The journalist as property...,
2003-04-26 19:51:15
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You can watch an anarchista co...,
2003-04-27 06:46:33
religion and politics, sitting in a tree:
But first, I thought Iraqi oil belongs to the Iraqi people?
Same place, same day: to quote Paul Wolfowitz, "democracies are democracies and they have to make their own judgements", unless they elect political Islamists.
Rumsfeld complaining that the "government of Iran has encouraged people to go into the country [Iraq] and ... they have people in the country attempting to influence the country" seems a little understated coming from a man who is in the middle of doing the same thing, and unlike Iran there's some significant evidence that the US has "encouraged people to go into" Iraq to "influence the country". Like, we invaded the fucking country. Hello.
The toss up though is whether or not the compromise between secular democracy and elected Islamist government, as exists presently in Turkey, is acceptable to either party. Of course a big question for Turkey's goverment is whether they'll continue repressing minorities like secular governments did. Theocratic republicanism, what the protesting Shi'ites are apparently calling for, isn't necessarily an equation for repressive rule, I just can't think of any counter-examples when it comes to nation states. Barring foreign invasion Iran will probably get there eventually. Such stuff shouldn't be our business, really, and between butting out or letting Rumsfeld continue to butt in I opt for the former. Which gets back to the reason we refused to give access to rebelling Iraqis to captured Iraqi equipment in 1991: if Shi'ites, Kurds, and Sunnis want to create their own governments (Union of Iraqi States?) we won't let them - and essentially all a federated state of seperate interest groups would amount to is an overthrow of an oppressive nation-state structure that was only ever able to exist as a unified entity through the rule of force. Just because we've been fucking them up for over 50 years, and the British for the previous 50, doesn't mean we have a responsibility to continue fucking them up. In any case much of the mid-east and central asia has outlawed political Islam and in so doing engaged in the same repression as Iran - if the US were Egypt or Uzbekistan the Christian Coalition would probably be considered a terrorist group, as it would have been driven underground and terrorized by the state, instead we elect their canidates into office. Presumably some similar outcome is possible in Iraq without making the clerics the defacto authority - though if the Christian right had 60% of the electorate, as the parallel movement possibly has in Iraq, I wouldn't be surprised to find Minister Bob in the bedroom making sure I don't use prophylactics or try anything "kinky".
Oh wait, the non-procreational coition laws for heteros are still on the books in nine states, I plumb forget sometimes. Howdy Minister Bob, when you're finished repressing homosexuality you'll find the key to my house under the welcome mat, feel free to have your agents leave their hidden cameras behind, but if they get caught wacking off to the tapes your butt will get nailed to the wall with counter-suits. Pure lunacy, though of course they'll never be finished repressing the minority enough to get around enforcing such lunacy against their electorate. Let's hear it for democracy. If privacy rights aren't constitutionally protected for some archaic reason they should be. If some 30 year old lard on Jerry Springer wants to sleep with his mother the only thing I want is to not hear about it from the police blotter.
Outside white suburban gated communities there is actual crime to deal with. I wonder if there's a tax resisters league for people who oppose funding anti-HIV programs that issue condoms because they oppose other peoples' use of birth control. There's a vindication for the religion of Christ. Two lives saved for not having spawned a third doomed to terrible suffering, and they oppose it on first principles. You'd think after so many ideas have proven their essential brutality by valuing mere ideas over human life that the mere ideas people have would stop putting value in something besides it. Lord, theirs wouldn't have.
The trains keep running on the same old track.
A 2002 World Vision poll, run by the Barna Research Group, showed that only 7 percent of evangelical Christians said they would donate money to help children orphaned by AIDS and 56 percent said they definitely would not donate.
