I suppose I should read some counterpoint books. I just finished two doozies on corporate corruption at the state, federal and international level. The books in question, both of which I recommend, are The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast and Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosher. This along with books on big government really should be ( Read more... )

If you want a good picture of how venomous the "religious" right is, take a gander at their reaction to President Bush's ABC interview last night. Bush basically said he supports a U.S. Constitutional amendment making it illegal for states to decide what they consider to be marriage, but then stated that this shouldn't be construed as a lack of ( Read more... )

I've recently been lamenting the rise of Airbus as the dominant aircraft manufacturer in the world. Is it the fact that it is a foreign company? Is it the fact that their main base of operations is out of France? Perhaps it is just that it is the same mechanism that was our undoing in the 70's that lead to a near domination of our economy by the ( Read more... )

While things in my life are generally going well, I'm having more and more apprehension about the current political situation within the United States. This is really nothing more than the scenario I expected to be played out actually occurring, so at least I can say I'm not taken by surprise on this ( Read more... )

I'm reading Yahoo News today, and I see an article about how Madonna criticizes American values. To quote the queen herself:

"We as Americans are completely obsessed and wrapped up in a lot of the wrong values -- looking good, having cash in the bank, being perceived as rich, famous and successful or just being famous,"

"It's the most ( Read more... )

Lets see. In the last month I've studied Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God, Joseph Farah's Taking America Back, an interesting book on family structure called The Way We Never Were, a very interesting book on government reform called The Radical Center along with dozens of political theory articles. Combine that with following round the clock ( Read more... )

Here are some very interesting stories that I've run across in the last two days. They help shed some light on what the Iraqi people are really thinking and some information confirming what the administration has been saying since before the war:

Alleged Iraqi terror group ‘finished’

Iraqi Feeds Hungry Marines

I was wrong!

Iraqi deserter ( Read more... )

On my usual perusal of the news sites, I ran across an interesting site. Iraq Body Count is an account of every Iraqi civilian casualty since the beginning of this new war. So far the counter is between 227 and 307. The notion of course is to highlight the amount of death and destruction that the war has taken on Iraq. You will notice that they ( Read more... )

I was surprised to see this story on the ArabNews website. Surprised because it is the first story which I think actually covers an anti-Saddam side of the story in the Arab press. Just two quotes of interest:
Arab News asked several of the refugees waiting to enter Basra what they thought of regime change. Accompanying Arab News were several ( Read more... )

Now that I've got a semblance of a good looking site posted for this journal, I can finally give a quick off the cuff analysis of what I think has happened so far. Just like all those ad hoc amateur sports enthusiasts, baseless opinions abound in the world of international politics. Mine is no exception ( Read more... )