Why are you here?

I know why I am here.

As a shadow of oppression threatens to descend over the
land it is a good thing to reach into your hearts and your
history to help you remember why you are here.

Die Gedanken Sind Frei!



When the time comes that you can be imprisoned for
singing this song, that is the time to imprint it on your
heart. Teach it to your children. Sing it with your grandchildren. Die Gedanken Sind Frei!


Our ancestors into antiquity have sung this song or one
like it. Our progeny will be singing this song or one like
it after we are long gone and forgotten.

I am here to sing my own unique expression of this song.
So are you. The day we are not allowed to sing this
song in our own unique way, the day we are obliged to
sing someone else's version of this song only, then
creativity and life itself will be extinguished. You cannot
bottle the wind, and you cannot stifle the yearning for freedom. Doing so is incompatible with life itself.

Please, sing with me. Remember why you are here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYxYXygAg8M

DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI

Die Gedanken sind frei
My thoughts freely flower,
Die Gedanken sind frei
My thoughts give me power.
No scholar can map them,
No hunter can trap them,
No man can deny:
Die Gedanken sind frei!

I think as I please
And this gives me pleasure,
My conscience decrees,
This right I must treasure;
My thoughts will not cater
To duke or dictator,
No man can deny--
Die Gedanken sind frei!

And if tyrants take me
And throw me in prison
My thoughts will burst free,
Like blossoms in season.
Foundations will crumble,
The structure will tumble,
And free men will cry:
Die Gedanken sind frei!

Die Gedanken sind frei" ("Thoughts are free") is a German song. The text and the melody can be found in Lieder der Brienzer Mädchen, printed in Bern, Switzerland between 1810 and 1820. The lyricist and the composer are unknown, though some attribute the text to Ferdinand Freiligrath.

The idea represented in the title — that thoughts are free — was expressed as early as Antiquity,[1] and became prominent again in the Middle Ages, when Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1230) sang: "Sind doch Gedanken frei" ("Thoughts are certainly free"). The Austrian Minnesänger Dietmar von Aist (12th century) composed the line "Die Gedanken, die sind ledig frei" ("only thoughts are free").

A slightly different version of the text can be found under the title "Lied des Verfolgten im Turm" ("Song of the persecuted in the tower") in Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano's circa 1800 folk poetry collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn. This version was given a new musical setting by Gustav Mahler in the 1890s.

The song originally had four strophes to which a fifth was later added. Today, their order may vary. During the German Revolution (1848/1849) and in Nazi Germany, the song was forbidden. It also was used by the White Rose anti-Nazi resistance movement in Germany. [2] Pete Seeger recorded the song in 1966 on his Dangerous Songs!? album.

Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten,
sie fliegen vorbei wie nächtliche Schatten.
Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jäger erschießen
mit Pulver und Blei, Die Gedanken sind frei!

Ich denke was ich will und was mich beglücket,
doch alles in der Still', und wie es sich schicket.
Mein Wunsch und Begehren kann niemand mir wehren,
es bleibet dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei!

Und sperrt man mich ein im finsteren Kerker,
das alles sind rein vergebliche Werke.
Denn meine Gedanken zerreißen die Schranken
und Mauern entzwei, die Gedanken sind frei!

Drum will ich auf immer den Sorgen absagen
und will mich auch nimmer mit Grillen mehr plagen.
Man kann ja im Herzen stets lachen und scherzen
und denken dabei: Die Gedanken sind frei!

Thoughts are free, who can guess them?
They flee by like nocturnal shadows.
No man can know them, no hunter can shoot them,
with powder and lead: Thoughts are free!

I think what I want, and what delights me,
still always reticent, and as it is suitable.
My wish and desire, no one can deny me
and so it will always be: Thoughts are free!

And if I am thrown into the darkest dungeon,
all this would be futile work,
because my thoughts tear all gates
and walls apart. Thoughts are free!

So I will renounce my sorrows forever,
and never again will torture myself with some fancy ideas.
In one's heart, one can always laugh and joke
and think at the same time: Thoughts are free!

Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory



Article Tools Sponsored By
By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: April 5, 2009

Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain. Could make you forget a chronic fear, a traumatic loss, even a bad habit.


