War is the Health of the State

Wow, this is a really scary article on how the American public was manipulated by the government through former military brass seeking war contracts prior to and during the Iraq War. I have wanted to read an essay by Randolph Bourne since I first took an economics class nine years ago, and I thought today would be appropriate day to do so. I've looked before, but this is the first time I've found it. Enjoy...

"With the shock of war, however, the State comes into its own again. The Government, with no mandate from the people, without consultation of the people, conducts all the negotiations, the backing and filling, the menaces and explanations, which slowly bring it into collision with some other Government, and gently and irresistibly slides the country into war. For the benefit of proud and haughty citizens, it is fortified with a list of the intolerable insults which have been hurled toward us by the other nations; for the benefit of the liberal and beneficent, it has a convincing set of moral purposes which our going to war will achieve; for the ambitious and aggressive classes, it can gently whisper of a bigger role in the destiny of the world." -Randolph Bourne, War is the Health of the State

Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand

By DAVID BARSTOW

Published: April 20, 2008

The Pentagon has cultivated “military analysts” in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the Bush administration’s wartime performance.

Ironic Death Penalty

I find a certain irony that on the same day the Supreme Court allows the death penalty President Bush tells Pope Benedict that Americans “need your message that all of life is sacred.”

Plastics: Adored and Abhored

In Adored, Deplored and Ubiquitous Natalie Angier plays devil's advocate about the argument of banning plastic bags in grocery stores. Her argument falls apart when she says that if she cannot use plastic bags from the grocery store for her trash cans (claiming she is doing her part to help the environment because she reuses bags), then she will be forced to buy plastic bags, thus polluting even more.

Oh my, oh my, what am I to do without plastic bags lining my trash cans? Without plastic protection, my trash cans will be dirty! What an awful thought!

What a pathetically narrow-minded excuse.

It's this type of backward thinking that has caused so much damage to our environment in the first place. We need solutions and alternatives, not arguments against improving our environment through simple lifestyle changes.

And please, journalists, for the sake rational thinking, do not present the opposite viewpoint solely for the purpose of being a non-sequitur. It's not funny and it's often only mildly effective in being ironic.

The City of Noise

I've sometimes said that Egypt's national song is the honking of a horn and I pseudo-affectionately call Cairo el medinet el dowsha, or the city of noise.

The following is a great story about this, and yet another example of Slackman writing the stories that every journalist wants to do.


Cairo Journal

A City Where You Can’t Hear Yourself Scream

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

Published: April 14, 2008

Noise — outrageous, unceasing, pounding noise — is the backdrop to a tense time in Egypt, prompting protests.