I’m sad about Ms. Lipow’s passing. I read a lot of her work when I was writng my Virtual Reference Culminating paper.
Here is a web page with some really nice comments about Ms. Lipow and her life.
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Image via Wikipedia Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Far graver than Vietnam
“We have a growing, maturing insurgency group,” he told me. “We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they’re all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are conirmed in that view.”
This is not surprising to me at all. The Iraqis do not want us there. It’s time for us to get a clue.
Quite a long time ago I was listening to “This American Life” on NPR. The episode was on Iraq after the war. This was not long, maybe a month or two, after Bush cockily declared “Mission Accomplished.” In the episode, they were in Iraq and they were interviewing people. They interviewed a woman soilder in the army who was taking names, addresses, and phone numbers of, ironically, Iraqi’s who no longer have addresses on account of our bombing them to oblivion. There is no postal system either. The soldier could not help them immediately so would get back to them “in two months”. So they interview this woman from the army and she is saying that she keeps telling them “two months’ over and over to them but, in reality, she doesn’t know when they would get the help they need. Then they go interview some Iraqi tribe leaders. They are pissed. No, they are beyond pissed. They have lost everything. They have had it. One of the men said something along the lines of, “if this doesn’t get fixed within 1 month we are going to war against America.” In other words, they were sick and tired of the situation. Because of America, they had lost everything. And they weren’t going to put up with it much longer. Sure enough, it was about a month later that the insurgency started.
Because of what I heard on This American Life, I am inclined to believe that this insurgency is just tribal men, or civilians, who are sick of the American occupation, and they are rising up to overthrow it. Sure, the various America-hating terrorist organizations are taking advantage of the situation, but I really wonder if the root of this insurrgency isn’t just regular Iraqis who are sick and tired of the American occupation.
Note: you can listen to that episode here. It’s act three. Click on the realplayer icon to listen via realplayer. It’s very interesting.
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I haven’t posted in a few days…I apologize. I’ve been dealing with some issues that have left me feeling a little bit downtrodden lately. And so I just have kind of lost the oomph to post on this site. I’ve also been very busy at work. So I just wanted to tell you that I’m still here. Give me a few days and I’ll be back to my old self again :twisted:.
I visited my family in Washington State over last weekend and had a pretty good time, despite some tertiary issues. My hubby went backpacking in the Okanogan forest with my step-dad and had a ball. I hear that they camped on top of a waterfall! I can’t wait to see the pics. I will post them in my photo album when I get them. While the guys were out hiking my Mom and i had fun in town. We visited a yarn store and bought yarn, needles, and instructions on knitting for left-handers. I bought some lovely handspun and hand dyed yarn. I taught my mom to knit on the way home from picking the guys up from backpacking Sunday. (Watch out siblings, you might get some potholders for Christmas 😉 )
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Image by Jose P Isern Comas via Flickr I wanted to post something in remembrance of this day three years ago. I will never forget it for as long as I live. I will never forget the huge, gaping hole that it has left in the fabric of our nation’s soul. I will never forget the people who died that day, and who gave thier lives saving others, the NYC firemen, and the passengers on flight 93, and all of the other people who died saving other people. I will never forget watching, in horror, as one of the towers of the WTC collapsed, and then listening in my car on the way to work as the second tower fell. I was sitting in a traffic jam on Highway 17 and everyone in the cars around me were crying or had looks of shock on thier faces. Later on in the drive, I heard about the demise of flight 93. It was the most horrific experience of my life, and I wasn’t even in New York. I was thousands of miles away, on the opposite end of the country, but I could feel the collective pain of a billion people. Every single American (and many people around the world) grieved that day, and we still do.
My prayers and thoughts are with all of those who died that day, and also with the people who lost a loved one.
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Yahoo! News – Gore: Cheney ‘Wrong Choice’ Remark Sleazy
“The claim by Bush and Cheney that the American people must give them four more years in office or else be ‘hit hard’ by another terrorist attack is a sleazy and despicable effort to blackmail voters with fear,” Gore said.
“They are going back to the ugliest page in the Republican playbook: fear,” he said. “They’re not even trying to convince you to vote for George Bush. Their only hope is to try and make you too afraid to vote for John Kerry. It’s the lowest sort of politics imaginable.”
Reading the news lately is pissing me off. The latest antics of Cheney makes me see red! Folks, the Bush admin thinks we’re stupid. They are treating us like rats in a labratory. They think we are too stupid to make our own descisions on the candidates based on thier policies so they have to resort to using fear to get us to vote for them. ARG!!!!! (she says as she pulls her hair out).
