Time for another summary

Since I have returned from Morocco there has been:

Days of sunshine: 0

Minutes of daylight I have not-during-working-hours: 10 (and only because I left early one day for just that purpose)

Leaves on trees: 50%

First day of snow: TODAY

Its snowing! Its not supposed to snow. At least not in Baden. And definitely not until Christmas time. Certainly not before all the leaves have fallen off the trees! And we're not talking a little flurry. We're talking enough huge junks that turned my hair white between the bus stop and the office. Its very pretty and a nice change from the sleet we've been having all week. Reading Karen's journal, I guess I can expect the same from England.

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock."--Graham Greene

We were talking about the "news bubble" in the kitchen at the Marein Heim (henceforth known as "the amateur political philosophy corner"). The Swiss lady we live with was telling us that editorialy in the newspapers here have been increasingly negative on the war in Afghanistan. Specifically, she said that there was a growing belief that America was just looking for an excuse to regain large deposits of oil there. And she also said that there was evidence coming out here that our intelligence agencies knew about the attack on the World Trade centers but let it happen so we would have that excuse. She went on. Conspiracy theories were all I could think about, almost like an accusation.

That is a little far out. I told her, in my best defense of America (as I usually am saying that America is too agressive). I asked her, what else would you do if 5,000 people and billions of dollars were lost in SWITZERLAND by a coordinated violent action obviously sponsored by the Taliban? Just not do anything? And, I said that it is extremely likely the intelligence agencies had evidence pointing to the attack, but either not enough to predict it, or because of some massive foul up, they didn't put it together in time to predict it. It was unthinkable in my mind that some official would've known about it and not done something to evacuate the building.

But I was appalled to think that the Swiss/German press, and perhaps their people, actually think something like that could happen! Talk about negative opinions of America.

Anyway, then, in response to my rhetorical question about what would Switzerland do?, my Swiss friend was firmly convinced that Switzerland would never get in this situation to begin with. (Remember, Switzerland is the country where every man keep a semi-automatic rifle in their house so they can mobilize their standing army in under two hours). She said "violence begets violence" and then pointed out that the U.S. government was helping to prop up the Taliban regime when Russia pulled out. She also pointed out that now we are dealing with the Pakistanis, promising them all sorts of favors that we know they will use in a war against India. And said we did the same thing with Iraq. Now, this perspective I could agree with.

But again, I come to the thought, what else could we do to prevent something like this from happening again and punish those who did it the first time?