Democracy 9.0 a new OS

live 8

Africa Debt Cancellation. Poverty, AIDS. Dr. Martin Luther King. Live 8. G8 2005.

Free Verses to share here, with World Friends, about the common goal, ending poverty. Often in Biblical cadence.

THE VERSES THAT FOLLOW:

VERSE ONE: THE MAN FROM AMERICA
VERSE TWO: THE LIVE 8 NATIONS
VERSE THREE: INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT
VERSE FOUR: BREAD UPON THE WATERS
VERSE FIVE: THE DEATH MARCH IN AFRICA
VERSE SIX: BIG ISSUES OF THE PAST
VERSE SEVEN: "BIG ISSUES OF THE PRESENT
VERSE EIGHT: JOB OF THE PRESIDENT

VERSE NINE: THE LAND OF AFRICA
VERSE TEN: THE DEATH OF ALL CHILDREN
VERSE ELEVEN: DAWNING OF THE LIGHT
VERSE TWELVE: REMEMBRANCE OF TIMES PAST
VERSE THIRTEEN: OVER THE HORIZON
VERSE FOURTEEN: CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE
VERSE FIFTEEN: SETTING THE PATTERN
VERSE SIXTEEN: THE SECRET



VERSE ONE: THE MAN FROM AMERICA

You see, there was a man in America, back in the Fall of 2003.

He had a Vision, which he put into writing at the time, of this very event, now called Live-Aid.

Now manifest.

And today, in the Summer of 2005, he Saw that it had finally become Real.

His Vision. Our Vision.

Everything he had called out for, and foresaw.

It is now.

The underground Voices of Humanity well up from within all of us. His was one.

This is a part of his Story. His Dream

Live 8 happened because of the collective Dreams of all.

Here is what happened.

He simply went to a public meeting place, with the Vision he had written up.

It was rather lengthy, and mostly about politics. Forty or so pages of it.

One of the Visions therein was of a colloboration of music concerts, on the model of the original Live-Aid, but on a much bigger scale.

Exactly what is unfolding, almost two years later.

The man simply handed out the bulky 40 page text to whoever happened to cross his Path.

And he left other copies of the manuscript lying around, for whoever might come across it to pick up and read.

His theory being: if he pushed and pulled to try to make this happen himself, he might choose the wrong path, the wrong persons.

He reasoned: better that he simply "cast his bread upon the waters," and let God carry his message wherever, and to whomever, would be the best places and persons to make it real.

He recalled, in the writing he handed out and distributed at the time, the original Live-Aid, Woodstock and "We Are the World," as colloborations of musicians.

The Vision he saw in his political text was of a much bigger project, this time in many countries simultaneously.

He wrote then: "A similar musical project, now, could serve, once again, to bring the focus of the World upon this unnecessary calamity."

That calamity being, the same as the Live-Aid cause now: the long, slow, Death March in Africa.

Time has passed. More time than at first envisioned.

And in that time, many lives have been lost.

And lost forever.



VERSE TWO: THE LIVE 8 NATIONS.

Well, the Concerts are here now. Still, the man's original Vision and the Reality now are remarkably similar.

This was real.

Slight details differ, in the transition from Vision to Reality, from the Fall of 2003 to the Summer of 2005.

He foresaw nine countries then. And two smaller events. In other words, 9 + 2: 9/11.

Almost exactly what has turned out.

On the countries themselves, he was more or less half right.

He saw England, Germany, the United States, Japan.

Prophecy is not always accurate, in every detail. His Vision was, "a major country on every continent."

So he thought: Brazil, India, Jordan.

This did not happen.

He did see Nelson Mandela as being a big part of it.

This has happened.

And it took much longer to happen than first he thought.



VERSE THREE: INTERVIEW WITH THE PRESIDENT

In the 40 page Political Text he wrote, a fictional American President is interviewed by a New York city newspaper in the year 2007, looking back on his political career.

We pick up the narrative here:

THE NEWSPAPER: "You made frequent comparisons or connections between "We Are the World, "Live Aid," and the original Woodstock.

