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| Frank Rich is one of my heroes. I'm ok admitting that. Sometimes I want to be a journalist.
"The ultimate chutzpah is that Mr. Bush, the man who sold us Saddam's imminent mushroom clouds and "Mission Accomplished," is trivializing the chaos in Iraq as propaganda. The enemy's "sophisticated" strategy, he said in last weekend's radio address, is to distribute "images of violence" to television networks, Web sites and journalists to "demoralize our country."
This is a morally repugnant argument. The "images of violence" from Iraq are not fake - like, say, the fiction our government manufactured about the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman or the upbeat news stories the Pentagon spends millions of dollars planting in Iraqi newspapers today. These images of violence are real. Americans really are dying at the fastest pace in at least a year, and Iraqis in the greatest numbers to date. To imply that this carnage is magnified by the news media, whether the American press or Al Jazeera, is to belittle the gravity of the escalated bloodshed and to duck accountability for the mismanagement of the war. "
The war is not over, and what's more, we are losing it. 100 U.S. soldiers died THIS MONTH. Heavy-handed tactics are alienating what scant support we ever had with the Iraqi populace as a whole. Britain's top general stated on record that he believed we're making things worse by being there. The Lancet, perhaps the top-ranked public health journal in the world, estimated that the war has caused an additional 665,000 deaths (the study is based on pre-war death rates and post-war death rates, and despite President Bush's assertions to the otherwise, is pretty damn sound statistics). Anyway, i get upset that some people have this notion that the war ended when President Bush pulled his photo-op "Mission Accomplished" stunt.
In other news, Vote No on Prop 2. For real, i'm serious. If you need convincing, please give me a call.
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| Being back in Ann Arbor always brings out the activist in me. I'm pissed about a variety of things at the moment, including military recruitment (but I don't have time to really unload everything I have to say on that), so I'll just dump this little Op-Ed by Paul Krugman out there for consideration. For the record, this kid is against redefining or weaseling our way around the Geneva Conventions. Big fan of the Geneva Conventions myself. An excerpt:
Let's be clear what we're talking about here. According to an ABC
News report from last fall, procedures used by C.I.A. interrogators have included
forcing prisoners to "stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to
an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours"; the "cold cell,"
in which prisoners are forced "to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees,"
while being doused with cold water; and, of course, water boarding, in which
"the prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly
below the feet," then "cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's
face and water is poured over him," inducing "a terrifying fear
of drowning."
Go USA!
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| Seems an amount of time has passed since my last entry. School
has once again commenced, and I'm in Ann Arbor. The plan is to be
here three days a week, and Grand Rapids the remainder. Wish me
luck. Also, it seems it's time to start considering jobs, as I
graduate in December. And in other news, I was in a concert.
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| Check out some more pictures of Egypt
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| So I'm in an internet cafe in Cairo. I tried to post some pictures, but it wasn't working, so you guys will just have to wait for those. I am well, and having a wonderful time. Although the Egyptian museum almost induced a case of chronic pharoahnic fatigue. So much stuff in there, it's like a warehouse, packed to the gills with ancient statues and gold and what not. And pretty much no writing to tell you what any of it is. The placards that are there look to have been typed in the 1950's on a typewriter, complete with typos and misspellings. ridiculous. Off to the train station! | | |
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