Lots of things to speak about
Speaking when you see evil and stupidity is good. Letting others know you see it too is powerful. Yesterday, Hal said:
I had convinced myself that it was my own pessimism coloring my perceptions of what has been happening to my government.
But Hal is certainly not alone in worrying about how freedoms of thought, expression and movement are regarded as luxuries too dangerous to afford (to quote Landon Winner). This is happening all over Europe, too, as numerous small legal decisions threaten to make the European Union an even more closed and undemocratic institution.
Meanwhile, the Moscow hostage crisis ended with all terrorists and more than 100 hostages dead. Maybe Russian special forces did what they had to do. But when Vladimir Putin escalates the bloody war in Chechnya it is a deliberate choice.
Indeed, Russia has a long, sad tradition of talking about anti-terrorism while silencing critics and killing those it wants to kill anyway. But when George Bush and others see Vladimir Putin today, they apparently admire his efficiency more than anything else.