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News At Eleven

One of the unexpected side effects of leaving the States has been the kind of news that makes it across the border. I can’t tell if the news is getting progressively worse, or if the Canadian news agencies are neglecting the good news in favor of the bad. The news that I see while passing a newspaper vending machine, or that makes it on the CBC, is all so strange that I can hardly believe there isn’t a wave of U.S. refugees crossing the border en masse.

Hee hee. I typed “en mas”, it didn’t look right, so I went to double check via Google translation, which told me using “en mas” would give y’all the image of refugees crossing the border wearing farmhouses on their heads.

The first of the stories begins:

Alabama state Rep. Gerald Allen (R-Tuscaloosa) wants to ban public funding for any books with gay characters or content to protect children from the “homosexual agenda.” For those books already in the state’s public and university libraries, Allen suggests that people “dig a big hole and dump them in and bury them.” - Southern Voice

Oh, oh, Representative Allen, can I play too? I want to ban all books portraying Christianity as the One Truth, okay? And any books that imply that women were made from Adam’s rib, because I don’t like the government pushing that kind of agenda on The Homeland’s Youth. While I’m at it, I want to encourage all my readers to dig a big hole and bury any and all books that portray spanking as an option for parents. As my grand finale, I think I’ll firebomb all of the cigarette factories. Join me! Censorship is the answer!\

When the two plainclothes Loudoun County sheriff’s investigators showed up on her Leesburg doorstep, Pamela Albaugh got nervous…a complaint had been filed alleging that her 11-year old son had made “anti-American and violent” statements in school…Albaugh described her son as a rambunctious student who has long opposed armies of any kind.

She was aware of an incident at Belmont Ridge Middle School in which her son, Yishai Asido, refused to write a letter to U.S. Marines and responded, according to his teacher, by saying, “I wish all Americans were dead and that American soldiers should die.” Yishai and Albaugh deny that the boy wished his countrymen dead…Instead, Yishai said he has learned that it is not worth challenging authority. “At the end of the day, you lose,” he said, adding: “All of these freedoms and things they’re supposed to uphold, they bash them.” - Washington Post

You know, that kid could have been me. When I was eleven years old, my Sunday school teacher asked us to write a letter to Ronald Reagan. Ronnie’s letter openers found eight letters praising his presidency, and one asking how he could justify supporting shoveling so much money into nuclear weapons, and didn’t he know that little kids were terrified to go to sleep at night, because they could wake up to a nuclear war?

My step-sister wrote one of the drooly letters. She received a lovely series of photos of the White House interior. No response for me, though I suppose in retrospect I should be grateful that the FBI didn’t drop by to deprogram me.

Even scarier, however, is that in 2009, if we’d stayed in America, if he were in school, that kid could be Paul. Obviously we would never encourage him to wish people dead, but if he didn’t want to write to the Marines? We’d support that, we’d support talking about how war is wrong, one hundred percent.

Rainwater Harvesting: While this issue is very complex, the bottom line is that it is illegal under Colorado water rights. Although no specific statute has yet been written specifically directed at harvesting rainwater, the act of intercepting and diverting the water could be in violation of Colorado water rights. - Colorado State University

This means that putting a bucket under your gutter to collect rainwater is illegal. I’m not kidding. I wish I were kidding.

I’ve saved the scariest for last. And before you read the news story, here’s a little anecdotal preface: a Muslim co-worker of Todd’s, with an Arabic name, went to the States for a business meeting. When he arrived at the hotel, they assigned him room 911.

A prominent national Islamic civilrights and advocacy group today called on elected representatives andgovernment officials to address the rising level of Islamophobia in America. The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issuedthat call following today’s release of a survey by the Media and Society Research Group in Cornell University’s Department of Communication indicatingthat 44 percent of Americans believe the government should curtail the civilrights of American Muslims in some manner.

A Cornell University news release on the report states:
“About 27 percent of respondents said that all Muslim Americans should berequired to register their location with the federal government, and 26percent said they think that mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. lawenforcement agencies … About 22 percent said the federal government shouldprofile citizens as potential threats based on the fact that they are Muslimor have Middle Eastern heritage. In all, about 44 percent said they believethat some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans.” - PR Newswire

Still think comparing the United States to Germany, circa 1937 is an overreaction? I don’t.

© 2004 QN Podcast (formerly Quirky Nomads).