Too Much To Dream

I listen to NPR

I decided to listen to the local college radio station while preparing my steaks. WUCF is a jazz station, and they play NPR news every half hour or so. Well. News from Iraq was offered: first something about some women and children who had been killed in the fighting in wherever they are fighting now (it starts with "N"). I had a cynical thought: I knew that this must have made some journo's day, because they live for opportunities to be able to use the phrase "women 'n' children" in the same story as "were killed" appears. Chiding myself for such un-nice notions (not), I continued to listen. I then was informed that Amnesty International has called the US the "Jekyll and Hyde" of human rights. Well, at least we have a Dr. Jekyll component to our national personality -- so many other countries (including the one we are currently involved in festivities with) seem to be all Hyde. AI seems to have given up on those countries as beyond the pale, by the way. (See more on this subject by Steven Den Beste.)

Then they finished with the Iraq news and went on to another juicy, US-involved-somehow, country's doings. Apparently journalists are fleeing an "embattled" area of Colombia because leftist insurgents and their "right-wing" opponents both issued death threats against those journalists. A sensible option: now both sides can fight it out in (relative) peace and quiet without journalistic interference. I wonder if this is the start of a trend.