me peace
Category Archives: Rebel Posts
Give me peace
Achieve peace with understanding.
“Grant us peace. Your most precious gift,O Eternal Source of Peace, and give us the will to proclaim its message to all the peoples of the earth. Bless our country. that it may always be a stronghold of peace, and its advocate among the nations. May contentment reign between its borders, health and happiness within its homes. Strengthen the bonds of friendship among the inhabitants of all lands, and may the love of your name hallow every home and every heart. Teach us O God, to labor for righteousness, and inscribe us in the book of Life, blessing, and peace. Blessed is the Eternal God, the Source of peace. ”
“May we lie down this night in peace, and rise up to life renewed. May night spread over us a shelter of peace, of quiet and calm, the blessing of rest.
There will come a time when morning will bring no word of war or famine or anguish; there will come a day of happiness, of contentment and peace.
Praised be the Source of joy within us, for the night and its rest, for the promise of peace.”
A time of renewal
Tonight is the first night of the Jewish New Year. Jews around the world are asking for a sweet new year and for health, joy and peace. They go to Temple tonight to ask for a world in attunement, food for the hungry, calmness in our stricken world. They ask for all of the things that when blended together will bring an end to wars and strife.
May all of you find contentment and peace in you lives. And to every Jew, Rosh Hashanah, a happy new year.
Blowing in the Wind
Fifty years ago, there was a folk song that was played frequently on the radio. The song was “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The Vietnam War was going on and so many Vietnamese and our boys were killed. We had a draft here in America and dinner was spent in front of the television. They pulled the numbers of the brothers, friends, boyfriends, cousins that were going to have to go to war. Needless to say, it was gruesome.
The song signified all the questions we had about life on this world. Why people wanted to fight wars. Why we wanted to hurt other human beings. Why life was so dangerous. Some of you will remember this song and many of you will experience for the first time. I hope it makes everyone think. I hope everyone thinks before it is too late.
Where have all the Flowers Gone?
Pete Seeger wrote this song to remind us that when we wage war, we are destroying ourselves. We lose so much during wars. We lose lives, we lose nature and we lose ourselves. It is 2015, and we still haven’t learned.
What I am saying is that war has never fixed anything…not ever.
Namaste
Barbara
Rainbow
On 9/11 in New York, NY, 14 years later. On NBC Nightly News last evening.
Nature Remembers.
Namaste,
Barbara
What College Women Should Know
A 2015 Washington Post – Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 1 of every 5 women in college — 20% — experience either rape or attempted rape while in school.
What can a young woman — or her parents — do to ensure that the college chosen takes this problem seriously, and is poised to assist and prevent?
Here are 5 things they can look for (from Ms. Magazine):
- Read the schools annual crime reports. By federal law, any college or university which receives federal funds must collect statistics on certain crime,s including sexual assault. These reports must be published, and many schools do so on the school’s website. YOu can also use the Dept of Education’s Campus Safety and Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool. (Note: fewer reported incidents do not necessarily mean fewer actual incidents; a lot depends on the climate of the school, and how open they are to such reports. But it’s a place to start.
- Read the campus sexual misconduct policy. Title IX requires that schools mush both adopt and publish grievance procedures, and thoroughly explain how a student may make a complaint. There also must be investigation and resolution procedures, and protocols for disciplinary actions against the perpetrators. It’s important to know how your school defines “consent”. It’s also useful to see what the minimum penalties are for sexual assault vs other offenses, and whether the school has actual met those criterion. By federal law, survivors of sexual assault are required to have no-contact orders and housing available to protect them after an assault, and it’s important to know if your school complies.
- Find out what campus health and emergency services are available to sexual assault survivors. Ideally, there should be a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) on staff, or at the least an agreement with a local hospital to provide one. Will the school provide STI and HIV testing, or offer pregnancy test or emergency contraceptives? Is there access to a facility which can search for all the known substances used in drug-facility rape? Ideally, all these services should be free of charge for survivors.
- Meet your school’s Title IX Coordinator. Every school must have one, and if the coordinator does not have time to meet with you, it may be a sign that they are over-extended and unable to affectively do their job. If you do meet with the coordinator, ask if the school is under investigation, or has entered into a voluntary compliance agreement.
- Look for student activist groups. Peers can be an important resource. Many schools are safer because of student-led prevention and bystander trainings, task forces, social justice clubs, gender and sexual diversity programs, or a Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) with student involvement.
Human Trafficking Continues
Former Sex Slave Says Kayla Mueller Was Killed By ISIS, Not An Airstrike
Yazidi girls share insight about the American aid worker’s time in captivity.
Posted: 09/10/2015 04:44 PM EDT
Several Yazidi girls who were imprisoned by Islamic State militants spoke to the BBC recently about American aid worker Kayla Mueller’s time in captivity.
One of the girls, who gave her name only as Amshe, claims that the Islamic State was responsible for Mueller’s death, based on a conversation she had with Haji Mutazz, the group’s second-in-command. Mutazz was holding Amshe as a sex slave.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS had previously claimed that Mueller was killed in an airstrike by the U.S.-led coalition against the militant group.
Mueller was an American aid worker who began working on the Syria-Turkey border in 2012. ISIS captured her in Syria in August 2013.
The BBC interview, published Thursday, focuses on accounts by Dalal and Susan, two young Yazidi girls who escaped from Islamic State captivity and have since returned to northern Iraq. The girls say they met Mueller when all three shared a prison cell. Their recollections reveal previously unknown details about Mueller’s time as an ISIS prisoner.
U.S. officials told Mueller’s parents in June that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, raped Mueller “repeatedly” while she was in captivity. Dalal and Susan confirmed this to the BBC.
The two girls said Mueller told them that after she was kidnapped, her fingernails were pulled out in an effort to torture her into confessing that she was a spy.
