Passports, please

Starting today, passports are required of US citizens to enter or re-enter the country via Canada and Mexico. There is a short "cooling off" period before absolute enforcement, and passports are still not required for travel between the US proper and its possessions such as Guam and American Samoa. All part of the plan to combat turrorism.

Howard Zinn on the scourge of Nationalism

I found this link (from The Progressive) at Whole Wide World of Fat Buddha. It echoes my feelings on the subject perfectly. In my heart, I belong to a nation called "None" and our anthem is "Don't Fence Me In."

The Head Heeb on Nationalities

Following on from reading about the death of Edward Said (below), I was skimming through the comments on Jonathan (Head Heeb) Edelstein's obituary of him and came upon this very elegantly expressed thing about nationalities (Jonathan responding to something in the comments):
"All nationalities are, at bottom, created. 200 years ago, neither Israelis nor Palestinians existed; today, both do. Both are real not because of any political entity that did or did not exist 2000 years ago, but because a sufficient number of people believe that these nationalities exist and have constructed identities around them. Palestinian nationalism is at an earlier stage of development and as such has less definite boundaries, but that doesn't make it unreal, only embryonic."