Category — politics

Yahoo! News – Top Stories Photos – AP:
Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Due, right, a U.S. Army recruiter, is surrounded by protesters at Seattle Central Community College, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005, in Seattle. After about a 10-minute standoff during which protesters tore up U.S Army literature, the protesters were successful in getting Due and another recruiter to leave their table under escort by campus security officers. Several hundred students walked out of classes at several Seattle colleges and universities to protest the inauguration of President Bush (news – web sites). (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

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interesting….. but it isn’t about what the recruiters are…. it is about who they represent. the professional military are fine, but there are real issues with the civilian leadership.

Yahoo! News – Top Stories Photos – AP:
Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Due, right, a U.S. Army recruiter, is surrounded by protesters at Seattle Central Community College, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005, in Seattle. After about a 10-minute standoff during which protesters tore up U.S Army literature, the protesters were successful in getting Due and another recruiter to leave their table under escort by campus security officers. Several hundred students walked out of classes at several Seattle colleges and universities to protest the inauguration of President Bush (news – web sites). (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

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interesting….. but it isn’t about what the recruiters are…. it is about who they represent. the professional military are fine, but there are real issues with the civilian leadership.

Prospect – article_details:
To be concerned today with the Enlightenment ideals of freedom, democracy and reason, one needs to think about their entrenchment in an era in which political communities and states matter, but not solely and exclusively. States are hugely important vehicles for aiding the delivery of effective public regulation, equality and social justice, but they should not be thought of as occupying a privileged level of politics.

Recapturing Kansas — In These Times:
What I mean by that term is populist conservatism. It’s this angry right-wing sensibility that speaks in—or pretends to speak in—the voice of the working class. It got its start, more or less, in 1968, with the candidacy of George Wallace. The issues that the Backlash has embraced have changed a lot over the years. In the early days it was pretty much racist. Today, you have the same angry, hard-done-by sensibility, but it’s attached to different issues – the most famous being abortion, and, in this latest election, gay marriage.

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a nice description and interview by thomas frank.

Weapon inspectors fly out of Iraq:
It seems the US has finally accepted what everybody already knew: Sadam didn’t have any weapons of massive destruction or was trying to make them when the country was invaded. The US inspectors sent to the country to verify…
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imagine that… no wmd….. is this surprising?

A humanist future: Now that God is dead: printer friendly version:
God is dead.

Even the confident religions know this. When their god was overwhelmingly alive he did not permit them to mingle with the followers of other gods: Now they come together to increase the volume of their protests against the noisy indifference of the scoffers in the market place. But the god of the marketplace is also dead. Secular confidence in the ability of atheistic rationality to deliver the good society has been undermined by an invasion of the angry ghosts of dead religion and by the ugly excesses of materialist consumerism.

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mmmm nihlism, tasty….

A Letter to “Dear Abby”:
This bit of hilarity came in from the inbox. Enjoy! DEAR ABBY,My husband has a long record of money problems. He runs up huge credit card bills. At the end of the month, if I try to pay them off,…

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heh heh heh, were it not a good description, this would be funnier. now the humor is tainted with tragedy.

Jared Diamond interview: “

There’s an excellent interview with Jared Diamond in Salon—I’m definitely going to have to buy his new book, Collapse.

Toward the end of ‘Collapse’ you describe two crucial factors for determining whether or not a civilization will survive, and one of them is whether there’s a willingness to discard unhelpful values. Clearly we have some values in this country that are very important to us, but some of them, like anathematizing family planning, aren’t very helpful in this day and age.

—snip—-
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Foolish Jared, expecting people to do the reasonable, rational thing.

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(Via Pharyngula.)

yep, foolish…. sarcasm prevalent.

The Top 10 War Profiteers of 2004: “list plus info on major USA tax-subsidized corporations according to the The Center for Corporate Policy ~’War Profiteers’: now there’s a term you won’t ever hear on FOX or CNN. Or read in the Wall Street Journal. (Maybe ironically?)…”

(Via Spitting Image.)

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hmmm, not the usual suspects…. but pretty bad blokes nonetheless

Yahoo! News – Senator Says Lifetime Terror Detentions ‘Bad Idea’: “A reported U.S. plan to keep some suspected terrorists imprisoned for a lifetime even if the government lacks evidence to charge them in courts was swiftly condemned on Sunday as a ‘bad idea’ by a leading Republican senator.”

(Via .)

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especially if ideological labels are used….. which they eventually will be….