Be Careful Not to Get Too Much Education
I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately to a conversation I overheard at Starbucks in Nashville last winter. I was distracted from my work on that cold and rainy night by two young men who sat down in...
View ArticleThe Resistance and the West’s Anti-War Movement
Imagine yourself coming of age in a country where speaking out against the government is severely repressed. Activism of any sort is met with torture, imprisonment and even death, all courtesy of the...
View ArticleWhat Howard Dean May Bring to the DNC
A year before Howard Dean announced his bid for the presidency; he spoke at a Pittsburg event sponsored by a “smart-card” firm, Wave Systems, which was a sure sign Dean was fast running away from his...
View ArticleDisappearing the Anti-War Movement at the NYTs
Hot on the heels of the deadly attack on U.S forces in Mosul on December, 21, a front page headline in the NYT on December, 22, proclaimed authoritatively: “Fighting On Is the Only Option, Americans...
View ArticleRumsfeld Must Go
The new-model, compassionate, caring, tender-hearted, public-related Donald Rumsfeld flew to Iraq Christmas Eve, and went to Mosul. We are assured by the Pentagon that the Mosul visit by their CEO was...
View ArticleRicky Does 60 Minutes
Mike Wallace and his producer did their best to ridicule and incite jealousy towards Ricky Williams on “60 Minutes” Sunday night, but could not bring him down. My comments in (parentheses). MW: We’re...
View ArticleSeeking Parallels
History is made by people who seize the moments that circumstances offer and bend them to their purposes. When the conditions are adverse, they nurse their purposes, their dreams of freedom, dignity...
View ArticleElections Without Democracy
During the 1970’s, the apartheid government of South Africa sought to bolster its claims to legitimacy by allowing elections in the Bantustans – the equivalent to today’s walled in Palestinian...
View ArticleA Wave of Questions
How does one comprehend the magnitude, impact, and context of a disaster that may claim more than 100,000 lives? But enough about the U.S. occupation of Iraq… The recent earthquake/tsunami in Asia...
View ArticleTsunamis and Nuclear Power Plants
More than 80,000 people are dead. Bodies wash ashore in a dozen countries. A train, loaded with a thousand passengers and their luggage, is swept away, engine, tracks, and all. Cars, trucks, buses, and...
View ArticleWho’s Feeding the Bin Laden Legend?
Professor of Law, Washburn University Robin Hood and not Osama Bin Laden is the most celebrated outlaw in the English-speaking world. Part reality and part fantasy, Robin Hood has been written into...
View ArticleIt’s All Relative
Cost of one F-22 Raptor tactical fighter jet — $225 million Cost of the ongoing U.S. war in Iraq–$228 million/day Amount spent by Kerry and Bush campaigns — $400 million U.S. aid to Yushenko camp in...
View ArticleAs Time Goes By* With Andy Goldsworthy
*For Ilsa, Rick…and the rest of us. “That critic who said Rivers and Tides ‘could have been half as long,’ what was he going to do with the time he saved? Go shopping at Safeway? A fast food joint?” —...
View ArticleFamily Farms Are Being Fed to Corporate Sharks
President, Nebraska Farmers Union As a recent New York Times article on ag subsidies clearly shows, family farm agriculture is now reaping the public perception and political backlash that the American...
View ArticleEmpire of the Misers
In an April interview with the New York Times, World Bank President James Wolfensohn suggested that in addition to blowing up people and things: “I would argue that there is also a need for a parallel...
View ArticleThe Water Kings of California
A small group of wealthy farmers receive the vast majority of water and subsidies from the federal Central Valley Project, concludes a groundbreaking report issued on December 15 by the Environmental...
View ArticleWhat "Free Trade" Pacts Mean for Women
It has been nearly ten years since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China and the U.S. government’s ratification of the Beijing Platform for Action. To commemorate the occasion,...
View ArticleThe Ghosts of Vietnam
The Independent Who said this and when? “The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a...
View ArticleUnbecoming Conduct
What defines conduct unbecoming an officer? Major General Thomas Fiscus, judge advocate general of the Air Force, opposed the harsh interrogation techniques approved and later rescinded by Defense...
View ArticleArgentina Squares Off with International Financiers
President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina is locked in a standoff with the International Monetary Fund on the third anniversary of a popular uprising. Just before Christmas, 2001 protesters surged through...
View ArticleGrief, Relief and the Stingy West
The horrific aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami has revealed what many in the world have known for a long time: Western nations are eager to exploit the under privileged, but slow to lend a helping...
View ArticleUnnatural Disaster?
In the aftermath of a cataclysm like the Asian tsunami, speculation can run wild. Reserving judgment until we really know what happened, here is a list of salient questions and answers that I,ve...
View ArticleBush and Tsunamis
On Sunday, Dec. 26, an earthquake-triggered tsunami with an effect of 1,000 miles from its epicenter in the Indian Ocean near Sumatra devastated 12 countries. Within hours, numerous countries and...
View ArticleHow to React
Hyderabad, India. Here, a few hundred kilometers from coastal Andhra Pradesh, the papers and TV are carrying nonstop heartbreak: a military officer clinging to his two small children, keeping their...
View ArticleUS Air’s Bold New Idea
US Air, the nation’s seventh largest airline, currently in a bankruptcy designed to allow it to break all its previous union contracts and eliminate its pension program, has come up with a new idea...
View ArticleIraq vs. Tsunami
The American media has descended on the Asian tsunami with all the fervor of feral animals in a meat locker. The newspapers and TV’s are plastered with bodies drifting out to sea, battered carcasses...
View ArticleThe Tsunami and the Corporate Media
The terrible earthquake/tsunami disaster, along coastlines of the Indian Ocean, left tens of thousands dead and many times more people homeless and weakened. Front pages news stories swept the US...
View ArticleWar and the Tsunami
With a death toll rising above 120,000, and large affected areas still inaccessible to rescuers, the Asian tsunami disaster has become a truly global crisis. Millions from all over the world have been...
View ArticleTsunami Hits Iraq
Massive political plates in the depths of Old Foggy Bottom unexpectedly shifted this past weekend. Megatons of pressure, built up from decades of internal strife, sent gargantuan waves hurtling towards...
View ArticleA View from Syria on the Palestinian Right to Return
“We travel in the chariots of the Psalms, sleep in the tents of the prophets, and are born again in the language of Gypsies/Ours is a country of words: Talk. Talk/Let me see an end to this journey.”...
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