micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Monday, July 11, 2005
Stop talking about London Can we all stop talking about Thursday's bombings in London. The whole thing is way out or proportion. But Micah it was tragic event that reflects greatly on the future of society as we know it! Possibly, but I doubt it. Those who already thought we were in some great, glorious, gloriously great and greatly glorious war for freedom still think that. Same for those who believed Bush is a cowboy and/or dumb and the people, in numbers no less than one, who thought the "war on terror" is largely a con that manipulates legitimate fears, ignorance and a lack of critical thinking haven't changed their opinions either. And let's face it, it wasn't as terrible as some think it. People die every day and many times the deaths are premature. Well yeah, but this was intentional, it was the result of evil For the sake of the argument, I will accept this premise and then add, yeah, so why did virtually nobody care when the government of Uzbekistan murdered hundreds of civilians on May 13 of this year in response to a protest? This slaughter was the result of intentional malice on the part of humans, but news of it didn't take up the whole front page of my local paper the next day. And the undeniable truth that Uncle Sam supports the gov of Uzbekistan did not lead to any popular media fueled reflection on what it means for a country that loves to think of itself as promoting freedom to be supporting a brutal and repressive government by selling them weapons, training their troops and covering up their misdeeds. This isn't something than happened in the nineteenth century or the 1980s, it has happened this year and shows no signs of changing, unless of course Uzbekistan gets out of line - then, I've predicted, we will hear about how terrible the government is and how the only response is U.S. punishment. The funny thing is that Uzbekistan is a former Soviet Republic, so whenever someone says Reagan and U.S. of A. liberated people from Soviet domination, they are talking, in part, about how the people of Uzbekistan were freed. They were freed to be killed by their own good government, I guess. Unless I am crazy -I do regularly wonder- but the May 13 killings in Uzbekistan and the U.S. relationship to the government responsible should, by any reasonable standard, have generated a whole hell of a lot more soul searching and policy pondering than the July 7 bombings in London. More people died, the killings were intentional and the issues raised were not part of the usual dialogue. Ah yes, that last part probably explains it all. People in the U.S. would have to think of their country in a different manner if "May 13" was taken seriously. Nobody likes to do that, especially when we aren't the good guys. |