André A. Fenton studies spatial memory in mice and rats.
Brain Power
The Speed-Dial Molecule

For all that scientists have studied it, the brain remains the most complex and mysterious human organ — and, now, the focus of billions of dollars’ worth of research to penetrate its secrets.
Enlarge This Image
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Research by Dr. Todd C. Sacktor, above, and André A. Fenton has demonstrated a chemical’s effect on memory with potential implications for treatment of trauma, addiction and other conditions.

Researchers in Brooklyn have recently accomplished comparable feats, with a single dose of an experimental drug delivered to areas of the brain critical for holding specific types of memory, like emotional associations, spatial knowledge or motor skills.

The drug blocks the activity of a substance that the brain apparently needs to retain much of its learned information. And if enhanced, the substance could help ward off dementias and other memory problems.

So far, the research has been done only on animals. But scientists say this memory system is likely to work almost identically in people.

The discovery of such an apparently critical memory molecule, and its many potential uses, are part of the buzz surrounding a field that, in just the past few years, has made the seemingly impossible suddenly probable: neuroscience, the study of the brain.

“If this molecule is as important as it appears to be, you can see the possible implications,” said Dr. Todd C. Sacktor, a 52-year-old neuroscientist who leads the team at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, in Brooklyn, which demonstrated its effect on memory. “For trauma. For addiction, which is a learned behavior. Ultimately for improving memory and learning.”

Artists and writers have led the exploration of identity, consciousness and memory for centuries. Yet even as scientists sent men to the moon and spacecraft to Saturn and submarines to the ocean floor, the instrument responsible for such feats, the human mind, remained almost entirely dark, a vast and mostly uncharted universe as mysterious as the New World was to explorers of the past.

Now neuroscience, a field that barely existed a generation ago, is racing ahead, attracting billions of dollars in new financing and throngs of researchers. The National Institutes of Health last year spent $5.2 billion, nearly 20 percent of its total budget, on brain-related projects, according to the Society for Neuroscience.

Endowments like the Wellcome Trust and the Kavli Foundation have poured in hundreds of millions of dollars more, establishing institutes at universities around the world, including Columbia and Yale.

The influx of money, talent and technology means that scientists are at last finding real answers about the brain — and raising questions, both scientific and ethical, more quickly than anyone can answer them.

Millions of people might be tempted to erase a severely painful memory, for instance — but what if, in the process, they lost other, personally important memories that were somehow related? Would a treatment that “cleared” the learned habits of addiction only tempt people to experiment more widely?

And perhaps even more important, when scientists find a drug to strengthen memory, will everyone feel compelled to use it?

The stakes, and the wide-open opportunities possible in brain science, will only accelerate the pace of discovery.

“In this field we are merely at the foothills of an enormous mountain range,” said Dr. Eric R. Kandel, a neuroscientist at Columbia, “and unlike in other areas of science, it is still possible for an individual or small group to make important contributions, without any great expenditure or some enormous lab.”

Dr. Sacktor is one of hundreds of researchers trying to answer a question that has dumbfounded thinkers since the beginning of modern inquiry: How on earth can a clump of tissue possibly capture and store everything — poems, emotional reactions, locations of favorite bars, distant childhood scenes? The idea that experience leaves some trace in the brain goes back at least to Plato’s Theaetetus metaphor of a stamp on wax, and in 1904 the German scholar Richard Semon gave that ghostly trace a name: the engram.

What could that engram actually be?

The answer, previous research suggests, is that brain cells activated by an experience keep one another on biological speed-dial, like a group of people joined in common witness of some striking event. Call on one and word quickly goes out to the larger network of cells, each apparently adding some detail, sight, sound, smell. The brain appears to retain a memory by growing thicker, or more efficient, communication lines between these cells.

The billion-dollar question is how?

In the decades since this process was described in the 1960s and 1970s, scientists have found scores of molecules that play some role in the process. But for years the field struggled to pinpoint the purpose each one serves. The problem was not that such substances were so hard to find — on the contrary.
Skip to next paragraph
Brain Power
The Speed-Dial Molecule

For all that scientists have studied it, the brain remains the most complex and mysterious human organ — and, now, the focus of billions of dollars’ worth of research to penetrate its secrets.

In a 1999 paper in the journal Nature Neuroscience, two of the most prominent researchers in brain science, Dr. Jeff W. Lichtman and Joshua R. Sanes of Harvard, listed 117 molecules that were somehow involved when one cell creates a lasting speed-dial connection with a neighbor, a process known as “long-term potentiation.”

