[extropy-chat] A black paintbrush dotting the globe, making it dotty

[Amara Graps]

It's not often that I ramble here, I hope that you don't mind
a little bit for this Friday.

Sometimes I have a sense that black paintbrush has been swept
over the globe; hope, optimism, joy, the richness of variety,
that was before, so easy to see around, is submerged.

Every day I read the news, and every day I hate it worse. It is
a total fear-driven world we are living in now. The politicians are
dumber than usual, the wars and killing are more brutal,
intelligent people that should know better are only able to see
black and white too. 

a couple of stories

I am on the local organizing comittee of a scientific meeting
next week, and a few weeks ago,  a man from Pakistan wrote to me
and asked if he could be invited to our conference. He is vice
principal of a girls high school, and he also happens to be
taking an online astronomy course from James Cook University in
Australia (because Pakistan doesn't have higher degrees for
astronomy at the universities there). I put his name into
Google, and it was obvious to me that this man loves astronomy.
I didn't need convincing whether he was legititimate, but even
so, he was very willing to provide whatever proof we needed to
verify he was who he said he was.

However when I forwarded his letter to the scientific organizing
comittee, who make the decisions for things like this, the
response from one committee member was that, because he is from
Pakistan, and that AlQaeda was headquartered there (the committee
member said), then this was too dangerous of a situation, and he
recommended not inviting him. More discussions ensued, and it
was settled at the end, but I was so suprised to encounter this
from intellectuals. Pakistan has a population almost as large as
the US, could he honestly believe that the population of that
country is filled with terrorists? That country is filled with
humans like you and I, who also happen to be facing the same
terrorist problems there. People like this astronomy enthusiast
should get our understanding, not our ostracization.

-----

The second story  is one regarding the two Italian
girls who were held hostage and released. I wasn't following the
huge Italian news about that, but I know that during the last
couple of weeks, the whole country was emotionally involved in
that story while they were held, and then when the girls were
released, more stories on TV and in the newspapers were written
about them. 

What I appreciate about these two girls is that they said the
facts and they displayed their respect and care for the Iraqis.
We learned that people who are kidnapping there are a large
spectrum, from mild to fanatic, and their tactics change
accordingly. For these girls, they were taken by the 'mild'
variety of kidnappers, who apparently (according to the girls)
treated the girls well. And the girls stated this. Moreover,
when the girls were 'recovered' they were wearing long black
head pieces with respect to the muslims around them. This was
shown many times on video.

Today I heard that- 
The Italian government (right side) was apparently bent out of
shape that they paid one million euro ransom for getting the
girls from 'nice' kidnappers. Moreover, the girls shouldn't have
given such awful people so much respect, by stating that they
were treated well and by wearing black headdress, the stupid
Italian politician said. These dingbats said (publically!) that
they should boot the girls back to Iraq to the kidnappers, for the 
girls' stupid behavior, (that is, for 'respecting' the kidnappers 
and  the Iraqis).

The world is completely crazy.

-----

The best thing that we can do to get out of this mess is 
to recognize the human faces.

Kevin Sites Blog (in Iraq)  You can't get any more sublime than this.
http://www.kevinsites.net/

and a little more politics : 

Why We Must Not Re-elect President Bush 
http://georgesoros.com:80/index.cfm?Fuseaction=SpeechHTML

Amara