Every Memorial Day I think about what these men did and what we owe them. They didn't go through hell so Kenny Boy Lay could betray his investors and workers at Enron, or for a political system built on legal bribery. It wasn't for corporate tax havens in Bermuda, or an economic system driven by the law of the jungle, or so a handful of media buccaneers could turn the public airwaves into private sewers.

Sure, to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, freedom makes it possible for people to be crooks, but so does communism, and fascism, and monarchy. Democracy is about doing better. It's about fairness, justice, human rights, and yes, it's about equality, too; look it up.

I was never called on to do what soldiers do; I'll never know if I might have had their courage. But a journalist can help keep the record straight, on their behalf. They thought democracy was worth fighting for, even dying for. The least we can do is to help make democracy worthy of them.

-Bill Moyers

 
As I travel through Europe and talk to people in my field of work, I am finding a very different interpretation on recent world events than is commonly reported or accepted in the United States. In fact, in Wednesday’s Financial Times, there were two very insightful articles pointing out this difference. One article in particular, by Martin Wolf, is actually titled A Partnership Heading for a Destructive Separation. One of the more poignant thoughts expressed in this article is as follows: “Americans believe that French and German opposition to the War in Iraq was a betrayal of decades of support. But many Europeans believe recent U.S. behavior was a betrayal of what the U.S. has taught them (from the ideals of Woodrow Wilson, including peace, free markets, and democracy)…. The U.S. (now) wants to transform the world. Europeans want to manage it. The difference reflects differences in power and in attitudes to its legitimate use. The transatlantic relationship is now a partnership of convenience. It is already no more than that for the U.S.”

My perception is that there is a much larger resentment of U.S. behavior in Europe today than we might imagine, as Americans. And the reasons behind it are unlike anything that most Americans think, or have been told via the popular media. There are two things different here than in the U.S. For one, the Europeans truly believe the U.S. has betrayed them by behaving in a manner that is not consistent with the way Americans had convinced the Europeans to behave over the past several decades, namely to seek peace. And secondly, the Europeans truly desire peace, as witnessed by the huge presence of these multi-colored flags hanging from windows everywhere I go in Europe, that says, simply, “Peace.” Europeans were surprised to hear that these rainbow-colored “Peace flags”—which are everywhere here—are not known in America.

[Raymond Merriman]

 
You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build. - Sean O'Casey

 
The world's mass media, overwhelmed by the dramas in the Middle East, have stopped reporting news from Central Asia even though, until recently, the region's oil resources had been regarded as the biggest strategic resource for the West. The story of Central Asian oil is a mystery.

Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the leaders of Central Asian nations, supported by a number of big oil companies, proclaimed the Caspian Sea to be a new oil and gas treasure-trove. In fierce competition, American, British and Russian companies started exploring the new terrain. Each new pipeline made headline news, and countries like Kazakstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan appeared as a fresh alternative to Middle Eastern as well as Russian oil resources.

Around 2000, the Caspian Sea oil rush began receding. According to some reports, actual oil resources had been grossly overrated, and transportation problems proved to be tougher than expected. Now, with Iraq and much of the Middle East in mayhem, debates about Caspian Sea oil will resurface.

 
Finally, news just in of a worldwide survey conducted by the UN. The
only question asked was:
" Would you please give your honest opinion about solutions to the food
shortage in the rest of the world?"
The survey was a huge failure.
In much of Africa they didn't know what "food" meant.
In much of Eastern Europe they didn't know what "honest" meant.
In Western Europe they didn't know what "shortage" meant.
In China they didn't know what "opinion" meant.
In the Middle East they didn't know what "solution" meant.
And in the US they didn't know what "the rest of the world" meant.


Jeremy Paxman

 
---"A steak. A glass of wine. A beer," says Captain Glaser. "How does fucking work again?" asks Private Miller. "Here I am. Send me." That's the motto of the 2nd Brigade, and it's from the Book of Isaiah. The GIs have scratched "Send me home" onto the dashboards of their vehicles. And now the warriors must teach democracy and freedom, made in USA, to the people they have liberated and who did not wish to be liberated. They do this by building checkpoints everywhere, with concrete barriers, sandbags and a lot of barbed wire. Of course, checkpoints are also erected in front of the palaces, which are now just as closed to the people of Baghdad as they were before, except that the identity of those in power has changed.

---

 
"..when I visited Iraq, I thought to myself, 'What will we tell our children in fifty years when they ask what we did when the people in Iraq were dying.'" (Mairead McGuire, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Northern Ireland)

 
"A time comes when silence is betrayal. That time is now." -- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.