Residents of Beirut awoke to a scene of utter devastation on Wednesday, a day after a massive explosion at the port sent shock waves across the Lebanese capital, killing at least 100 people and wounding thousands.
It was a fundamental teaching and central source of battlefield talk, derived and discussed in the Sixties about the motion and meaning of history. There are, we assumed and argued with no small amount of certainty, two tendencies in history, that which is rising, grounding itself and growing stronger and that which is dying, decaying and passing away. And we defiantly declared that we and other oppressed and struggling peoples of this country and of the world belong to that rising tide of history. Likewise, we asserted with equal surety that oppressors of all kinds—racists, colonialists, capitalists, imperialists—and their lackeys, collaborators, hirelings, henchmen and handmaidens, belong to the declining side of history. And they would eventually be defeated, and freedom and justice for all would emerge and triumph in the world.
Oh! The love of mothers! Bless them! Good mothers don’t come prepackaged, highly educated and rich. One important factor is: these single mothers chose the road to childbirth rather than abortion. They laid aside fear and challenges of childrearing. Let’s applaud them, congratulate them and call them “Blessed!” Just think of great people who never made it through the birth channel. Millions did not. These did.