Amy Goodman

“You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may tread me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.” So wrote Maya Angelou, in her poem “Still I Rise”. She died on May 28 at 86 at her home in North Carolina. In remembering Maya Angelou, it is important to recall her commitment to the struggle for equality, not just for herself, or for women, or for African-Americans. She was committed to peace and justice for all.

The European Union was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on October 12. The chairperson of the committee tasked with awarding the prize, Thorbjoern Jagland, praised the EU for transforming Europe “from a continent of wars to a continent of peace”.

“The troubled sky reveals/The grief it feels.” Those two lines were written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem “Snow-Flakes”, published in a volume in 1863 alongside his epic and better-known “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere”. Much of the news chatter this week has been about Sarah Palin’s flubbing of the history of Revere’s famous ride in April 1775. Revere was on a late-night, clandestine mission to alert American revolutionaries of an impending British attack.