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I had to take a rest after I wrote the article "Democracy, Terrorism and the emergence of the Police State." I felt tired, my head was spinning, my heart felt empty. Then, few hours later I visited Ensign and I felt better as I read the humorous and sarcastic writing "To many Thoughts" by Timothy Shire. Referring to yesterday's warning by US Attorney General John Ashcroft that additional attacks can be expected over this week Shire wrote "Is a bandit sneaking away with the light? Is there a conspiracy of darkness? Or are there to many thoughts and not enough thinking?"

At a time of tragedy, we have US administration officials scaring the public and behaving like chickens with their heads chopped off; we have US generals telling us that the bombing in Afghanistan is in line with the secretive strategic timeline of a war on terrorism with no end in sight; and we have our converging media showing the GPS targeting and bombing of Taliban rubbly infrastructure turning to dust. I visited later the site managed by political commentator Arianna Huffington and I found it very refreshing as she sarcastically makes fun of our inept political leadership. And in order to invite you to visit her web site I want to share with you, my readers, the following excerpts from her writing.

...Watching the news may be hazardous to your health -- and may be damaging the well-being of our entire nation. In much the same way that the terrorists hijacked our airplanes and turned them into flying bombs, they are now on the verge of successfully hijacking our airwaves. What we are witnessing is the Gary Conditization of the most important story of our time. We all know the recipe by now: Take 10 minutes of actual news, mix in heaping portions of breathless reporting, rampant rumors, baseless speculation, twitchy, nerve-racking crawls and hours-old "breaking news," stir repeatedly, overheat for as long as possible and, voila, there you have it -- enough toxic filler to feed the 24-hour news beast. Broadcast immediately (definitely don't let it cool). Serves 280 million...

...If only our leaders had started thinking about the unthinkable before Sept. 11, we would not be as vulnerable as we are today. "None of us," said President Bush this week, epitomizing the prevailing failure of imagination, "could have imagined what was to come, the scale of the emergency, the enormity of the danger, the magnitude of the evil." Why not? How could anyone who has lived in a century that included the Holocaust, the Soviet Gulags and the killing fields of Cambodia say that?...

...It in no way minimizes the horrific toll of Sept. 11 to point out that 33,000 Americans fall victim every year to gun violence. Just as we have declared war against international terror, we should also redouble our efforts to put an end to the homegrown bloodshed that continues to stain America's inner cities. If new Cabinet member Tom Ridge really wants to increase Homeland Security, he should add this threat to his portfolio...

We have to break our grief with some laugh from time to time, so pay a visit to Arianna Online and enjoy her writing.

Reference:

Columns, by Arianna Huffington http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/index.html