Paging Alex

Sorry, love, lost your email a few days back. Don't suppose you could re-send that?

I'd spin that into an entry on how this has been a week of lost messages for me, but am again finding it difficult to work up the enthusiasm.

Thanks to Jason for turning me on to Mother Jones WarWatch a few days back. So far, my growing sense of disgust about the ongoing "liberation" has been fueled mostly by listening to NPR and catching bits of Democracy Now while driving around.

Would like to do something with this bit, from a Guardian article:

"But it's perfectly proper for us to say 'a British defence source has said there's an uprising in Basra' and not report it as gospel truth. We attribute wherever possible to a source. The secret is attribution, qualification and scepticism," he added.

Given the tendency of the (US) mainstream media to describe Pentagon "statements" vs. Iraqi "claims" and so forth, but sifting through stories to find examples of this sort of thing is hardly likely to improve my mood.

I'm well aware this hands-off approach is something of a benefit of living here. Others:

KATHMANDU: Hundreds of leftwing students and youths took to the streets of the Nepalse capital Wednesday to protest whopping increases in fuel prices the government says were prompted by the Iraq war.

[. . .] The [Nepal Oil Corp.], citing higher international oil prices due to the Iraq war, Wednesday announced it was increasing the prices of fuel products by up to 64.7 percent with immediate effect.

Others are more directly affected by the actions of what I strongly resist calling my government.

It's not like I have any control over what they're doing.

This isn't improving my mood either.

And as George mentioned/quoted a few days back (from a New York Times piece):

Black Americans are far more likely to oppose the war than both white Americans and white Democrats, and are correspondingly unhappy with Mr. Bush's job performance.

While 82 percent of whites said the United States should take military action to oust Mr. Hussein, just 44 percent of blacks said they supported that approach. In addition, 71 percent of whites said they were proud of what the United States was doing in Iraq, compared with 33 percent of blacks.

Which I'd find somewhat soothing, if not for the certainty that some quarters will just use this to resurrect old slurs about our lack of patriotism, or point to Condi Rice and Colin Powell as proof that the statistics are mistaken or misleading.

Not feeling like re-fighting old battles, thanks.

Which sentiment extends to the war itself, actually.