They did not see that these findings were necessarily clarifying the picture of how memories are formed. But an oddball substance right there on their own list, it turned out, had unusual properties.

A Helpful Nudge

“You know, my dad was the one who told me to look at this molecule — he was a scientist too, my dad, he’s dead now but he had these instincts — so anyway that’s how it all started,” Dr. Sacktor was saying. He was driving from his home in Yonkers to his laboratory in the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, with three quiches and bag of bagels bouncing in the back seat. Lunch for the lab.

The father’s advice led the son, eventually, to a substance called PKMzeta. In a series of studies, Dr. Sacktor’s lab found that this molecule was present and activated in cells precisely when they were put on speed-dial by a neighboring neuron.

In fact, the PKMzeta molecules appeared to herd themselves, like Army Rangers occupying a small peninsula, into precisely the fingerlike connections among brain cells that were strengthened. And they stayed there, indefinitely, like biological sentries.

In short: PKMzeta, a wallflower in the great swimming party of chemicals that erupts when one cell stimulates another, looked as if it might be the one that kept the speed-dial function turned on.

“After that,” Dr. Sacktor said, “we began to focus solely on PKMzeta to see how critical it really was to behavior.”

Running a lab is something like fielding a weekend soccer team. Players come and go, from Europe, India, Asia, Grand Rapids. You move players around, depending on their skills. And you bring lunch, because doctoral students logging 12-hour days in a yellowing shotgun lab in East Flatbush need to eat.

“People think that state schools like ours are low-key, laid back, and they’re right, we are,” said Robert K. S. Wong, chairman of the physiology and pharmacology department at SUNY Downstate, who brought Dr. Sacktor with him from Columbia. “You have less pressure to apply for grants, and you can take more time, I think, to work out your ideas.”

To find out what, if anything, PKMzeta meant for living, breathing animals, Dr. Sacktor walked a flight downstairs to the lab of André A. Fenton, also of SUNY Downstate, who studies spatial memory in mice and rats.

Dr. Fenton had already devised a clever way to teach animals strong memories for where things are located. He teaches them to move around a small chamber to avoid a mild electric shock to their feet. Once the animals learn, they do not forget. Placed back in the chamber a day later, even a month later, they quickly remember how to avoid the shock and do so.

But when injected — directly into their brain — with a drug called ZIP that interferes with PKMzeta, they are back to square one, almost immediately. “When we first saw this happen, I had grad students throwing their hands up in the air, yelling,” Dr. Fenton said. “Well, we needed a lot more than that” one study.

They now have it. Dr. Fenton’s lab repeated the experiment, in various ways; so has a consortium of memory researchers, each using a different method. Researchers led by Yadin Dudai at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel found that one dose of ZIP even made rats forget a strong disgust they had developed for a taste that had made them sick — three months earlier.

A Conscience Blocker?

“This possibility of memory editing has enormous possibilities and raises huge ethical issues,” said Dr. Steven E. Hyman, a neurobiologist at Harvard. “On the one hand, you can imagine a scenario in which a person enters a setting which elicits traumatic memories, but now has a drug that weakens those memories as they come up. Or, in the case of addiction, a drug that weakens the associations that stir craving.”

Researchers have already tried to blunt painful memories and addictive urges using existing drugs; blocking PKMzeta could potentially be far more effective.

Yet any such drug, Dr. Hyman and others argue, could be misused to erase or block memories of bad behavior, even of crimes. If traumatic memories are like malicious stalkers, then troubling memories — and a healthy dread of them — form the foundation of a moral conscience.

For those studying the biology of memory, the properties of PKMzeta promise something grander still: the prospect of retooling the engram factory itself. By 2050 more than 100 million people worldwide will have Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias, scientists estimate, and far more will struggle with age-related memory decline.

“This is really the biggest target, and we have some ideas of how you might try to do it, for instance to get cells to make more PKMzeta,” Dr. Sacktor said. “But these are only ideas at this stage.”

A substance that improved memory would immediately raise larger social concerns, as well. “We know that people already use smart drugs and performance enhancers of all kinds, so a substance that actually improved memory could lead to an arms race,” Dr. Hyman said.

Many questions in the science remain. For instance, can PKMzeta really link a network of neurons for a lifetime? If so, how? Most molecules live for no more than weeks at a time.

