Weapons of Mass Destruction

For those of us who are still willing to consider the possibility that President Bush was not out to invade Iraq from the beginning and didn't spread a net of lies to convince everyone to agree with him. Here is an article by CNN that says Saddam Hussein admitted to pretending that he had WMD's in order to intimidate Iran.

Nice to know that the "independent" report that chronicled over 900 false statements by the Bush administration between 2001 and 2003 is still hardly proof that Bush is a liar, besides the fact that the "independent" report was funded by a liberal group that has been funded by someone who publicly compares America today to Nazi Germany.

In Case You're Interested after all my talk about Kenya

Here's a really good article about the current conflict in Kenya and how the church there is responding.

http://www.urbana.org/_articles.cfm?RecordId=1160

American Media: The Image or the Mirror?

I was reading news this morning and noticed a headline about the ongoing tribal violence in Kenya. After I read the article, which was located on the BBC's website, I started wondering if any American news services were covering the same story. Being the inquisitive person that I am, rather than simply wondering, I investigated.

First on the list: CNN. I navigated from the US section to the main page to the "WORLD" section. On all three the headline was about the Democratic Primary race in South Carolina. Since when is that world news?!?! A 30 second search of this page and I couldn't find any reference to the conflict in Kenya (I figure that's more than the average American would spend, and the average one wouldn't be looking for that specific article.)

Next for the chopping block was Fox News: They actually had "world" events on their world page. Fox also had an article about the Kenyan conflict too. However, it was buried in a list of about 30 minor articles at the bottom, I'm still not impressed.

Last of all was Reuters (which I didn't check until later, I started this blog post about 9:15 am). Unfortunately for the sake of this post, Reuters had a fairly large feature about the Kenyan situation. At this, I returned to FoxNews and CNN, which even more unfortunately for this post, now have featured articles on the world section of their websites.

But, for the sake of the first half of this blog, lets say that's not true. I was going to go on a bit of a rant on how either the American media or Americans in general have little interest in what's going outside of their own little world. The title raising the question of whether its the media that doesn't care and the general public follows, or if the media is simply catering to what Americans are interested in. But in any case, I have some news articles to read about what's going on in Kenya :D.

Culture

A couple days ago I came across a new band... well, a band that's new to me. Within Temptation is a goth-rock group with a female lead vocalist, very comparable to Evanescence. The main difference that I noticed is that they use an orchestra to powerful effect in several of their tracks. Within Temptation would be accused of being a copy cat band, except that WT has actually been around longer than Evanescence. They started in Norway in the late 90's, and were well received in their home country. It took about a decade for their popularity to spread to Holland and the rest of Europe and then finally to the states. They released a new cd in 2007 on a deal with an American record label.

What I find interesting is that it seems that the pinnacle of musical success is to sign a deal with an American record company and record in the US. In many things it seems that reaching fame in America is the "top." The only exception I can think of is soccer. The best MLS (Major League Soccer, also known as MajorLy Sucks) players migrate to European Leagues. I'm reminded of an article I read about understanding other cultures. It said that everyone knows American culture because it spreads everywhere. But most Americans know little about other cultures, when traveling they take at least a little bit of their own culture with them. Even on missions trips Americans tend to stay in nice clean American hotels and eat nice American food. In France I've heard that there's a law that requires radio stations to play at least as many songs by French artists as by American artists. Our culture is pretty invasive, so it takes more effort for us to get to know other cultures than it does for others to get to know ours.

Something I heard today (well, I started this blog two weeks ago)

I was listening to Christian radio this morning and the DJ read the days "Word on the Way," the Bible verse of the day. He talked about it for just a minute, and I don't remember the verse, but his application for it is that it is wrong to think that what your denomination believes is right and other denominations that disagree with you are wrong. He said if you think that, stop, because that's what divides Christians.

That kinda bugged me, because if I don't think that what I believe is right, what's the point in believing anything? I understand the importance of accepting the possibility that I am in error and respecting the beliefs of those who disagree with me. It is really important for Christians to avoid over-emphasizing minor theology, especially when it comes to unity in the universal church, but I believe what I believe because I think it's true. By definition, it follows that I believe that those who disagree with me are wrong. Could I be wrong? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean that have to agree that someone else is just as right as I am when one of us is clearly in error.

What divides Christians is not individuals standing for what they believe. Divisions are caused by Christians who are unwilling to agree to disagree.