ENKINDLER

Greetings!

My hope is that everyone is well. I am well, despite my wife fighting the flu. This winter I have kept busy balancing my three teenagers and full time job at the hospital. I have also been working overtime, so my time has been short for writing. My prayers have been with those suffering in Kosovo and Tibet. During the last quarter of this year so many of the daily headlines have left me speechless. Therefore, I have spent a lot of time pondering. My thoughts become conversations in my head. Conversations that lead to debates than only subside when I reach the inner courtroom of silence. The inner sanctuary, where darkness is blessed by light. With so much double talk in the media, it becomes increasingly necessary to find the time to contemplate the world in we live in. The culmination of absurd information we digest through our eyes and consciousness of our being all seek to sculpt our reality. With so many prognosticators, spin doctors, and perception shapers continually spewing new reality onto age old quandaries, it would seem that Babylon is in full effect. Confusion reigns the airwaves! Therefore, we must use what Jah has given us and THINK!
How ’bout this headline from AP Feb. 2008, “Icelandic Singer-songwriter Bjork banned from China”, “Chinese government demands apology!” Recently, she said said two words at the end of a concert she performed in Shanghai, two words that were apparently so obnoxious and hurtful that they warranted an apology.
The two words, you ask? TIBET, TIBET! Now, if you have ever examined the human rights violations of China, it reads like a how-to book on torture. How could they ever claim indecency while they themselves sponsor torture and killings of Tibetan Monks? Our government here in America subsidizes company’s like Walmart who purchase large amounts of consumer goods from China. If you have not heard Bjork’s song “Declare Independence” from her latest work “Volta”, I urge you to purchase it. Björk dedicated her set-closing song “Declare Independence” to independent Kosovo, which did unilaterally declare independence from Serbia a few days earlier on 17, February 2008. According to her management, she was subsequently and consequently dropped from July’s Exit Festival, which is held in Serbia, in the city of Novi Sad in the northern province of Vojvodina, a major event that each year draws over 150,000 people, half of them from abroad. Sometimes, the only way for the light of truth to expose the darkness is to “stir it up” as Mr. Marley once sang! Not too bad, for someone who stand less than five feet tall.

Blessings,
James Curt Byrum
Free Tibet: Bjork Declare Independence for Tibe in Shanghai

Jah March 2008 first appeared in ReggaeFestivalEguide.com

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