14 Sep 2002 Uche   » (Master)

Why do the responses to September 11th seem to cluster inexorably in the extremes? On one hand are those who like to say: "America brought this all on themselves with their foreign policy". On the other hand are the flag-waving jingoistic absolutists who have substituted patriotism for reason and fair-mindedness. I dislike a lot of American foreign policy, especially under our current, benighted adminsitration. But I cannot think of any significant power at any point in history whose overall interaction with the rest of the world has been as benign. On the other hand, it is silly for us to go on as if, in this very dangerous world we inhabit, we should be invulnerable from the attacks of those who claim we have injured them. Americans in the main seem to have responded to 9/11 with a very thoughtless insistence on wanting to appear the world's greatest victims as well as the world's greatest power.

Meanwhile Ayatollah Ashcroft and company continue to turn the U.S. into a police state. The F.B.I. have been "interviewing" people for less than what I've written here. It's nice to see some backbone in the judiciary against the Bush administrations' contempt for civil rights. It is especially nice to see the families of the September 11th victims using their moral high ground to shame the Bush administration.

As for Saddam Hussein. Id's be gleeful if we could we take that bastard out for Halabja and drop all this pretense of weapons of mass destruction? Iraq is no threat to us. But if Milosevic is in court, how can I find my way to tolerating a dictatorship whose crimes against humanity dwarf those of the Serb elite during the Balkan wars? Of course it's all not that simple, but this is how I feel. Nevertheless, the jinking way Bush and co are going about the Iraq issue just makes it look like a florid case of "wag the dog".

On the technical front, I added catalog support to 4Suite and preliminary streaming XPointer support.

Check out the forms-based ,online XSLT demo using 4Suite and the CherryPy app server. Nifty

I've also added a Python section to my home page.

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