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May 12, 2004
Go Green!
Well, it certainly felt good to get some sleep last night. I've still been pretty tired most of the day though, particularly this afternoon and evening when I was trying to do some research for my presentation on Pablo Picasso that's coming up on Friday. The plus side is that I finally found at least a couple of works that are based directly on the classical tradition. Since that's supposed to be kinda the main point of what we're talking about with our artists that we're presenting, I was a bit worried with Picasso, since most of his stuff is so strange it's hard to find classical influences. But at least now I have a bit of a starting point to go off of.
Tonight I went to Proclaim again, and it was good as usual. Afterwards I went to Ruttles for a little while with Erin, Javen, Leah, and Erin's friend Jason from UW-Superior (who actually knows a girl named Amy who I graduated with in high school ... small world!). Anyway, somehow the discussion got onto some personality test that they all took recently, where they were assigned a certain color that corresponded to certain personality traits. Erin was "blue," meaning that she typically gets all emotional about things and hangs out with friends over doing homework. Meanwhile, Javen was a "green," which means that he's a perfectionist that needs to get all of his work done before he goes to have fun with his friends. After hearing the description of green, I definitely knew that I was a green, even before I heard the other colors, hehe. So let's just say that Javen & I had some fun ganging up on our blue friend. :-) And then on the way back to campus we played this game called "Stating the Obvious," where as you're driving down the street and you see a random person, say, pumping gas for instance, you would shout out the window "PUMPING GAS!" Okay, so maybe it's not the greatest game in the world, but it can be pretty amusing, especially when people totally stop what they're doing and get all confused at what we just shouted, hehe. As an example of that, we were driving by Patrick's, and this guy was taking a bunch of garbage out or something, and Javen yelled out the window, "HANDS FULL!" The guy completely stopped and turned around to try and see where the shout was coming from, it was awesome. So tonight was actually pretty fun. :-)
I'm sure all of you out there have seen all sorts of pictures in the media illustrating the humiliation that a few American soldiers were putting a few Iraqi prisoners through, but I can probably guarantee that you haven't seen these refreshing photos of American soldiers in Iraq from the Drudge Report. It's safe to say that the mainstream media isn't going to show these photos to the public, because they portray the fact that not all American soldiers are evil torturers, and that some Iraqis even welcome the Americans into their homes as heroes. Was what the few Americans were doing to Iraqis reprehensible? Yes. But where was the outcry and the outrage over Saddam's actual torture of prisoners? Where were they when his thugs would use power drills to drill holes through prisoners' hands, cut out their tongues, dip their bodies in vats of acid? Where were they when Saddam would line up 312 kids under the age of 12 and execute them all? Where were they when Saddam would bury people alive in mass graves? Where were they? So yes, what a few of our soldiers did was wrong, but it wasn't torture. It isn't even in the same league as the atrocities the Saddam Hussein's regime committed on a daily basis. And in case we needed more proof just what we're up against, there's a video out on the internet of Al-Qaeda terrorists beheading an American civilian who had been kidnapped in Iraq in recent weeks. (WARNING: the link contains very graphic footage, view it at your own risk ... I haven't yet, and I don't know if I will.) I thought it was important to include the link to that, because the American media is refusing to show it, even though they gleefully parade around all the photos of the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. This is a war against evil, and evil must be defeated. We must not back down, because that will only embolden the terrorists, put Americans at greater risk, and allow evil to win. And despite what Al-Qaeda claims, this most recent slaughter of an American civilian is not in response to the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. Al-Qaeda beheaded Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl a year ago. They hijacked planes and slaughtered thousands of innocent Americans on September 11th, 2001. They have been committing reprehensible acts of terror against Americans for years and years before this prison story even broke. And you want to know another difference between the USA and all these terrorist Islamofascist nations such as Iran, Syria and the Sudan? When we found out about the mistreatment of prisoners, we ensured that it would be swiftly dealt with, and that those guilty of the crimes would go on trial. Those other nations openly torture their own citizens in much more grotesque ways, yet there is next to no outrage from the international community over that. It's all so frustrating. But I repeat, this is a war against evil like the world hasn't known before, and it must be defeated.
Well, it's definitely time for bed. I'm never gonna make it out of my sleep deprivation hole that I've dug myself! But I'm excited about tomorrow night, because I get to go to the Twins-Mariners game at the Metrodome with some physics friends for just $3! We'll probably be sitting in the upper deck in left field, at least to start. We might consider trying to move into the lower deck in the middle of the game, but we'll just have to see. Go Twins!
Posted by Jared at May 12, 2004 12:58 AM