http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNKNEQ6HVSWNGJM
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Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Michael D. Mori
From Unknown News:
"The United States can be very proud of Major Mori. He stands for those "American" values that George Bush and his cronies trumpet long and loud, but rarely seem to uphold. He is proof that there are still people of integrity in the United States. And as an Australian, I am grateful to Major Mori, for reminding the public at large in Australia of our concept that everyone deserves a fair go. Thank you, Major Mori, for restoring my faith in the sheer decency (of most) of my fellow human beings."
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Sunday, August 12, 2007
Rod Langway
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Langway
Back in the 80's, my father was in the position to provide the Washington Capital's hockey team with some courtesy loaner Volvo cars. In exchange for this, the team management provided the car dealership with four sets of season tickets, together in a good seating area.
Meanwhile, dad also became involved with the Big Brothers organization and started mentoring Billy. Several years before, a farmer with a shotgun, angered by a broken windshield on his car, around near where Billy’s brother and some friends had been partying, killed Billy’s biological big brother.
Dad took Billy out in the evenings to quite a few games, helping the situation so that Billy felt like a real hotshot and could bear life again. Occasionally, after winning hockey games, they went down together into the locker room to visit the players. After meeting the savior of the Washington Capitals, Rod Langway, shaking his hand and briefly conversing with him, Billy was in awe. Mr. Langway's should know his brief minutes of kindness left a lasting impression.
Occasionally, Billy would call dad at the showroom; and if Dave Dando or I happened to be walking by, Dad would quickly hand us the phone after saying to Billy, "Hey Billy, your hero Rod Langway just stopped here by to say hello.” Suddenly saddled with this impromptu test, Dave or I would speak to Billy in our deepest voice, while impersonating Mr. Langway, “Thanks for coming to our game last week. I looked up in the stands and saw you there clapping for us" -and things of that nature.
These heroic phone impersonations probably occurred a dozen times. It felt like the right thing to do, enthusiastically perpetuating this hero myth - as Billy certainly needed a boost at the time.
Thinking back on it now, we weren’t steering a myth at all, but reality. Certainly, Mr. Langway would have not minded that we were speaking kind words of encouragement on his behalf to a young troubled boy.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Joe Darby
"His decision to hand them over rather than keep quiet changed his life forever."
"I had a raincoat hanging up for a door. Like I said to my room mate, they could reach their hand in the door - because I slept right by the door - and cut my throat without making a noise, or anybody knowing what was going on, and I was scared of that."
When the accused soldiers were finally removed from the base, he thought his troubles were over.
And then he was sitting in a crowded Iraqi canteen with hundreds of soldiers and Donald Rumsfeld came on the television to thank Joe Darby by name for handing in the photographs.
"I don't think it was an accident because those things are pretty much scripted," Mr Darby says.
"But I did receive a letter from him which said he had no malicious intent, he was only doing it to praise me and he had no idea about my anonymity.
"I really find it hard to believe that the secretary of defence of the United States has no idea about the star witness for a criminal case being anonymous."
Rather than turn on him for betraying colleagues, most of the soldiers in his unit shook his hand. It was at home where the real trouble started."
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Poet Ferlinghetti chased subs in WW2
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/11/11/MNGE4MATPT1.DTL
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"But while serving aboard the troop transport Selinur, he had his most transformative experience of the war. Originally, the Selinur was supposed to deliver attack troops. But after atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered, the men aboard were reassigned to occupation duty. They arrived in Sasebo on the Japanese island of Kyushu in September 1945, not far from Nagasaki.
With two friends, Ferlinghetti secured enough leave to take a train up to Nagasaki to see the devastated area just six weeks after the atom bomb had exploded.
"I saw a giant field of scorched mulch. It sprawled out to the horizon, 3 square miles looking like someone had worked it over with a huge blowtorch. A few sticks from buildings jutted up like black arms," Ferlinghetti says. "I found a teacup that seemed like it had human flesh fused into it, just melted into the porcelain.
"In that instant," says Ferlinghetti, "I became a total pacifist."
It's long been argued that using atomic bombs to compel Japan's unconditional surrender actually saved millions of lives that would have been lost on both sides had the Allies been forced to invade.
Ferlinghetti disagrees.
"It was a monstrous, racist act, the worst the U.S. ever committed," he says. "Had the Japanese been white-skinned, those bombs would not have dropped.""
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