Inside
NCR
Judging the need for or the effect
of welfare programs is a devilishly difficult undertaking. Our story this week
does not attempt to pass final judgment on the merits or lack of merit of the
existing program. Teresa Malcolms reporting, however, points out the
complexity of the programs and the growing, serious questions about the
adequacy of a scheme hatched in prosperous times, now that we are experiencing
an economic downturn.
It is of no little consequence that at every turn in looking into
the state of welfare reform, one runs into Catholic activists and agencies
lobbying and advocating for those on the farthest margins of society. It is
where the church belongs.
Some weeks its just tough to
keep track of it all, to grab hold of what it means to be at war with the
evil axis while keeping up with the medal count at the Winter
Olympics. In such a week even a lead story in The New York Times can
slip into the pond without making many ripples. One last week bore the
headline: Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad, with a
subhead, New Office Proposes to Send News or Maybe False News to Even
Friendly Lands.
Unpack that one.
The story reports that the Pentagon has a plan, which has not yet
received final approval from the president, for a new agency that would engage
in information warfare.
The further twist here is that the effort would go beyond hostile
nations and include nations in the Middle East, Asia and even Western Europe,
according to the report, and would include both true and false information,
depending on what was needed to serve U.S. interests. Now maybe this idea goes
nowhere.
But the fact that it is being seriously considered at high levels
in the Defense Department is alarming. Isnt there something inherently
repugnant about a plan to spend federal money to hire professional liars?
What about U.S. news agencies overseas that might pick up on some
of this information? Where does one go to get a confirmation? Or a denial? Are
other U.S. agencies going to blow the cover of the Pentagon by admitting that
an item put out by the Office of Strategic Influence, as it is to
be known, is really balderdash and should not be reported as true?
How far are we willing to go under cover of a war on
terrorism?
Since NCR started publishing
a poetry page a little more than three years ago, the page has usually featured
a photo taken by Jesuit Fr. Algimantas Kezys, as this weeks poetry page
does (photo not posted to internet). Kezys is a photographer of some renown,
and we will continue to make room on the page for Kezys work
occasionally. But we have decided that this is the right time to ask readers to
submit photos of their own for the page as well. We refer to such pictures
around here as meditation photos, but the only true criteria are that the photo
must stand on its own, for no explanatory lines will run beneath it, and that
it be a striking, memorable photo. Look on the bottom of the poetry page for
submission guidelines.
-- Tom Roberts
My e-mail address is troberts@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, March 1,
2002
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