Mueller used notebooks to write of her travels in India and France, and kept busy by reading books. She had learned some Arabic from Islamic State members, according to Susan.
The girls also recounted how caring Mueller was. “When IS brought food for us, Kayla ate very little,” Susan said. “She didn’t want us to be hungry.”
Mueller shared stories about her life in the U.S., while the other two told her of their own lives back home.
When Baghdadi would call for Mueller to pay him a visit, Dalal said she would come back “shaken,” according to the BBC. He allegedly told Mueller that he would behead her unless she married him. Baghdadi subsequently married her and raped her, Dalal explained, though he never referred to her as his slave, the way he did with a Yazidi girl he also raped.
Baghdadi paid extra attention to Kayla, the girls said, and gave her a Quran and a wristwatch as gifts. He dressed her in all black and banned other men in the house from looking at her.
But other men took interest in Kayla, too, Amshe said. Mutazz made Mueller his sex slave as well, viewing her as a trophy because of her American nationality.
That’s also the reason Islamic State leadership ultimately killed Mueller: Amshe says Mutazz told her it was an effort to seek revenge on thee West.
Human trafficking continues to spread its own brand of evil across the planet. ISIS is not taking responsibility for girls being forced into prostitution or being forced to marry ISIS soldiers. There is so much going on in the world right now. There are natural disasters, mass murders, kids dying from heroin. Millions of people live in violence and fear.
There are so many people running for President that it looks like the Indie 500. The items we use for every day life such as food are escalating in price. There are even pockets of Leprosy in our world. There are actually hundreds of thousands of infected people world wide.
There is terrorism, mass murders, Mental health problems are on the rise. So it is easy to allow a problem such as human trafficking to go by the wayside. It is easy to forget the women and children stolen and sold like cattle. Slavery on our globe is alive and well and we need to be alert for people who look like they are terrified or might be trying to send you a look which cries HELP.
There are many things we can do. We can notify the police when a situation looks suspicious. We can listen to women who are being abused at home and advise them to call a Domestic Violence hotline for help. We can be compassionate and look out for others. We can spend our money feeding the poor. We can all do a little volunteer work every week or month. We can let these difficult problems continue or we can all help fight them each in our own way.
All I ask, is for everyone not to turn away from human trafficking, realize that our citizens don’t need guns, and keeping kids in school is vital for their futures. Domestic Violence needs to be eliminated and every human being needs to know that they are important and it is their right to live in freedom.
One day at a time, let us all do one thing to create a world where slavery and violence are defeated.
Let us make a world for ourselves in which all people thrive and flourish in.
Namaste,
Barbara
Slavery – Human Trafficking
Life is a Beach
As many of you know, I was visiting my oldest daughter over the holiday. We went to the beach on Sunday and the weather was forecasted to be a mixed bag of sun and rain. Sunday morning it was raining at the beach and that rain was then moving inland.
We went to the beach while the storm came inland. We went to Holden Beach and it was sunny and beautiful except there were hardly any waves, something Stephanie and I had never seen before. Over the course of a few hours, we had the most interesting sky, which I photographed. It was really a special day at the beach and then we went and ate crab. Here are some of my pictures. I hope you like them.
Photograph and copyright 2015 by Barbara Mattio
Photograph and copyright by Barbara Mattio
Photograph and copyright by Barbara Mattio 2015
photograph and copyright by Barbara Mattio 2015
Photograph and copyright by Barbara Mattio 2015
Photograph and copyright by Barbara Mattio 2015
Photograph and copyright by Barbara Mattio
America the Beautiful
America the Beautiful
Words by Katharine Lee Bates,
Melody by Samuel Ward
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!
O beautiful for pilgrims feet,
Whose stem impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through
wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man’s avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!
This Land is Your Land
This land is your land
–Woody Guthrie
This land is my land
From California to the New York island
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me
As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway
I saw below me that golden valley
This land was made for you and me
I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting
This land was made for you and me
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing
That side was made for you and me
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people
By the relief office I seen my people
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking that freedom highway
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me
America is founded on one idea: That ALL are created equal. Regardless of color, country of origin, religion, ethnicity, sexuality, social class, education, economic status, this land belongs to us all.
May there be no quarrels. May there be no hatred, because truly, this land was made for you and me.
Rest in Peace, Pete Seeger
Namaste,
Barbara
Labor Day Greetings
Labor Song
Ah! Little they know of true happiness, they whom satiety fills,
Who, flung on the rich breast of luxury, eat of the rankness that kills.
Ah! little they know of the blessedness toll-purchased slumber enjoys
Who, stretched on the hard rack of indolence, taste of the sleep that destroys;
Nothing to hope for, or labor for; nothing to sign for or gain;
Nothing to light in its vividness, lightning-like, bosom and brain;
Nothing to break life’s monotony, rippling it o’er with its breath:
Nothing but dullness and lethargy, weariness, sorry and death!
But blessed that child of humanity, happiest man among men,
Who, with hammer or chisel or pencil, with rudder or ploughshare or pen
Laboreth ever and ever with hope through the morning of life,
Winning home and its darling divinities, –love-worshipped children and wife.
Round swings the hammer of industry, quickly, the sharp chisel rings,
and the heart of the toiler has throbbings that stir not the bosom of kings, —
He the true ruler and conqueror, he the true king of his race,
Who nerveth his arm for life’s combat, but looks the strong world in the face
–Denis Florence McCarthy
Hello everyone,
I am going to see some of the grandchildren for the holiday. I hope you enjoy this post. It was fun to put together for you all. I will have pictures when I return and will look forward to reading your posts.
I wish you all fun, safety and a happy heart.
Namaste,
Barbara
idealisticrebel 