apparently my last rant was too long as nobody responded. anyway, i'm brain-dead right now so I'll write more later...

Another day of work complete. This morning was one of those mornings where nothing seems to go your way. I woke up on time, but decided to try again and get my marks from this past term off the Internet. Well, let's just say, fuck Quest! I have even defended this ass-backwards, stupid-ass program from time to time but no longer. It is currently holding my marks hostage and it took me 15 minutes to get so close to them but then not get them this morning- thereby making me late for work. grrr. then i spilled coffee on my nice white shirt causing me to hold books in front of it all day so no one would notice the stain.

however, things picked up because an old prof sent me a nice e-mail because he wanted to make sure i was coming to convocation. and, yes, i am. my dad and i are heading out for a lovely vacation to waterloo (his first trip east of kenora i think). convocation is june 13th all you waterloo kids so i'll be back in town then.

on my way home from work today i ran into an old camp friend who is now doing voluntary service with Christian Peacemakers Teams in Colombia. She's basically acting as a third-party body-guard for people who are at risk of paramilitary violence. It appears that things in Colombia are potentially going downhill as a right-wing candidate is running for election and he has been very upfront about his paramilitary ties. It appears that the urban middle class have no idea what paramilitary violence is like in the country side and so the possibility for massacre and devastating violence continues.

which leads me to my bigger rant. i don't necessarily consider myself a complete defender of the underdog in that i attempt to insure i know the facts before automatically choosing the less-popular side. however, i seem to be the lone voice of dissent in my family in so many situations. at the cottage over dinner last night we were watching the cbc evening news. they were reporting that coalition forces had encountered heavy fighting in northern afghanistan and that an al-Qaeda fighter had been killed. however, an American soldier had also been killed and the news cast went on to give his name and hometown and also mention that he was a father and husband.

i sarcastically remarked "i guess the afghan man's family isn't worth mentioning" and was quickly told by multiple people around the table that we don't care about him. why is it that the media will go to such great lenghts to humanize our allies but will not recognize that a human casualty is a human casualty? why is the afghan man not a husband or a father? are they not equally devastated by his death? is it because he is a "terrorist" who has taken the lives of americans? what about the americans who have taken thousands of lives?

i understand that the americans are our "allies" and that the al-Qaeda afghans are our "enemies" (not the citizens in the coalition aghan government we just helped establish), but i do not believe that a supposedly neutral news agency should be furthering the propaganda of the government by dehumanizing the enemy and thereby fueling the war effort.

Remeber, Saddam Hussein was once our "friend". We helped put Milosovic into power and the Taliban government was initially installed by the US. Funny, how quickly humans become our enemies.