Informant38

among clouds of worlds
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He was the first person to call me when

Jesse Helms, my friend and long-time senator from my home state of North Carolina, was a man of consistent conviction to conservative ideals and courage to faithfully serve God and country based on principle, not popularity or politics...

Rev. Billy Graham on Jesse Helms
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the uncompromisingly defiant exemplar:

Indeed, the mainstream media rarely put Helms's career in context the way they did, for example, with Sam Ervin, a Democrat who served with Helms in the Senate from North Carolina before retiring in 1975. Ervin was the leading legal strategist against Civil Rights legislation, and he largely crafted the Southern Manifesto against Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court case that ruled school segregation unconstitutional. But Ervin was the man who chaired the Watergate hearings that helped bring down Richard Nixon, and his views on civil rights were almost never mentioned. Both Helms and Ervin were courtly, principled conservatives. Only one became a cartoon media villain.
Contrary to his reputation, Helms did change his mind. For his first decade in office he opposed aid to Israel and in 1982, after that nation invaded Lebanon, called for "shutting down" relations. But after learning more about Israel's security fears during a visit there in 1985, and receiving assurances that officials there could support some military sales to moderate Arab nations, he became Israel's stalwart ally. "It was a complete switch," recalls Morris Amitay, former executive director of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby.
Helms also softened on both AIDS and Africa. He developed an unlikely friendship with the rock star Bono...

Mr.Fund/WallStreetJournal on Jesse Helms
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God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives:

Bono told Livni he is also working on a project involving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mentioned that U2 guitarist The Edge has relatives in Jerusalem.

History, like God, is watching what we do.
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E tu Iddio / You, God

You, God
Because of whom i walk in this boundless sky
among clouds of worlds
You are lonelier, poorer than I;
I have seen you wince under the surgeon's scalpel
removing an ulcer from your bowels.
I have seen You dead drunk
staggering empty-eyed,
I have seen You
tense pushing a laden wheel-barrow,
jump for joy over new pockets
over shiny shoes
and call out to me, and stretch out Your hands
happy over a smile and a little kiss.
Those sparrow-like eyes of yours
make me sad.
In order to live, I must be a brother
and a father to You.
And wipe your running nose
and support you in your faltering steps,
build you a stout house
of solid stone in fine plumb, and heal you
if your head limply resting on my knees
burns with fever,
and fetch you bread, soup
and honey and the fruit you like:
it is my way of adoring you.

Danilo Dolce at a clearing in rain
via Matrullo, Tom
vis. which: Bono bites bullet