The list - Thank you, chalst, for the explanation of your list. I guess it's an honor... just seems somewhat strange as I know for a fact that I have never mentioned his name in any diary entry of mine. (Quick grep of the diary.xml file shows that.) Whatever... doesn't matter much to me.
Ratings - The list made me look a bit more at the whole ratings thing... I haven't really done anything with it to rate anyone's diary, so the report generated for my userid is most interesting. Someday I'll take the time to delve into more and understand more of what raph has done here.
The view from afar as a nation girds for war - It is quite interesting to be an American living in Canada as my home country prepares to launch a war. You get a much different perspective than the view seen by my friends and family back in the U.S. The articles in the paper... editorial cartoons... radio... TV (especially given that we get the BBC here and a whole range of international stations). It is rather interesting to see how few countries are really very supportive of the U.S. preparations for war.
As an American, I have found that folks here do ask me about my thoughts on the looming war. They ask me other questions, too, such as:
- Why is it that your president is so focused on Iraq? What happened to the "war on terrorism"? Where is the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda?
- Why is he not focusing on the U.S. economy that is falling apart?
- How is it that your president is planning to bomb back into the Stone Age a country ruled by a tyrannical dictator that is allowing U.N. weapons inspectors to have free reign to travel wherever and is complying with U.N. Security Council mandates, and that quite frankly is little threat outside of his immediate area -- while that same president is looking like he will be sending financial aid to a country ruled by a tyrannical dictator who has tossed out the U.N. weapons inspectors, pulled out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, restarted nuclear weapons production, has publicly declared that he will produce the Bomb, and has already developed missles that are capable of delivering such a warhead throughout all of southeast Asia and the Pacific (and indeed potentially to our western borders)?
Sadly, to those questions, especially the last one, I have no answer. I don't understand, quite frankly. I wonder if anyone really does. I very strongly believe that we do need to root out the terrorists who are slaughtering hundreds and thousands of people through their cowardly acts. But how does bombing a country into oblivion and forcing a regime change help to do this... will it not simply make more martyrs and only fan the flames? I am still struggling to understand how the "war on terrorism" morphed into the "war on Iraq". Given the comments here and in many other forums, I do not seem to be alone in asking that question. Nor can I explain the disparity of reactions toward Iraq versus North Korea.
I fear for the repercussions if, as it looks, we go it alone (or with only Britain) and do indeed launch a war.
Carter - The Ottawa Citizen, our local paper, recently had a very brief review of the Nobel Prize lecture given by former President Jimmy Carter. The lecture is now a 20-page book published by Simon & Schuster. I found the excerpt quite moving:
Tragically, in the industrialized world there is a terrible absence of understanding or concern about those who are enduring lives of despair and hopelessness. We have not yet made the commitment to share with others an appreciable part of our excessive wealth. This is a potentially rewarding burden that we should all be willing to assume.
Ladies and Gentleman:
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
The bond of our common humanity is stronger than the divisiveness of our fears and prejudices. God gives us the capacity for choice. We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes -- and we must.
Good words. I have always thought that when the history of the 20th Century is written, President Carter will probably be underappreciated for the moral leadership he provided and continues to provide through his actions.
Cold - Last night the temperature here was -25 degrees Celsius with the windchill bringing it down to -34 C. For those of you south of the border, that translates into -13 and -29 degrees Fahrenheit. On either scale, all you can say is that it is dang cold!
I was reminded again that -40 C is the same as -40 F... let's hope it doesn't get down that far!