At the petrol station with its attractive, beckoning red and yellow icon, a diverse group gathers to witness.
We recite the narrative of the Niger Delta.
Like supplicants before a mystical altar, we chant one by one—giving evidence of what we have learned.
Like a mantra, like a prayer committed to memory and spoken for generations.
We chant lest we allow ourselves to forget.

In 1956 oil was discovered in the Niger Delta,
an area rich with oil and natural gas,
so rich that Nigeria is now the fifth largest supplier of oil to the
United States.

In 1995, the Ogoni 9, including writer/activist Ken Saro-Wiwa,
were hung for their protest,
hung at dawn by men in red robes,
hung for challenging the corruption of governments and oil companies.

Shell, Chevron, and British Petroleum…
make billions from the area,
billions… while polluting the waters,
billions… while ravaging the land.

The fishermen have nothing,
the farmers have nothing,
the people have nothing…
but sickness and poverty.

Thanks to Linda Kunik and Jon Beau Aeon for edits.

Everything that was not suffered to the end and finally concluded, recurred and the same sorrows were undergone. ~ Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

In recurring - often mystical - dreams, all my presumptions are encapsulated. What, after all, is more presumptuous than a dream?

OMID – HOPE (PERSIAN)

I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return’d to me,
And answer’d “I Myself am Heav’n and Hell:” - The Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam

This dream of hope projects my desires.

I am a witness.

I am amongst men, women and children dressed in long white tunics. We stand barefoot on fertile ground.

At first, there are no words just thousands of smiles that flash like stars. Tears flow, but they are tears of joy.

This is my axis mundi. This is the center of the world – neither heaven nor hell (or both) – where all god heads are worshiped as one (or not). Our feet are planted in the ground like seeds then slowly, tears run together like a river irrigating the land that once bled black blood then almost suffocated itself.

Instead, our tears made more fertile what was once fallow, allowing us to begin to ripen and grow toward a sun that was obscured by smoke, cynicism and hopelessness. All we could do was smile because the oil had changed and we thrived once again in the land of the rising sun. The atrocities are now distant memories and children can dream once more of being queens and kings.

In a recurring dream all my presumptions and hopes are nurtured. It is a dream of possibilities. As a young boy did, once upon a time, I had the audacity to hope that it would come to pass… that it would not disappear when my eyes were unveiled to the light of dawn.

Taft, California

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens - Plato

Law in origin was merely a codification of the power of dominant groups, and did not aim at anything that to a modern man would appear to be justice - Bertrand Russell

Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, and in opposition to it — a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals. - Albert Schweitzer