February 2012
14 posts
“When the newspapers were full of alarms about Iran possibly developing a nuclear...”
– Howard Zinn on Kurt Vonnegut (via axelgonz08)
Mother Jones: Why Screwing Unions Screws the... →
Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice →
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Bullets and Bars: How the U.S gets crime fighting...
“Sensitive, impassioned, inflamed” These are the words that come to mind when thinking about Americans and guns. Any restriction is deemed an assault on liberty. Americans are committed to their 2nd Amendment rights, meanwhile (perhaps unknowingly); they allow other rights to be violated. The explanation for this is fear. Fear of strangers, of criminals who will raid and invade your home. Fear of...
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Some reading material...
- Lengthy Noam Chomsky interview from 2003. Really good.
- Paul Krugman piece from last week, “Moochers against Welfare”
- And Jeremy Scahill discusses U.S policy in Yemen. “For the United States, the most serious question that lingers over Yemen after Ali Abdullah Saleh is: Did US counterterrorism policy strengthen the very threat it sought to eliminate?”
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Why Nothing Gets Done: The two party system
I’ve written a bit before on the continuity of Bush era defense policies in the Obama administration and the hypocrisy of progressives who now favor these policies. Unfortunately, support is growing stronger. According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, “53 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats — and 67 percent of moderate or conservative Democrats — support keeping Guantanamo Bay...
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The EPA: Not so stringent
This is a follow up to this piece I posted a couple of days ago about environmental regulation. I was talking to someone about China’s PM2.5 levels when they asked me about ours in the U.S. Well, the EPA’s air quality index rates most of the country as “green”, but it is important to note what exactly the EPA’s standards are. While the WHO states that PM2.5 levels above 10 micrograms...
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"The Fate on an Honest Intellectual" by Noam...
Really good read from Mr. Noam Chomsky relating to the circles of influence and control in academia. It also disproves Newt Gingrich’s recent comment that Palestinians are a “made up people”, I guess in the same way that Americans are a “made up people” of white Europeans. Anyways, check it out.
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Seattle’s Plastic bag ban, libertarians, and China
It wasn’t at all surprising to see that Seattle’s ban on plastic grocery bags, which goes into effect on July 1st, was challenged. Any sort of collective effort to improve the condition of the environment and our lives always meets opposition. And the rhetoric is always the same. According to Craig Keller, the man behind the petition to overturn the ban, it is a, “limitation on people’s choice,”...
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Something about the Superbowl actually worth... →
Disregarding my opinion on football itself, the NFL as an organization has it together. Shared revenue among the teams and a good relationship with the player’s union sounds good to me. The linked article is worth reading if only for Player Association president DeMaurice Smith’s quote towards the end. Check it out.
