With the Iraq War an all too recent memory and the war in Afghanistan being further extended as the longest war in US history, President Obama has asked Congress to approve military action against Syria in response to alleged use of chemical weapons by government forces against Syrian civilians. In my opinion, the President should abide by prevailing American public opinion, as well as predominating international preference and rescind his plan to conduct military strikes against Syria at this time. Furthermore, Congress should vote not to authorize such action as requested by the President last weekend.

The American people are tired of seemingly endless and increasingly pointless wars. The memory of the lead-up to the Iraq War is all too fresh in our minds, along with the faulty intelligence (read here “lies”) about the existence of weapons of mass destruction which seemed to have vanished into thin air as soon…

Champion Diana Nyad spoke to the Daily News about her “Xtreme dream”—to swim from Cuba to Florida—and what was going through her mind as she swam for an amazing 53 hours straight. This record-setting adventure is the subject of a new documentary film called The Other Shore, which debuts on September 26, 2013. She explains that “it is not your typical sports film,” stating that “It’s beautiful. It’s poetic. It’s dramatic. It’s not clichéd. It’s real art. It’s who I am.” The Daily News writes:

In treacherous waters one woman showed the world the possibilities of the human spirit. Diana Nyad, a 64-year-old endurance swimmer, achieved her “Xtreme dream” Monday when she became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. Two days later, the New York-born athlete spoke to the Daily News about her plan to raise money for victims of Hurricane…

Writing about the pleasures of retirement, Dan Kadlec says, “There’s a term for late bloomers like Diana Nyad, who stunned the world this weekend with her swimming feat: ageless explorer. You can be one too.” [Also see previous posts New Film: Diana Nyad Tells about Her Swimming and Experience in “The Other Shore” and ‘Never, ever give up’: Diana Nyad completes historic Cuba-to-Florida swim.]

Welcome a new ageless explorer to the fold. Diana Nyad, the 64-year-old woman who swam 110 miles from Cuba to Florida over the Labor Day weekend, offers a glorious example of late-life achievement. She has become an instant inspiration to aging populations around the world. Upon emerging from two days in the water, swollen and breathless, Nyad declared, “We should never, ever give up…you are never too old to chase your dreams.”

With those sparkling words she ascended to a leadership role for her generation…

Open the door to the past

look just there

toward the horizon of unfulfilled dreams

can you see her

yes she was the county’s beauty queen

the broad young man

in  red and gold

our school’s rising star

making an unbelievable catch

what stories could be told

*

I wanted nothing more

than to save children

average unassuming doctor

where there was no translation

just a need to be helped

with pediatric medicine

*

but beauty queens get old and dye their hair

football stars break a leg

drink beer in a lazy chair

and smart kids with no money

go on any one’s coat tails

to third world countries

*

in the end did it really matter

that she dyed her hair

that he beer cans scattered

that all over the world she flew

offering hugs in languages

she barely knew

Do you have regrets, something you aspired to…

(satire?)

Britain, France and the US on Thursday tried to pile pressure on an increasingly emboldened Vladimir Putin by producing new evidence which proves that blowing children up on their way to school with cruise missiles is better than gassing them in their beds with lethal sarin nerve gas

The predominantly British claims were based on tests of clothing and soil samples that David Cameron said had been taken from Syria which showed that children who were blown up were much less likely to suffer than children who were suffocated with chemical weapons.

On the first day of G20 summit in St Petersburg – dominated by the conflict between the West and Russia over how Syrian children should be killed – the British prime minister said:

Samples taken from Damascus and tested in the Porton Down laboratory in Britain clearly show that the gassing of children by the Assad regime is considerably worse…