I fly

The Silk Road was a very cool trade route that joined civilizations and cultures. It now seems it’s being revived. Aside from the physical reconstruction, you can see off to the side under “voices in our heads” a CD called “Silk Road Journeys: When Strangers Meet,” put out by the Silk Road Project. They are committed to using the cultural synthesis that defined the Silk Road to help bring people closer together. They were part of the Folklife Festival at the Smithsonian in DC in 2002. The really nice thing is that they list the major funder and creative partner…

For those of you who don’t know, there was a site in Australia known as Woomera where refugees were detained. While technically not like Gitmo, it was where refugees, predominantly Muslim, were held without legal recourse or appeal until they could be deported. They were not given a hearing to determine their status, they were simply locked up. Condition at one point had gotten so bad, the prisoners sewed their mouths shut. Because of all the bad press, the center was shut down, but the practice continues, and Woomera has become symbolic of the racist policies of John Howard, Prime…