Congratulations, Al Gore

You earned this Nobel prize for the inconvenient truths you've been telling. (Some of them even more obviously related to peace than your warnings about global warming.)

And congratulations to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as well.

I hope the prize will encourage you to push candidates at every level into seriously grappling with the crisis, before and after their election. Don't let them off easy.

By request: antiwar song

Via Body and Soul, by request of Julia:

While digesting Reader's Digest
In the back of a dirty book store,
A plastic flag, with gum on the back,
Fell out on the floor.
Well, I picked it up and I ran outside
Slapped it on my window shield,
And if I could see old Betsy Ross
I'd tell her how good I feel.

Chorus:
But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.

Well, I went to the bank this morning
And the cashier he said to me,
"If you join the Christmas club
We'll give you ten of them flags for free."
Well, I didn't mess around a bit
I took him up on what he said.
And I stuck them stickers all over my car
And one on my wife's forehead.

[Chorus]

Well, I got my window shield so filled
With flags I couldn't see.
So, I ran the car upside a curb
And right into a tree.
By the time they got a doctor down
I was already dead.
And I'll never understand why the man
Standing in the Pearly Gates said...

"But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
We're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more."

Flag Decal John Prine 1971
Video of Prine performance at Philadelphia Folk Festival 2004

Christian Peacemakers freed!

Norman Kember, Harmeet Sooden, and James Loney were taken from an empty building in a rural area northwest of Baghdad early this morning by British soldiers. Thanks be. Tom Fox's murder is a somber counterpoint to this joyful news. The men were taken to hospital in the Green Zone, but apparently only as a precaution, and should soon be able to see their friends in the Christian Peacemaker Teams and then their families.

The British embassy clearly wished to make this appear as a military operation, emphasizing that U.S. and British forces took part. Foreign Minister Jack Straw said, "It followed weeks and weeks of very careful work by our military and coalition personnel in Iraq, and many civilians as well." Mmm-hm. No shots were fired, the captors were not around. This was a negotiated release. For which I am deeply thankful.

Tom Fox

Friends believe there is that of God in every person. More in some than in others, perhaps.

Tom Fox's inner light shone through his life and work. May his death deepen our commitment to peacemaking.

A member of Langley Friends Meeting has posted a remembrance and appreciation of Tom Fox. The first post of this blog contains a link to his daughter Catharine's appeal for his release, which is something of a eulogy as well.

Update: via Jeanne at Body and Soul, an excellent overview at Electronic Iraq using selections from Tom Fox's Iraq blog.

Donald Rumsfeld is coming to town

On Tuesday, May 16, the Worst SecDef Ever will be here to deliver the graduation address at Virginia Military Institute. As when Bush spoke at VMI in June 2002, the security bubble (a.k.a. "the cone of silence") will probably extend to the edge of town. So the East Lexington bridge over the Maury will be our free speech zone; with any luck, there'll be enough of us to cover the length of the bridge.

Suggestions welcomed for signs, props, and chants. We're going to have fun, despite the grimness of the underlying issues. Rumsfeld has made himself into a cartoon figure of evil: unresponsive arrogance and stupendous, whopping lies wrapped in a package of verbal tics, gee-whiz speaking style, and manic hand gestures.

All neatly captured in one of my favorite Fafnir posts, Drivin with Donald. The post is one of many included in Untidy, a book compilation of blog writing on Rumsfeld. The book came out last year, but the man keeps on providing inspiration...

Holding them in the light

Anas Al-Tikriti is guardedly optimistic. He is the Canadian Muslim who went to Iraq to mediate on behalf of the Christian Peacemaker Team members. He takes the captors' recent silence as a non-ominous sign, at least. By 'silence', he meant the complete cutting of communications that might be a prelude to release. But I was reminded of the kind of silence that Friends appreciate, and of Catharine Fox's wrenching appeal for her father on Democracy Now yesterday:

Above all else, my father is a listener, even when no one is speaking. He values the honesty of silence, and when he speaks, there is a respect and kindness in his voice and a strength that stands in quiet testimony to the life he has chosen to lead.