THE PRESIDENT: "Woodstock, unintentionally at the time, became a transforming experience for the whole country. Here we had all came together...for three days of 'Peace and Love.' We had thought we were just going to a concert--albeit, a very big one.

But something unexpected happened when we got there. We looked around at each other, at everyone who had come, and there was a flash of recognition: Hey! We're in the Majority in this Country!

Without that experience of collective identity, of feeling our power all linked together, perhaps Vietnam would have dragged on a lot longer. We became in that moment...'Woodstock Nation.'"

THE NEWSPAPER: "...Maybe in some subtle, metaphysical way, Woodstock may have had something to do with ending Vietnam. But your concept seems to have been one of adding on other dimensions to simply a musical concert. To involve greater numbers of people, in more complex ways?

THE PRESIDENT: "From the beginning I envisioned something much bigger, and multi-dimensional: a series of concerts, this time planetary. The end result, when you put it all together: nothing less than the largest scale artistic collaboration in human history."

THE NEWSPAPER: "How exactly was this supposed to work? How was a concert, or even a series of them to benefit Africa, supposed to translate...Most people hearing this for the first time probably scratched their heads and said, 'I don't get it? What's the connection?'"

THE PRESIDENT: "...It was a promotional event. It was a way of saying, subtly and not-so-subtly: that the people themselves had to assert leadership. This was a cultural politics, bypassing the conventional arena."



VERSE FOUR: BREAD UPON THE WATERS

Having written his text, the beginning part in the form of an open letter, the man ended the first section with these words:

"...I let it go, to find whatever manifestation in reality it can. Or cannot. It's all up to you now. Whoever happens to read this, passed from hand to hand. It does not matter who I am. I was spiritually guided to write what I have written. The idea alone is all that counts.

"Perhaps one or another of you who reads this, will transmit it to the right person. So that one will give it to another, and to another, and so on. Perhaps someone else within the community of Musicians, famous or not, will heed my call...."

"I have written in Metaphor, one individual speaking to another. As we must all some day do, more and more, if our nation is to be healed. We are all, in the end, Individuals. As are all the Nameless Ones who suffer and die. And we must reconnect in this way."

"Do with this whatever you are inspired to. But please don't break the link. Do your small part, whatever that might be. The Chain of Being, to survive, must be supported and sustained by a vital Chain of Information....

"Some way or another, if my Call speaks to you, and to all of us, it will be heeded. And the Divine will find some Way of making it real. In this I trust and believe."

"And we shall gather in Unity. And the World be made whole again."

"And we shall be Free."



VERSE FIVE: THE DEATH MARCH IN AFRICA

So here we all are now. The unknown, obscure New York City man, watching his Vision unfold.

And more words come now:


Friends,

The Death March in Africa, in these dawning years of the 21st century, is the largest scale tragedy, in the making, in human history.

From starvation.

From preventable disease.

From lack of clean water.

From the slow strangulation of the noose of debt

From AIDS.

The AIDS death toll alone may reach 100 million over the decade, if nothing is done to alter its course.

That's seventeen Holocausts.

Count them.

What is missing here? To avert the calamity?

Merely things in themselves simple, and small.

The problems of Africa only seem big, and complex, as a matter of scale.

But you know what?

Look around you.

We're in the majority in this World.

Believe it.



VERSE SIX: BIG ISSUES OF THE PAST


And what of America?

Where IS America?

And too: Where are all the other rich countries?

In this time, when the rich have never been richer?

As they call them the G8:

Canada. United Kingdom. Germany. France. Italy. Japan. Russia. And of course, the United States.

Of the American President, particularly: where is he?

His job, should he choose to take it seriously, is supposed to be about the very largest issues of our time.

All prior American Presidents understood this.

It was an American President who lead America out of the Great Depression, and later to victory in World War Two.

Later Presidents and Peoples of America struggled with the Great Issues of our time.

The threat of nuclear proliferation.

The race to the moon, and journey to the stars.

Racial justice and equality.

The War on Poverty in the US.

The emancipation of Women

The Cold War.

Big issues, indeed.




VERSE SEVEN: "BIG" ISSUES OF THE PRESENT


And what, you may ask, are Great Issues of our own time? As defined by American political leaders and the media, in the dawning years of the New Century?

