Friday, September 27, 2002

The Cowboy from Crawford vs. The Butcher of Baghdad QUOTE OF THE DAY "It's time to remake our system of government, to rid our country of the culture of greed that has infected our politicians, weakened their consciences, and tainted their policies. It's time to throw a tent over Washington and fumigate." - - Arianna Huffington (from her book, "How To Overthrow The Government") RHINO HERE: Of national importance, the California State Assembly recently passed SB 1828; The Sacred Lands Protection Act, with a strong bipartisan vote (10 Republicans voted to help protect the sacred places of California's Indigenous people. The bill would create a process by which Native Americans can petition federal land management agencies to withdraw sacred lands from development, and go to court to seek protection if the land managers fail to protect culturally significant places. No matter what state you live in, please take a moment to fax Governor Gray Davis and urge him to sign SB 1828; The Sacred Lands Protection Act. The Governor has until midnight Monday, September 30 to sign the bill or it is effectively vetoed. You'll find an easy to download sample letter at http://www.sacredland.org/new.html Governor Davis' fax number is 916-445-4633. FOR DETAILS ON 15 CURRENT SACRED SITE STRUGGLES ACROSS THE COUNTRY, GO TO: http://www.sacredland.org/involved.html FOR RESOURCES TO GET MORE INVOLVED, GO TO: http://www.sacredland.org/resource.html Consistently wry & insightful these days, Arianna Huffington's latest column (excerpt below) likens the proposed war with Iraq to a Friday Night WWF contest: "The Cowboy from Crawford taking on the Butcher of Baghdad in Smackdown 2002's Main Event". She warns, "Like a WWF wrestler, the war promoters in the White House know that the better you work the mike before the match, the better your chances of winning over the crowd. But this war won't be won with mere stage blood." Did you know that at 21, Arianna was President of the famed debating society, the Cambridge Union? You can read an excerpt of her column below or, SEE THE ENTIRE COLUMN AT: http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/files/092602.html 8:48:24 AM    comment

The Latest Bush Doctrine: Out With The Old, In With The Old Filed September 26, 2002 by Arianna Huffington Make no mistake. President Bush is right. At least, that is, about the basic assumptions behind the new Bush doctrine. We are, as he says, living in a post-containment, post-deterrence, post-Cold War world. So why has the White House chosen to deal with this new reality by traveling back to the future to take on Saddam? It's Us vs. The Evil Empire all over again, only this time with a Middle Eastern accent. This worldview is mustier than the plot lines on the WB's "Family Affair" remake -- and about as realistic. Our new enemies are shadowy, hard-to-grasp, lurking in sleeper terrorist cells in more than 60 countries -- including the good ol' USA -- armed with dirty nukes, anthrax-laced letters, smallpox spores, and box cutters as weapons of mass destruction. And yet the president is sticking to a simple-minded, binary approach to our national security. Somehow all the world's evildoers have been awarded honorary Iraqi citizenship by Mr. Bush and his saber-rattling support group of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice, and Co. Reducing the protean challenge of eradicating terrorism down to "regime change" in Iraq is another sign of the president's limited ability to handle complexity. Here's how bad it is: even shrinking the worldwide terrorist threat to an Axis of Evil that included only three of the plethora of countries with terrorist ties proved too complicated for him, so he crossed North Korea and Iran off the list, and indicted Saddam's Iraq as the source of all evil. Such sledge-hammer reductionism is not only intellectually lazy; it's dangerous. As the recent arrests in Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia have shown, our ability to fight -- let alone win -- the war on terrorism depends on the cooperation of countries that are not exactly our closest allies. We need a network of far-flung informants if we are to obtain the splinters of information that will allow us to take the kind of "preemptive action" that truly will protect us from terrorist attacks. TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE, GO TO: http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/files/092602.html Reprinted under the Fair Use doctrine of international copyright law ( http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html ). All copyrights belong to original publisher. "RHINO'S NEWS BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. Feedback is encouraged and can be emailed to him at: rhino@kifaru.com RHINO'S WEB SITES: http://radio.weblogs.com/0103207 (RHINO'S NEWS WEBLOG - PRESENT & PAST) http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) 8:35:00 AM    comment

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