Another sad story....

[fajrdrako]

I hate appalling refugee cases. Not just the really flagrant cases like Maher Arar, but cases like this one look heartbreaking to me. I don't even approve of national borders, especially when people are imprisoned or suffering because of them. No one thinks Iran is a particularly good place to live right now; but the really scary thing is that this family is being held by Americans, who ought to be the good guys, who ought to be our friends, and who ought to believe in justice. Who would, or should, be horrified if other Americans were being held in such conditions.

Imagine there's no countries...

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I would see more hope in the US elections if I didn't think Bush's people were masterminds at perverting democracy - that is, by creating faked but unrevokable election results.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

History is not going to be kind to us. That's all I have to say. Sadness and shame have made me inarticulate.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

You don't need to be personally ashamed just because you are an American - Bush is none of your doing, and I know you don't want children put in detention camps. You'd stop it if you could. Same as I would. Same as anyone with a heart would.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

It hurts to know that this man is strutting around on the world stage talking loudly about how proud he is to be American, and acting as if his kind is the only kind... while there are so many of us who value peace and tolerance and diversity, who have lately become afraid to say so in certain venues for fear of getting attacked for it. The ideal has gone so wrong -- that's what has me in pain about this.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't want to try to defend our own Prime Minister, myself. Or a good number of the world leaders out there, come to think of it.

I think Americans in general are going through a great sense of disillusionment - they believed so much in those "American ideals" which have fallen apart, or turned out to be illusions.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

I think Americans in general are going through a great sense of disillusionment - they believed so much in those "American ideals" which have fallen apart, or turned out to be illusions.

Yes. And I have to say that I don't think the ideals are illusions, as what the world in general has (according to an LJ post I read somewhere recently ;-] noticed/recognized as characterizing Canadians ARE "American" ideals. "Pre-emptive war" and surveillance on our own citizens... no, this is not my country.

Life is confusing right now.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't think the ideals are illusions

I think the identification of certain ideals with the United States is an illusion. Put another way: no nation has special ownership of any ideal.

noticed/recognized as characterizing Canadians ARE "American" ideals

No. I strongly disbelieve that. They might be universal ideals. They might be human ideals. But they are not American or Canadian. They don't belong to any particular nation. When the people of any country believes they have originated, or somehow 'possess', a certain set of values - and that their values are better than those of other nations - I think that's dangerous.

I think that what you are trying to say is that there should be no difference between American and Canadian values. That may be true but I have my doubts: the U.S. has always been legally/constitutionally founded on ideals I do not share. Even the notion that everyone in a nation could or should share the same ideals is something I am wary of, though I do wish no one else had the same warmongering ideals as President Bush.

"Pre-emptive war" and surveillance on our own citizens... no, this is not my country.

It isn't the country you want, or the one you should have, but it's the one that exists right now. And those are not particularly American vices. It could happen anywhere that certain men seize power and use it badly - and it has happened, over and over in history.