The Great Struggle to hold fast to the Ten Commandments in public places.

Keeping one lone, brain dead woman on a feeding tube alive, no matter the cost in human suffering.

Preventing the total collapse of the Bonds of Holy Matrimony, and with it much of Western Civilization As We Know It, by....

Outlawing the carnal union of man with man.

Above all: Endless and massive media consumption of the Grand Parade of personal tragedies and celebrity trials.

Little girls murdered under mysterious circumstances.

Individuals of all kinds and stations in life abducted.

Of interest, however, only if the story has a good plot line, and the abductee is suitably empathetic and....white.

What else?

An endless succession of Black Men on Trial.

When one Media Circus ends, the next one picks up where the last left off. To keep the image of Threatening Black Men ever present in the mind's eye, ever renewed.

And so, the thought is continually re-injected into the lifestream and consciousness of America:

"No matter how high they rise, or far they fly, in the end, you know what he is. He's just another...."

As they said in ancient Rome, Quo Vadis? Who benefits?

My guess would be: white politicians.



VERSE EIGHT: JOB OF THE PRESIDENT.


But back to Africa, the origin of all peoples of color.

And back to the American President. What is his job?

The job of the American presidency ceased long ago to be only a leadership of America itself, as one country, first amongst equals.

As the one remaining superpower, the modern American presidency is essentially a presidency of the world.

And the time is long overdue for American presidents to truly shoulder their planetary responsibilities.

If the largest scale tragedy in human history is not an issue of the highest priority to the President of the United States, or to any of the other leaders of the most economically powerful countries on the planet, then surely we have completely lost our moral compass.

The word comes in from all corners of the globe: we may be dying as a species. We are perhaps on the verge of poisoning it, to such an extent that there may not be time enough for us, and the great Earth itself, to recover.

It is, perhaps, a Chain of Death, of just deserts long deferred, that rises like a mighty and merciless tidal wave, all around us.

The Death of Humanity in Africa.

The Slow Death of the Planet itself.

As the Rivers of Poison wash over the Earth.

And the Winds of Poison blow over the oceans, from land to land to land.

And back again.

And the Voices of Poison call out to the Inner Poison of fear, and greed, and hate.

And the bowels of the Earth wrench and strain. And spew forth the great groaning relief of all its suffering.

And the lands move, and shake.

And the Cities of Men tumble and fall.

And the vital Spirit of Earth, of Mother Gaia, crys out in pain, and long endurance and forebearance.

A patience that might one day end.



VERSE NINE: THE LAND OF AFRICA.


In the land of Africa, the plague of hopelessness and despair previsions the depopulation and devastation of an entire continent.

Nothing like this has ever happened on this planet since the Black Plague, six hundred years ago.

A quarter of the population of Europe perished then.

Yes, Humanity recovered. But we might not, this time.

Our political leaders have failed us. Utterly and completely. We stand alone, abandoned, seemingly helpless to do anything, while we watch in horror.

We all go about our daily lives, seemingly oblivious to it, numbed by the sheer magnitude of the pandemic.

We must act for ourselves now. We, the people of the world.

All over this fragile, blue gren planet, in every country, there are no rulers of Vision, to lead the way.

No Great Leaders to seize the reins of History, for our time.

We are adrift. Rudderless, on a ship of world peril.

If we do not act: no one else will.

They have not ears to hear, the deafening cries of the dying. They have not eyes that can see, the chain of being linking the fate of the dying, with our own.

What will we tell our children, and all the children of Man to follow? Assuming we have any, in the final scene of this Armageddon of poverty and disease? Of neglect and abandonment?

That we stood by and did nothing?

That we did not act, 'to save our own lives'?

We must, all together now, again raise aloft the banner of hope and caring.



VERSE TEN: THE DEATH OF ALL CHILDREN.


How will we feel, that day, if they should come to tell us that all the children of the world had just died?

How close we are now, perhaps, to treading the very path that leads to this final outcome.

I see them now. Their bodies emaciated, care-worn, resigned to a fate they do not understand. Looking to us, the Elders, on whom they depend.

