146 countries have signed a treaty banning the use of landmines.
20,000 people are killed each year by landmines, 80% are civilians, and 40% are civilian children.and yet the bush administration are planning on using landmines if they go to war with iraq, even though every other western nation has banned the use of landmines.
for this, and many other reasons, it is a very sad time to be an american.
america under the bush administration will henceforth be known as the country that: didn’t sign the kyoto accord, continues to use landmines, executes people on a regular and unjust basis, gives huge subsidies to coal, oil, and nuclear energy producers, cuts funding to education and the arts, has an avowed republican racist as the head of the senate, and so on and so on.
as i said, it’s a sad time to be an american. i just hope that the american people come to their senses in 2 years and elect anyone other than bush and his atavistic cronies.
moby

paul wellstone, a wonderful man and a senator from minnesota, died today in a plane crash with his family.
this is a very sad thing, indeed.
-moby

how sad…
i just read about the assasination of pim fortuyn. for those of you who don’t know who he was, pim fortuyn was a politician in the netherlands. and not necessarily a politician whom i agreed with, but a very interesting politician nonetheless. he was the leader of the far-right party in the netherlands, and he was openly gay. which could really only happen in the netherlands.
and as i said, i didn’t agree with his politics, but i admired his courage and his conviction.
and now he’s been assasinated.

killing is always abhorrent, but especially in a place like the netherlands which has always seemed like such a rational and tolerant country. i guess that there are violent lunatics everywhere, even a place as peaceful as the netherlands. so it is that we mourn another unnecessary death. how sad.
-moby

p.s-on a side note, after pim fortuyn died a lot of the muslims in the netherlands were celebrating his death. it doesn’t exactly help the promotion of islam as a peaceful faith when muslims celebrate the deaths of innocent people. it’s still very painful for me to remember the footage of muslims dancing in celebration after the terrorist attacks of september 11th.