And how does it work with the many other substances that appear to be important in creating a memory?

“There is not going to be one, single memory molecule, the system is just not that simple,” said Thomas J. Carew, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, and president of the Society for Neuroscience. “There are going to be many molecules involved, in different kinds of memories, all along the process of learning, storage and retrieval.”

Yet as scientists begin to climb out of the dark foothills and into the dim light, they are now poised to alter the understanding of human nature in ways artists and writers have not.

[Dantheman62]

It makes me sick that they're even attemting to erase bad memories, and really makes me sick that they're testing it on animals, and spending billions of dollars trying to figure out the brain and how it works. When all they need to do is look in the mirror!

Phd.= Piled higher and deeper, that's all, that's it, and I bet their eyes are brown too.

Please, sing with me.

[Dantheman62]

Hans Scholl (left), Sophie Scholl (center), and Christoph Probst (right), leaders of the White Rose resistance organization. Munich, Germany, 1942 (USHMM Photo).

One day in 1942, copies of a leaflet entitled “The White Rose” suddenly appeared at the University of Munich. The leaflet contained an anonymous essay that said that the Nazi system had slowly imprisoned the German people and was now destroying them. The Nazi regime had turned evil. It was time, the essay said, for Germans to rise up and resist the tyranny of their own government. At the bottom of the essay, the following request appeared: “Please make as many copies of this leaflet as you can and distribute them.”

The leaflet caused a tremendous stir among the student body. It was the first time that internal dissent against the Nazi regime had surfaced in Germany. The essay had been secretly written and distributed by Hans Scholl and his friends.

Another leaflet appeared soon afterward. And then another. And another. Ultimately, there were six leaflets published and distributed by Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends, four under the title “The White Rose” and two under the title “Leaflets of the Resistance.” Their publication took place periodically between 1942 and 1943, interrupted for a few months when Hans and his friends were temporarily sent to the Eastern Front to fight against the Russians.

The members of The White Rose, of course, had to act cautiously. The Nazi regime maintained an iron grip over German society. Internal dissent was quickly and efficiently smashed by the Gestapo. Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends knew what would happen to them if they were caught.

People began receiving copies of the leaflets in the mail. Students at the University of Hamburg began copying and distributing them. Copies began turning up in different parts of Germany and Austria. Moreover, as Hanser points out, the members of The White Rose did not limit themselves to leaflets. Graffiti began appearing in large letters on streets and buildings all over Munich: “Down with Hitler! . . . Hitler the Mass Murderer!” and “Freiheit! . . . Freiheit! . . . Freedom! . . . Freedom!”

The Gestapo was driven into a frenzy. It knew that the authors were having to procure large quantities of paper, envelopes, and postage. It knew that they were using a duplicating machine. But despite the Gestapo's best efforts, it was unable to catch the perpetrators.

One day, February 18, 1943, Hans' and Sophie's luck ran out. They were caught leaving pamphlets at the University of Munich and were arrested. A search disclosed evidence of Christoph Probst's participation, and he too was soon arrested. The three of them were indicted for treason.

On February 22, four days after their arrest, their trial began. The presiding judge, Roland Freisler, chief justice of the People's Court of the Greater German Reich, had been sent from Berlin.

Freisler and the other accusers could not understand what had happened to these German youths. After all, they all came from nice German families. They all had attended German schools. They had been members of the Hitler Youth. How could they have turned out to be traitors? What had so twisted and warped their minds?

Sophie Scholl shocked everyone in the courtroom when she remarked to Freisler: “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don't dare to express themselves as we did.” Later in the proceedings, she said to him: “You know the war is lost. Why don't you have the courage to face it?”

In the middle of the trial, Robert and Magdalene Scholl tried to enter the courtroom. Magdalene said to the guard: “But I'm the mother of two of the accused.” The guard responded: “You should have brought them up better.” Robert Scholl forced his way into the courtroom and told the court that he was there to defend his children. He was seized and forcibly escorted outside. The entire courtroom heard him shout: “One day there will be another kind of justice! One day they will go down in history!”

Robert Freisler pronounced his judgment on the three defendants: Guilty of treason. Their sentence: Death.

They were escorted back to Stadelheim prison, where the guards permitted Hans and Sophie to have one last visit with their parents.

