Letter to the Editor

Greetings, CNN folk.

I feel obligated to leave a comment about your headlines for today. It has been established for some weeks now that there is an impending campaign to crackdown on security in Bagdad (you know, "the surge" currently debated in congress, in the media, and by the public), the locus for much of the sectarian violence. From other sources, it appears this surge is under way, yet, in visiting your news site, I find that “Nasa Love Triangle” is the leading story and the only reference to Iraq is a negative piece on a kickback scam run by US officers and the deaths resulting from a downed US helicopter.

What gives?

The American people have been constantly bombarded with stories and statistics about casualty rates (“grim milestones”), how the war is not going well and has been mismanaged, and is responsible for the president's and our country’s low approval ratings. And here we have a change in tactics and policy being implemented as I write this, measures that will have an enormous impact on whether the efforts for a stable democracy in Iraq has any success or failure, and CNN can’t be bothered to mention this development in their headlines? What else could you be waiting for, or consider more important? Ah yes, “NASA Love Triangle”.

Why would I not go elsewhere for my news in the future...

Sincerely,
Barbara Wester

"Our job is to bash the president"

Wow. Did anyone hear about this?

On Friday night's edition of Inside Washington, the first topic was whether the media's been unfair to President Bush given his abysmal approval ratings. NPR reporter Nina Totenberg said Bush received a free ride for years, so now the worm has turned and the coverage is fierce. A free ride? As if we’ve never heard criticism leveled at the president before now? Then the host turned to Newsweek's Evan Thomas, who was up front in his assessment of the media's role:

Gordon Peterson: "What do you think, Evan? Are the mainstream media bashing the president unfairly?"

Evan Thomas: "Well, our job is to bash the president, that's what we do almost --"

Peterson: "But unfairly?"

I can’t take anyone seriously when they dismiss the notion that the media has a blatant bias, one that’s hostile to this administration and makes no pretense of objectivity.

The message is very simple: the mainstream media are the key players in shaping public opinion according to the political outcomes they would desire. This agenda has consequences since we are currently in a global war against an ideology whose principle objective to transform the world into an Islamic state. The West has to fight to reform Islam except that it has an academic elite and a media that are actively engaged in foiling any effective response to this threat. As well, the insurgency understands that the only way they can win in Iraq isn’t by tactical military success but by undermining the American public’s support for the war.

So, in the end, neither the insurgents nor the media here at home want the project in Iraq to succeed.

Presenting:

"Daddy, why does my head disappear so easily into the television set? Daddy?"

So, my recent thoughts have been spent on the importance of a stable, supportive home-front on educational outcome, but also on the question of how do those few schools with poor students and unmotivated parents do it?

To begin answering those questions, I think it’s important to understand a student’s world according to the greatest influences. I think of students as existing in two spheres, each having the ability to shape their development for better or for worse. Education can make people at any age flower into well adjusted, fully functioning individuals, but if a students shows up at the school door unprepared to take advantage of this opportunity, there is a limit to what the establishment can do to reach them. How receptive they are depends on the other, second sphere of everything else: family, peers, television, computers and other media, much of which today I believe we should consider a cultural wasteland.

My experience has convinced me that society would be a different and better place on the whole if parents showed more philanthropy to the development their children’s character rather than spoil them materially, set few limits, and consider them their “friends”. Most of the behavioral problems in the classroom –in my opinion the largest factor obstructing academic progress- would largely disappear if students were taught how to exibit self-control and respect for authority, starting in the home.

But the $20,ooo question is and shall remain: How do you effect change within communities where the generational ethos is selfishness and irresponsibility?

I think the first answer to that tough question is: by sheer necessity. People should be protected from harming themselves and others, namely their children, but they should also be found accountable for their behavior. Decisions are meaningless if there aren’t consequences, and if you shelter an individual from this truth, they will not learn it and ardently resist learning it later in life. I know this from personal experience –studying my own personal behavior- as well as from watching that of others very closely.

In a related way, too, a reevaluation of what is commonly considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior and norms (witness the ongoing culture wars) is necessary. But that isn’t a conversation this country (Europe is gone) is easily willing to assume since so much of what is considered virtuous or wicked is regulated to the authority of opinion and therefore is usually off the table for public debate.

So, I ask again with a slight modification, and with the understanding that I do so as a lonely voice in the wilderness: How do you effect change within communities where the generational ethos is selfishness and irresponsibility, knowing it is politically incorrect to attribute causation to cultural factors that largely lay outside public education?

Letting in the Sunshine

Jon Anderson and Steve Howe look like they’re straight out of a Tolkien work. This is quite possibly one of my most favorite pieces of enchanted music:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7NlyzpGcnQ

Long distance runaround

Long time waiting to feel the sound

I still remember the dream there

I still remember the time you said goodbye

Did we really tell lies

Letting in the sunshine

Did we really count to one hundred

Cold summer listening

Hot colour melting the anger to stone

I still remember the dream there

I still remember the time you said goodbye

Did we really tell lies

Letting in the sunshine

Did we really count to one hundred

Human Shields

The above picture offers some valuable insight into the intellectual collusion of the far left and anti-Western movements. In contrast, here's some insight into the conflict in Lebanon during July of last year from Michael Totten:

http://michaeltotten.com/

I turned on my voice recorder. Alan translated.

“So you stayed in Ain Ebel through the whole war?”

I said. “Yes,”

Jad said. “At what point did Hezbollah come to the village and fire their missiles?”

I said. “During the war they took some uninhabited houses at the edge of our village and stayed there.”

“Uninhabited?” I said.

“Yes, uninhabited. Nobody was there, so they took them. They were eating in there, sleeping in there, and maybe doing some reconnaissance.”

“Did they ever go into houses where people were still living?” I said.

“No,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

I wondered if Hezbollah deserved credit for not encroaching on people’s personal space, but Jad answered that question before I could ask it.

“They chose specific houses because nobody was living there and nobody would know.”

“Did they choose to come to this town for strategic or tactical reasons?” Noah said. “Or was it because it’s a Christian town?”

“Strategically, of course,” Jad said. “It’s a high peak. It is very good strategically. But they could have chosen these parts, these lands...”

He gestured with his arm toward the valley below, the place Alan promised to take us next.

“It would have been more protection for them than this village. So why did they come here? I think it’s because it’s a Christian village. They do this.”

“Did anybody who lives here try to get Hezbollah to leave the village?” I said.

“We don’t have any arms,” Jad said. “Hezbollah has arms. But there was this incident that happened. Next to a guy’s place they were firing Katyushas – you know, missiles. They were firing from the house. This guy went out and said Please, do not fire from our home, from in front of our house. My father is very ill and there are some children in the house. They came to him and said Shut up, go in your house, this is none of your business.”

A Battle for Global Values

Listen, I know that Blair is Bush's lap-dog, but let’s give him a chance and read his essay anyways:

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20070101faessay86106/tony-blair/a-battle-for-global-values.html

Listening and reading Blair makes one long for an articulate leader skilled at oration, something critical in times like these.

Suicide of a Christmas Tree