And we are not there.

And the wretched of the Earth shall cry out in their millions. And raise up their voices to Heaven.

And hear only Silence.

And they, the Children of Earth, shall wander a continent in desolation and despair, seemingly abandoned by God.

A death preceded by the deaths of the Elders, on whose caring hands and loving hearts they depended, for the very milk of existence.

What would be their fate then? Surely, a long, slow, agonizing path to the same dark and fathomless place.

As close to a Final Outcome of "all children dying," as could ever arrive.

And then, the breeding ground for still more deaths through war, and the breakdown of civil society.

A downward spiral of death and destruction, which no man is wise enough to see the end of.

We know not where this might lead, in the end. Perhaps it is all a bad dream, which must some day end in the dawn of New Life.

The wound on the soul of mankind, of such a catastrophe, upon all people of color, on this entire planet, surely must be unbearable.

No soul can die in Africa, without that wound being felt here in America. And everywhere. By all of us.

But most especially, in the hearts and souls of all who first came from that land. A wound inflicted:

Again.

And Again.

And Again.

One hundred million times.



VERSE ELEVEN: DAWNING OF THE LIGHT.


But do you know, my Friends, that God, all this time, has been searching for a way to bring us back into the Light? To put an end to all our trials?

A tidal wave of gratitude, from all Peoples of the Earth, await the brave and bold souls who will Act now.

A tidal wave of death, is to be met, matched, and surpassed by a tidal wave of life.

And we shall be engulfed, in the Ocean of the Divine.

We will shine now.

Like the Sun, the Moon and the farthest stars.

And be a beacon of light unto the World.

And show true leadership, a leadership of the Spirit.

And the name of this time endure, for a thousand years.

The time when we finally turned the corner, at the darkest hour.
For the gift of precious life, to humanity.

There is no negative or dark power on this Earth that can withstand the awesome power of the Light, of God's unending Love.

And all who are truly good and pure of heart shall be bathed anew in God's Grace. And be reborn in Light. And break free from Bondage.

For no one's heart is hidden from God.

God knows who we really are. And always has.

And what our task must be now, in this profane and suffering world. Our calling in service.

God calls us now We are to perform a task far greater than we have ever known.

It is, perhaps, what we were born to do. This generation now

For the children.

The Souls of all people of color are now in our hands. Perhaps more than we know, or yet understand.

But we will.

Many hands and hearts will join us.

From every continent

From all peoples.

Amen.


VERSE TWELVE: REMEMBRANCE OF TIMES PAST.


I have thought of this often. Knowing this moment would come.

And I have looked back in my mind, so many times, on all the suffering and struggle of all who first came to this country, from Africa, over a span of hundreds of years.

I have thought of how they first came to this strange New World, in chains.

How they died in their millions in the Middle Passage. How they endured three long centuries of slavery.

And how, in the end, a Mighty Contest was waged, a Great Civil War, that finally put an end to it.

Only to begin a hundred years more of struggle. Until, at last, another step forward to the Light. As the Civil Rights struggle of our time was victorious in the end.

And the Souls of Black Folks, and the Souls of White Folks, came closer together, as they had a hundred years before.

One step closer, towards the Light.

That we might be, as Dr. King said in Prophecy, "free at last."

As often as I have thought of this, and the task for us God has prepared, so too have I thought of him, of Dr. King. Of the great soul he was, struck down in his prime.

Of how much we all lost, the day he died.

And where he would be now, were he alive today.

I think you know the answer. We all do.

He would be in Africa. He would be in the Middle East.

He would be, so many places, on this troubled and restless planet.

He would be with the poor and suffering in every land. To raise aloft the banner of hope, as he did then.

And transformed this country.

Now, it is four decades further into the future. And we have not seen his like again.

Now, when we most need him, there is, it would seem, no one to take his place. No one to stride onto the dark stage of History, in Africa, raise a mighty hand, and say: This shall not pass.

But this is not what I See.

That God should abandon us now.

Believe it.



VERSE THIRTEEN: OVER THE HORIZON


For I see, just over the horizon, that we all, Black and White, and people of all color, will do again, what we did before: That, in the end, we all came together in Unity.