That afternoon, the prison guards permitted Hans, Sophie, and Christoph to have one last visit together. Sophie was then led to the guillotine. One observer described her as she walked to her death: “Without turning a hair, without flinching.” Christoph Probst was next. Hans Scholl was last; just before he was beheaded, Hans cried out: “Long live freedom!”

Unfortunately, they were not the last to die. The Gestapo's investigation was relentless. Later tried and executed were Alex Schmorell (age 25), Willi Graf (age 25), and Kurt Huber (age 49). Students at the University of Hamburg were either executed or sent to concentration camps.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...aust/rose.html

This is the story of The White Rose. It is a lesson in dissent. It is a tale of courage, of principle, of honor. It is detailed in three books, The White Rose (1970) by Inge Scholl, A Noble Treason (1979) by Richard Hanser, and An Honourable Defeat (1994) by Anton Gill.

[Dantheman62]

I didn't just copy and paste the article, I read it and picked through it what I thought was important, and enough to give people the basis of what the White Rose was about.

Some of your posts are like a whistleblowers, doing just that giving a whistle instead of singing out loud! Which I do get a kick out of sometimes.

If you look at any whistleblower threads, I've stayed away from them because I don't agree with that. If I've got something to tell I'm going to yell it out loud not just whistle. LOL

You know as well as I that a lot of people won't bother to look past a simple paragraph or two and some pictures, so I've posted most of an article about it. And it's also kind of funny that a lot of people won't read a long drawn out post either, it almost has to be a happy medium in between to get attention and hold it.

And that's my 2.5 cents worth, oh and this isn't a dig at you either! Just trying to fill in the blanks for some.

I have come to the conclusion that the coming storm is
something that we need to go through. The fire must
be hot if it will temper the steel. The evil is an unwitting
dupe in the process and will fall away when it is no longer
needed.

Some will get it. Others will not. I am after a select few with the intellectual curiosity to ask why and then follow the bread crumbs to the solution. The rest are excused.

We are teaching this song to die Kinskinner. No, that
is not correct. One cannot teach what is already known.
We are revealing it to them.

This thread was a leading. The whispering of spirit at a
deep emotional level. Thank you for succinctly verbalizing that which I could feel and not adequately
express. Much of our thought is beyond words, in the
realm of emotion. Die gedanken sind frei.

[Dantheman62]

A true story about what someone very wise said to me about 30 years ago and I've never forgot it.
It was a very wise old man who saw me getting upset because I couldn't understand how some people just couldn't do their job like me when I thought it was so easy to comprehend and get done in the right way the very first time, instead of doing it over and over.
He pulled me to the side and said "Dan, don't ever expect anybody to work like you, or to think like you, or to act like you because it won't ever happen and will just drive you crazy thinking that it will."
I've always kept that in the back of my mind.

Originally Posted by Dantheman62

A true story about what someone very wise said to me about 30 years ago and I've never forgot it.
It was a very wise old man who saw me getting upset because I couldn't understand how some people just couldn't do their job like me when I thought it was so easy to comprehend and get done in the right way the very first time, instead of doing it over and over.
He pulled me to the side and said "Dan, don't ever expect anybody to work like you, or to think like you, or to act like you because it won't ever happen and will just drive you crazy thinking that it will."
I've always kept that in the back of my mind.

caption; business is bad, we might need to lay off andre.

This is why we need to go through the coming storm.
Some lessons need to be written across the heavens
to effect an attitude adjustment.

One the other hand, why not eat the horse misht that is
shoveled at us. One hundred million flys can't be wrong.

We have placed a philosophical hedge between ourselves and this world. In it but not of it according
to Romans 12:2

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed

Our message is for a select few: there is a storm coming
prepare. Hold tight to your core values. You might need
them. Back to basics. Die gedanken sind frei!

[Dantheman62]

Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the first paragraph under the picture above wiil probably hold true to 80% of the people on earth, and that's being extremely conservative. It's probably closer to 95% that will stand and get slapped in the face by reality.
The way I look at it is you can either see the slap coming and duck, which is what I prefer, or keep your eyes closed and get slapped hard.

[Carmen]

Thank you Baggywrinkle and Dan. The song and words are fabulous. The courage shown by those students was incredible, in a time of great fear and base survival. When humans are experiencing (as in wartime) base fear and survival conscousness, the few who rise up with courage and fortitude are rather rare. These souls are heroes and inspiration to many. In the light of all eternity, they are ones who are remembered and should be honoured.

