Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Hate Groups Increase by Five Percent So says Peter Jennings of ABC tonight - a Canadian high school scholar of international status in the US. Don't get me wrong. Of all the U.S. network news people, he is my favorite since often he is able to tell the news rather than "interpret" it for us. But, where are the sources? He didn't mention where the figure came from... there's no quick Google news search that provides the source. Does that mean it isn't true? Sadly, I doubt it. It's likely higher... We (the U.S. population) are becoming increasingly smug, proud of our (not yet proclaimed) victory, waiting to let in our Christian missionary angels of mercy, and rhetoric flies about Syria, Iran, North Korea... I belive in democracy (sort of). I do belive in the orginal Constitution... all of us are created equal - regardless of what god we believe in... all of us have rights, no matter where we live or under what dictatorial regimes (catholicism?)... There is nothing I have read though that says we (US) are the best and only right way to interpret all that.... comment []  permalink  posted by: jgh  6:55:34 PM

Syria and Reality: Ours, Theirs, Whomevers Apparently we're on a name-calling role again; this time with admonitions about how people and countries should behave: Ari Fleischer says Syria is a "terrorist state" and a "rogue nation." Colin Powell says Syria should "review its action and behavior" and the US will "examine possible measures of diplomatic, economic or other nature." Jack Straw says Syria must prove it's not a rogue state and explains that "given the changed reality," Syria must understand and cooperate. Isn't reality reality? Can it change? Is this a matter of semantics or something more? I learned, through my Constitution and Bill of Rights, that people were innocent until proven guilty - the presumption of innocence principle. Now, that we are requiring others to prove their innocence, rather than presuming that they are innocent, have we changed reality? The Guardian reports that although Rumsfeld had "ordered contingency plans for a war on Syria to be reviewed following the fall of Baghdad," the White House has" privately ruled out suggestions that the US should go to war against Syria following its military success in Iraq, and has blocked preliminary planning for such a campaign in the Pentagon." Is this the real reality, or the changed reality? As Richard Bernstein (NYTimes) writes in Echoes of Empires Past: "Does the policy remain on this trajectory and they go off hunting other regimes that are judged undesirable and dangerous?" said Michael Emerson of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. "Or do they say: 'Whew, that was a sweat politically, the Iraqi campaign. We better slow down and attempt to reconstruct multinational understanding and consensus.' " Perhaps we simply alter the trajectory a bit in our zeal to dictate behavior. After all, the US, apparently in charge of humanitarian aid efforts also houses the evangelists. "Among the largest aid groups preparing to provide humanitarian assistance to Iraqis ravaged by the war are a number of Christian charities based in the southern United States that make no secret of their desire to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and win over Muslim souls." This ought to wiin us more friends, and then perhaps in a few years (months?), as U.S. citizens, we'll have several more states to call our own. comment []  permalink  posted by: jgh  5:09:48 AM

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