That we did not let our leaders succeed in dividing us, one from another.

That their lack of leadership did not fail us. That a leadership from God, from the people themselves, rose up in the final hour.

And we created our own victory, in the Cause of Life itself; the cause most dear to the heart of God.

That we gathered together the scattered shards of Dr. King's Dream, deep inside the hearts of every one of us; and we joined them all together, to make a Mighty, Unconquerable Blaze of Healing, which no force of darkness could withstand.

That we Saw, finally, that the only color there is, or ever was, is the color of God's Limitless Light.

And that all our souls are joined together, working towards a final resolution.

Of a Mighty Work, building now for centuries.

The stakes are the very highest. Tens of millions of people might live. Or, if nothing is done, they will surely die.

And all that we have suffered, and all endured, brothers and sisters alike under the skin, be as it were for nought: being set back so far.

This shall not Be.



VERSE FOURTEEN: CHILDREN OF THE FUTURE

All the souls of the Middle Passage, and all the suffering souls of slavery that followed, down through time, surely must now cry out to Heaven:

"Deliver us, oh God, from the Mightiest Evil yet of our people. We did not fight and endure, for you, our children far into the future, for this to be.

We have honored you with our struggle, that you might one day be as you are: blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh. And Risen Up from Bondage. And carrying forward the Light, that first came from us.

We are so very proud of you, our Children of the Future. All our lives we sacrificed for you, and dreamed of the day you would one day live in freedom.

Never doubt that we look on your lives from Heaven, where we abide in Final Peace, with gladness in our hearts. Proud of your progress. And with you in your trials.

With all our collective will and passion, our Children of the Future, we join our voices together now to ask you to redeem our faith and trust in you.

Honor us now, that our battle was not fought in vain.

Come together.

And act in the Cause of Life."



VERSE FIFTEEN: SETTING THE PATTERN


Whatever happens over the next few years may set the pattern for all that follows.

The Rulers of the strongest nations, during this time, may control the ultimate fate of a Continent.

And of an entire people.

Fear for the fate of millions, if there is no change in this World.

We need a common meeting place, a way of getting this into the public consciousness and awareness, as an issue that cannot be avoided or silenced.

For always it is Silence that Kills.

But, if we came together in Unity.

We would have a chance.

Ultimately, we all must hope. As all others before us have done. And dream again. And believe once again in our true power.

For we are not such beings--Black, or White, or any color--to be defeated now.

Descended from Heaven, we must one day rise up to claim our birthright.

We are still flesh of their flesh, blood of their blood, alike beneath the skin, as our forebears who triumphed before us.

Black and White, we have done all before. Suffered and endured all before, in so many greater ways. And conquered all before.

We must do so again.

Now, more than ever.

Come.

Take my hand.

And the hands of all around you.

Our glorious future is just over the Horizon.





VERSE SIXTEEN: THE SECRET


But I will let you in on a secret.

Something you must already know, in your heart.

Dr. King didn't really die, that awful day. I remember where I was then. I am sure we all do.

Much has happened since then. The onward march, the eyes on the prize: we went forward.

But we should know, after all this time, this one simple truth:

You cannot kill a dream.

As long as there is breath in my body, or in yours, or in any of us on this star crossed planet, his dream can never die.

A thousand years from now, long after we have finally vanquished all Hate, it will still endure.

And shine like the Sun, having come home to God.

A part of the man we once knew as Martin Luther King lives on in all our hearts.

He is here. He has always been here.

He is here with me now, as I write these words.

And he, too, is calling us. Calling you to rise up.

To rise up. To carry on the Dream, in his name.

And if we would but join the dispersed pieces of his Dream all together now, we would raise up a force of God's true power, that no force of Evil could withstand.

And Death, in the final days, shall be vanquished by Life.

And we shall take the Broken Pieces of our lives, the shattered dreams, that weigh us down, from day to day.

And we shall be made whole, by the Grace of God.

And the wandering lost souls of the children of Africa, join with us in world family And reunion.

And we, all God's Children, shall be Free.


God Bless You All.


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