Tragedy

There's an interesting summary of international reaction to the terrible events at Virginia Tech on CNN.com. The article highlights press coverage from India (there are many Indian students that Virginia Tech, and of the professors killed was Indian), South Korea (they worry about backlash against Korean communities in America), and Britain (which focuses, unsurprisingly, on American gun laws. They conclude, sadly, that nothing much will change).

The emotional side of me who remembers my college years still quite clearly can't even manage what it must be like for students on campus, for the families of the victims. Just awful.

The more aloof and cynical side can't help but think that there Karl Rove is thrilled that this opportunity has arisen for Bush to play the concerned, fatherly, in-charge figure that played so well post 9/11. I'm sure the administration can't help but welcome a short break from the constant criticism.

I can't help but wish that Bush would show the same level of compassion and sympathy for the 1000s of innocent Iraqi who have lost their lives in what many consider the same senseless way. And the 10,000s Sudanese in Darfur. How does any of that make more sense?

I'm not saying it wasn't a terrible, horrible event. But when you step back and look at it on a global level (which I can though I know many can't, understandably) it's unfortunately just a tiny drop of blood compared to the pool that the world amasses daily from war and disease.

Just Stop It!

People, stop killing other people!

This means you, World.

Honestly. I just read an article in Ontario, Canada's Hamilton Spectator. Yesterday gunmen shot and killed THREE CHILDREN who were on their way to school. Their father is an intelligence officer who is considered an "enemy" of Hamas. The father wasn't even in the car (so much for Hamas intelligence).

Three, six, and nine. Dead. Just like that.

There will, of course, be more violence to follow.

Hundreds continue to die every day in Darfur. Bombings in Baghdad killed and wounded over 300 people.

How is this supposed to solve anything?

Here's some more lingo for you: carnage.

Stop it, people. Grow up.

There's Nothing Like a Classic

I opened up my browser this morning to Google as usual. And the quote of the day:

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. - Samuel Johnson
I feel like this should be put on a greeting card and sent to the White House, Fox News, and Rush Limbaugh.

What do you think?

Oh, and just so you don't let slip your mind: genocide is still taking place in Darfur.

I also think we should start protesting against invading Iran now. If we can't even learn from our biggest mistakes, then we need to step down as "super power." Where's Mighty Mouse when we need him?

Socialism and Me

So I'm going to a Socialist meeting on Thursday.

Yeah.

I got the bright idea in my head to walk part way home before jumping on the 39 bus. You know, exercise, fresh air, blah, blah blah.

Near the Au Bon Pain on Northeastern University Campus there were a few college kids trying to engage passers-by into conversation. They were handing out copies of the International Socialist Review and looking to invite people to their weekly Thursday meetings.

I felt bad for the way they were being so blatantly ignored. Here they are, standing in below-freezing temperatures, trying to make a difference! Someday they'll be jaded middle-aged, middle-management individuals living in a three-bedroom ranch in the suburbs, and I didn't want to be responsible for that! And also, I can't help but agree with many socialist tenants.
One student in particular caught my attention by mentioning the now-more-than-infamous Mohammed cartoon.

Media institutions around the world babble about free speech in regards to the cartoon, but I have reservations. I firmly believe that if this cartoon had been drawn about Jews or Africans or Homosexuals with the same amount of animosity and bigotry that was displayed in the Mohammed cartoon, it would not have been printed to begin with--or at least it would have been looked on very negatively by the Western World.

Antagonizing -- even hating -- Muslims and Arabs seems to be socially acceptable around the world. Its couched in political terms of promoting "democracy" and "human rights" but I don't see how its acceptable to violently force revolution upon a society from the outside.

If in our post-modern (so called) "post-colonial" world we frown upon the 19th century idea of Kipling's "white man's burden" why is the Western (white) World so intent upon saddling ourselves with this new Islamic burden when we're so content to leave the Chinese/Darfur/North Korean/Cambodian/Human Trafficking/Malaria/Small Pox/Polio/AIDS/Global Warming/Endangered Species/Rain Forest/Wetlands burdens languishing along the road side?

Our government--and the Western World at large--is completely consumed with this notion of terrorism which really means Islam.

Frankly I'm scared by the current state of the world, not because of any terrorist threat, but because of the actions of my own government. And I don't find my fellow citizens to be any more reassuring because on en masse, they just don't seem to care.

Prove me wrong, people, please.

International Women's Day

Happy International Women's Day! We are women, stand up and take notice! Unfortunately this holiday goes sadly unnoticed in the United States--I don't see any Hallmark cards for Women's Day. Too bad. I want flowers and power tools, to be told that I'm pretty and smart; to have doors held open for me and but know that I can haul around lumber on a construction site.

I want a parade! How cool would that be? An all-women parade celebrating all our acheivements, from quilters to surgeons and everything in between.

Hooray Marlana Deitrich and Madame Curie.

Of course, there are still many women suffering around the world, and there is the disturbing trend of targeting them during warefare (Darfur, for example). Kofi Annon focuses on these problems in his Women's Day Proclamation.

And here is the UN's official site for Women's Day 2005.

Whaa?

I feel like I'm going crazy. I swear I heard something on WBUR this morning about the leader of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (Roy Hoffmann, I believe) wanting to move to Massachusetts so he could run against John Kerry in the next senate race. But I can't find anything about it. Google is coming up blank.

Did I dream that absurdity? If so, why?!

--Wait, no, I just heard it again. That nut really is going to move to Massachusetts to run against Kerry in 2006. Yeah, that's going to go well....

I fear I was derelict in my responsibilities yesterday, having failed to mention the UN commemoration of the holocaust and the recognition of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps. Touching words were exchanged and exclaimed--the UN is so very good at speeches--"Never Again!" But with the history of Cambodia, Rwanda, and the current situation in Darfur weighing heavily (so I hope) upon their collective shoulders, the words rang empty in my ears.

If you wonder at my cynicism--and you shouldn't if you've read anything I've ever written--take a look at this column in the New York Post by Andrea Peyser:

Sixty years after the world learned that bored Germans flung Jewish babies into the air for target practice at the Auschwitz death camp, our oily pals at the United Nations have officially acknowledged the Holocaust.

Oh, but that's not all. Here's Ms. Peyser's characterization of the UN:

the anti-American, anti-Semitic rats infesting the banks of the East River — a
species alternately known as the "French," "Germans" and "Libyans," among others

Lovely, no? As if Americans are rallying around the world stopping all genocide and crimes against humanity like a nation-sized superhero? Hardly.

I don't object to the UN--it was created with the best of intentions, and I shudder to think of our world without it. It's the countries in the UN which create all the problems and then ignore those problems while glibly discussing them in a sort of good-will camouflaged.

Go see Hotel Rwanda to "commemorate" the "Never Again" of the world. Take a moment to read the news coming from Darfur--it might take a little digging; the 24 hour news stations are too busy hyping the Superbowl to make time for humanitarian crisis and--shush--genocide.