It appears the Erie Times has created something it calls its "electronic edition." I can't find too much info on it, but I did find a link earlier to an ad for it, but that seems to have disappeared now. All I can find is the log-in page, which asks for $10 per month to view the paper, which from what I can tell actually looks like a paper, on your computer. Some of the stories in today's paper are still available on goerie.com, but certain ones, like this one I wanted to link to about Condy's reaction to the letter from the president of Iran, are not. I'm sure we'll see more on this in the days to come - the e-paper thing that is.
As far as Condy and the whole U.S. government's reaction to this Iran letter thing, I find it disturbing, but also fairly typical. It seems the Iranian president has taken some serious time and effort to put together this 17-page letter that contains a laundry list of complaints about the U.S., and some other stuff as well. But, it doesn't sound like the letter was overbearing, and I got the impression it was rather politely constructed. The U.S., of course, has immediately dismissed it as a con job to distract us from the nuclear questions at hand.
Have these people (our gov.) no cooth whatsoever? I don't get it. To me, it seems the letter should be regarded as an open invitation to diplomatic discussions. An introduction, of sorts, and can't we move forward from there? No, but because we're the big bully with all the guns and power on our side, and the letter doesn't say exactly what we want it to, we're ignoring it - and ignorance is bliss, at least as far as the Bush administration is concerned. Didn't we also ignore WMD reports on Iraq because they didn't say what we wanted them to either? Look where that has got us.
Can't we just respond diplomatically to these people, the Iranian president in this case, and work things out like civilized human beings? Oh wait, that would require some sort of compromise, and heaven forbid a man-child like Bush get involved in any compromise. He'll just takes his guns and weapons and invade you unless you totally give in to his demands. We're fucked as long as this fool remains in office. Thank God, and I use that term loosely, the American people are finally losing confidence in this guy, I just hope it's not too late to avert WWIII.
Ralph
2 comments:
This tells us everything you need to know aboutthe current administration. A president from a major country attempts to open a discussion, and Washington wipes its ass with the letter.
This is exactly the same response that Bush gave to Mubarak shortly after 9/11. Egypt's Mubarak--who strikes me as a far brighter and experienced man than George Bush--came to DC after 9/11 and told Bush that the way to peace in the Middle East was to resolve the Israeli/Palestinian once and for all.
Bush sent him packing and bombed Iraq.
Huh?
This tells me that the US government is not interested in negotiating peace. They never even talk about peace. As a result, we will be at war for many years.
War will kill this country. The Soviet Union tried to control other countries by force and the nation fell apart. I'll bet they never thought that would happen.
Instead of peace, the Bush administration wants to control. It's survival of the fittest on a global scale, and it's teaching Tehran a good lesson in this art.
That's why Iran wants the bomb, to protect it from the US, who refuses to negotiate on practically any matter, and how is the only country to use nuclear weapons to kill hundreds of thousands of people.
And please don't talk to me about the "spread of democracy" as the magnanimous driving force behind current foreign policy. I believe Hamas recently won legal democratic elections and Washington moved to cut them off and kill the organization.
It seems Washington only wants "democracy" when their man is in charge. Okay, so stop calling it "democracy," Mr. Man-of-Integrity.
Can you see so why many other countries hate the US? We're friggin hypocrites.
And do we even care about peace? Do we want a president who has the ability negotiate with other countries? Seems not. We celebrate the idea of war, so get yer guns ready.
In closing, someone once said, on the point of world affairs, "As long as you keep them negotiating, you have peace. It's when the talking stops that bad things happen."
We stopped talking to the Arab world a long time ago.
This all maked me sad to know that our leaders have no desire to talk and have such little tact in their international relations.
That's enough for now.
Thanks for your piece. A very solid commentary. A couple quesitons/tangents:
1. Have we always had a deaf ear for Muslims? Does this date all the back to the Crusades? What do we need to overcome this/can it be overcome?
2. Also, has it been detertimed that Iran is going to build nuclear weapons, or is this another WMD thing? From what I've seen, they only seem to be talking about creating energy. Of course, if they do want to create weapons, the question is, of course, what right do we have to stop them? They didn't try and stop us, did they?
Cheers.
Ralph
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