I will learn this song and add it to my repetoire Baggy, love it. And loved that picture!!

Love and Light

Carmen

[Carmen]

This wonderful poem I wondered where to post and decided that this thread was one of courage, valour and wisdom. It is from a book called "In Tune With The Infinite" first published in 1897



There is no thing we cannot overcome;
Say not thy evil instinct is inherited,
Or that some trait inborn makes thy whole life forlorn,
And calls down punishment that is not merited.

Back of thy parents and grandparents lies
The great Eternal Will! That too is thine
Inheritance--strong, beautiful, divine,
Sure lever of success for one who tries.

# # # # # #

There is no noble height thou canst not climb;
All triumphs may be thine in Times's futurity,
If, whatso'er thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt;
But lean upon the staff of God's security.

Earth has no claim the soul cannot contest;
Know thyself part of the Eternal Source;
Naught can stand before thy spirit's force;
The soul's Divine Inheritance is best.]

Love and Light

Carmen

Originally Posted by Carmen

Love and Light

Carmen

Thank you.

Veah oahra hott fa heahra, loss een heahra
Gott is bei uns

[Czymra]

And for the more boisterous among us, a version with more gusto:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmwTa9qRq0o

[deb003]

Originally Posted by Dantheman62

It makes me sick that they're even attemting to erase bad memories, and really makes me sick that they're testing it on animals, and spending billions of dollars trying to figure out the brain and how it works. When all they need to do is look in the mirror!

Phd.= Piled higher and deeper, that's all, that's it, and I bet their eyes are brown too.

Dan, wasn't the Montauk project to do with erasing memories?
I'm pretty ignorant to this Project but even the movie "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", which was a great moevie by the way, involved this Project.
I should do my research on it this week so I can learn about it...

You won't know what you've lost till it's gone:


אױפֿן פֿורל ליגט דאָס קעלבל,
ליגט געבונדן מיט אַ שטריק.
הױך אין הימל פֿליט דאָס שװעלבל,
פֿרײט זיך, דרײט זיך הינט נאָך צריק.

כאָר:
לאַכט דער װינט אין קאָרן,
לאַכט און לאַכט און לאַכט,
לאַכט ער אָפּ אַ טאָג אַ גאַנצן
מיט אַ האַלבע נאַכט.
דאָנאַ, דאָנאַ, דאָנאַ, ...

שרײַט דאָס קעלבל, זאָגט דער פּױער:
װער זשע הײסט דיר זײַן אַ קאַלב?
װאָלסט געקענט דאָך זײַן אַ פֿױגל,
װאָלסט געקענט דאָך זײַן אַ שװאַלב.

כאָר

בלינדע קעלבער טוט מען בינדן
און מען שלעפּט זײ און מען שעכט,
װער ס'האָט פֿליגל, פֿליט אַרױפֿצו,
איז בײַ קײנעם ניט קײן קנעכט.

כאָר

Oyfn furl ligt dos kelbl,
Ligt gebundn mit a shtrik.
Hoykh in himl flit dos shvelbl,
Freyt zikh, dreyt zikh hin un tsrik.

Chorus:
Lakht der vint in korn,
Lakht un lakht un lakht,
Lakht er op a tog a gantsn
Mit a halber nakht.
Dona, dona, dona, ...

Shrayt dos kelbl, zogt der poyer:
Ver zhe heyst dikh zayn a kalb?
Volst gekent dokh zayn a foygl,
Volst gekent dokh zayn a shvalb.

Chorus

Bidne kelber tut men bindn
Un men shlept zey un men shekht,
Ver s'hot fligl, flit aroyftsu,
Iz bay keynem nit keyn knekht.

Chorus

On a wagon bound for market
There's a calf with a mournful eye.
High above him there's a swallow
Winging swiftly through the sky.

Chorus:
How the winds are laughing
They laugh with all their might
Laugh and laugh the whole day through
And half the summer's night.
Dona, dona, dona...

"Stop complaining," said the farmer,
"Who told you a calf to be?
Why don't you have wings to fly away
Like the swallow so proud and free?"

Chorus

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered
Never knowing the reason why.
But whoever treasures freedom,
Like the swallow has learned to fly.

Chorus

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dKV7...eature=related