Interesting article

I found this today on Salon.

Raises interesting thoughts for me to ponder. I agree with the author, I often look around me and feel like I've moved into another country. I know most people believe that the US won't turn into Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia, but the truth is, neither did most of the people living in those times and countries. While I certainly don't like to think I might actually really need to move, how do you know when you do? What price might you pay if you don't? Also like the author, I'm not the "person" the government's hoping to catch either - I obey most laws, I pay my taxes, I contribute to society in my own little way. But I find that little comfort, because I don't want to live in a country where fear, suspicion and terror reign supreme, and I don't want to raise my child in one either. I also realize that I wouldn't know the first thing about the mechanics of how to leave - what do you have to do to lawfully move to another country? If it came down to it, would I go illegally (Canada, anyone?)

How do you know when it's time to go?

Something that makes me wonder

I've heard a number of people talking about supporting troops overseas by sending them care packages, and I think it's certainly on of the best things we can do to show our feelings of support. Today, following a link that cranapril posted on TIM, I found a list of suggested items, and I'm more than a little confused.

Some of the items on the list make a lot of sense - current magazines, candy, girl scout cookies. You know, typical care package kind of stuff. But some of it, I look at, and can't figure out why it isn't being supplied for them - things like tampons and pads, soap and shampoo, toilet paper, sunscreen? These aren't little luxuries, they're necessities. If units are in a position to still be receiving mail (i.e., they're not completely unreachable in the middle of combat), why aren't these being supplied to them like their food and uniforms?

It seems that most of the things on the list seem to ride the middle of the line - food items like granola bars, ramen noodles and hot cocoa aren't needed, since we do, generally feed our soldiers. But I'm sure they make life a lot nicer, since I doubt army food is all that great to eat. Anything that makes you feel closer to home has got to be good when you're so far away.

If this just reveals some essential ignorance on my part as to how the Army operates, well, feel free to smack me with a clue-by-four

(no subject)

I think having just finished reading Anne Frank, having just seen The Pianist and having Where She Came From stuck in my head ever since I read it is definitely coloring my mood today. In all three, the families seemed to have underestimated the "worst" that could befall them, and in the latter two, took almost no precations. And in all of them, most of the people end up dead. This isn't a good object lesson.

Yes, I realize that they were all also Jewish in Nazi Germany, and that there isn't exactly a perfect parallel between there and what could happen here. But, again, the books I read during my different Chinese history classes, telling the tale of the Cultural Revolution echo in my head as well. Neighbors and family members turning on one another, sometimes for their own self preservation. Torture, imprisonment, death, all for exercising for freedoms we continue to take for granted here (for how much longer?).

I feel, too, like crap for thinking that I would prefer to flee instead of staying and fighting if it came down to that. It seems like an imposssible choice, with heartbreak on either side; do I protect my family and leave everyone else behind? Do I stay and face a completely diminished life (assuming I managed to stay on the right side of the law)? Could I just hunker down into the "trenches" of my job and family and not speak out, could I live with myself if I did OR if I didn't?

God I'm maudlin today. I'm not quite sure what's gotten into me.

Another thought

I was driving to work today, listening to NPR and the folks on there were discussing news agencies, and their rights and responsibilities regarding publishing and broadcasting pictures of the war - should they do, should they not, under what circumstances, that sort of thing. Overall an interesting discussion.

Now, some of you may not know that my company's primary client base is newspapers. We're well entrenched in the daily production (ie, getting the paper out) workflow of a number of the major paper in the US. This is relevant in minute, I promise.

One of the things that this has made me very aware of is the consolidation of the newspaper industry, where, like so many other businesses, multiple newspapers are owned by the same parent company - for example, the New York Times owns the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune and LA Times are owned by one company, and so on. This is all, of course, public information, but of the kind that I'm not sure the average joe reading the paper would realize. It's always made me slightly uncomfortable - in a vague "I don't trust anyone over thirty" kind of way, I don't like the thought that at a very basic level my news sources could be limited to coming from one or two sources. Perhaps I just focus on this because it's a way to express my general distrust of the media, I'm not sure.

Anyway, one thing that all these conglomerate owned newspapers insist on is that, as a general rule, the parent companies don't make decisions about what does or doesn't run in the individual papers. I've always taken that with a grain of salt, figuring that while that might be true on a day-to-day story-by-story basis, eventually, the corporate mindset would percolate down through its papers so that decision would be made, knowing what the corporate stance was, and so on - self censorship instead of corporate mandated, right?

So, I was interested to hear today, when discussing what newspapers were doing with war pictures, I couldn't help but notice that he listed a number of papers that I knew to be owned by this company or that, and that in each case, the papers owned by the same company were all doing the same thing with regard to their handling of the photos.

I'm not sure that this has much real point. Just something I thought was interesting.