Monday

The Daily WAR (#02-10)

 
 
Rome represents the pagan world and therefore all peoples who are outside the ancient people of God. In fact, the Acts conclude with the arrival of the Gospel in Rome. We can say, then, that Rome is the concrete name of the catholicity and missionary spirit of the Church; it expresses fidelity to the origins, to the Church of all times, to a Church that speaks in all languages and goes out to meet every culture.
 
More than 3,000 delegates from dozens of countries gathered May 11-13 in Warsaw, Poland, for the 4th meeting of the World Congress of Families. The WCF describes itself as an "international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of good will." On the first day of proceedings, the minister of education and deputy prime minister of Poland, told participants: "The family is life. Without the family, there is no state. There is no government. There is nothing."
 
 
 
Uh-oh...
Bavarian Prime Minister Edmund Stoiber on Sunday criticized the decrees legitimizing the expulsion of several million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia at the end of WW2. "The Benes decrees are incompatible with the law, the spirit and the culture of Europe," he told a rally of the Sudeten German Association in the Bavarian city of Augsburg. Stoiber said human rights, freedom, justice and the right to a homeland were basic rights in the EU. The future of Europe could be built on this, he said, not on a set of laws leading to expulsions.
 
Germany and some of its partners in the Group of 8 leading industrial economies are bracing for a major conflict with the US at a summit meeting next week.
 
 
 
The new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, wants to use the momentum of his election success to rush through a number of reactionary measures this summer. The liberal newspaper Libération summarized Sarkozy's program for the next 6 months as follows: "He will set about thoroughly transforming the ill-reputed 'French social model'. The first term of his presidency will be directed against its core principle: the entitlement to equality..."
 
 
 
US jet fighters from Iraq crossed into Turkey in an area where the Turkish military is building up forces in preparation for a possible attack on Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. Turkey, with the second-biggest army in NATO, has threatened to enter northern Iraq without the approval of the US, saying the US has failed to stop militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, from using Iraq as a base from which to attack Turkey.
 
Prime Minister Olmert vowed yesterday to widen the fight against Hamas militants with fresh air strikes after a Hamas rocket fired from the Gaza Strip killed an Israeli. "No one involved in terror is immune. There will be no limit in acting against the terror groups and against those who are responsible for the terror."
 
China reacted angrily today to a US Defense Department report on China's military buildup, accusing the Pentagon of fanning baseless fears of a Chinese threat. The Chinese Foreign Ministry suggested that the Pentagon's report exaggerated China's military capabilities to justify higher US defense spending and lend encouragement to Beijing's political rival, Taiwan.
 
 
 
Iran and the US are holding their first bilateral public talks for almost 30 years. Iraq's security is the only item on the agenda.
 
Iran announced Sunday that crunch talks with the EU to break the deadlock over its disputed nuclear program would go ahead as planned, hours after saying they had been postponed.
 
Iran dismissed US naval war games on its doorstep as a morale-boosting exercise for American soldiers, days after a large flotilla of US ships entered the Gulf in a show of military muscle. "This coming and going (of US military ships in the Gulf) is nothing new. It seems these movements are for lifting the spirits of the American soldiers."
 
Build-up of propaganda & military encirclement prior to a first strike attack on Iran?
 
 
 
Never mind how badly the war is going in Iraq. President Bush has been swaggering around like a victorious general because he cowed a wobbly coalition of Democrats into dropping their attempt to impose a time limit on his disastrous misadventure. And, ever faithful to his illusions, Bush was insisting that he was the only person who understood the true enemy.
 
It is hardly surprising not a single corporate newspaper reported the death of the Constitution. Of course, another death blow to the Constitution, already long on life support, is hardly news. Few understand we now live in a dictatorship, or maybe it should be called a decidership. In short, Bush may now declare himself absolute ruler at any moment and Congress can like it or lump it.
 
So herewith are the impressions of a political naïf wandering unsupervised in the lair of Leviathan, a citizen out of time, holding quixotically to the notion that the United States are a constitutional republic, that the Constitution circumscribes and enumerates the powers of the central government, and that in general the government which governs best, governs least. Finally, while riding Amtrak home, I mused on what power and prosperity had wrought. Then it came to me, a fact so plain that it is simply not seen: our representatives do not have, and desperately require, philosophy. Without it, they can't be anything more than political hacks.  As the scenery flew by my fervent and spontaneous prayer for all of them was that they may learn to treasure virtue above all, and draw deep into their souls the words of Tacitus: "The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws."
 
Americans are well aware of the horrid faults of their legal system, but they still like to think that it is the best in the world. The risk of a miscarriage of justice is inherent in the US plea-bargaining system.  It is all very embarrassing. We do not want to tell the Americans that the defects of their justice system have become notorious.
 
Chuck Norris on...
It's fitting for a soldier like Wieland that Memorial Day falls every year a week or so before the anniversary of the day he gave his life for the cause of freedom. Though we didn't win the war in Vietnam, my brother did not die in vain, just like no soldier does today. ... rest assured your sacrifice will never be forgotten. Until then, fight the fight, keep the faith and press on for the prize!
 
And again...
Memorial Day was, and is, a day for Americans to come together and honor our military dead who gave their all so we might live in freedom. It used to be that every community had a parade, and there was also the understanding that the reason for the march was to remember and honor those who died to protect our country and maintain our freedom.
 
But the truth of the matter is...
One often can write news stories by the calendar, and today is not an exception. This is Memorial Day, and we are going to hear the rhetoric about honoring those who "died fighting for our freedom." Indeed, Americans might be honoring the dead from US wars, but in no case did any of those dead whom we memorialize today die for "our freedom." They died, instead, because our political classes pointedly understand that promoting war is good for them. If anything, the aggressive US foreign policy that has existed since the end of WW2 threatens our freedoms more than any foreign government. As people around the world fight back, our own political classes respond by taking away our rights and freedoms one-by-one, all in the name of "protecting freedom."
 
Holy Hypocrits...
It is bad enough to hear the Bush Administration, the neocons, the Randians, most Republicans in Congress, the right-wing talk show hosts, and some assorted libertarians still defend the war in Iraq, but it is even worse when Christians do the same. Never at any time in history have so many conservative, evangelical Christians held such unholy opinions. The adoration that many of these Christians have toward President Bush is unholy. The association of many of these Christians with the Republican Party is unholy. The alliance between evangelical Christianity and the military is unholy. The idolatry that many of these Christians manifest toward the state is unholy. But what continues to amaze me the most is the unholy desire on the part of many of these Christians to legitimize killing in war.
 
Paranoid Protestants Playing Politics...
Evangelicals aren't flocking to the GOP front runners, and don't know where to turn.
 
Verbal crap vs. literal crap...
A jury in northeastern Colorado has ruled that a pile of dog doo left in the entrance of the office of US Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., was protected political speech, acquitting a critic of the congresswoman who admitted dumping the load.
 
 
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