Category Archives: US News

Kids These Days

’nuff said Photo by カランドラカス. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)Before we go any further, there is something you should know about me. I was one of those kids. The scary, weird kids that you try to keep an eye on, ’cause you know there is something wrong, but you don’t know [...]

Considering The Vision: Dennis Kucinich

Dennis Kucinich ran for President in 2004, and garnered at best 17 percent of the vote in the state primaries. He is back in the running for 2008, but the question remains: what does Kucinich think he has to offer that we haven’t seen before?

Considering a Vision: Rudy Giuliani

In keeping with the promise made in my previous article, “Visionary Terms”, this is the first in a series of articles where we will explore both the history of the Presidential candidates and try to get a clear view of the vision they offer to the American people for their future.
Rudy Giuliani once was, [...]

The Monster We Have Become

On January 11, 2002, the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Despite much public objection, calls by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, and several legal battles, we still hold over 400 prisoners in Guantanamo today. We are told that these men are the “worst of the worst”, “obvious threats to national security”, “Islamofascists”, and “terrorists”. We use these epithets to justify our new definitions which allow us to hold them outside the regulations of the Geneva Conventions, outside of previous United States law, and outside of our general moral concerns. It is worth a moment of our time, then, to consider who these men actually are, what we intend to do with them, and whether our means will justify our bespoken ends.

Of the 775 men and boys who have been held as “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo, about 340 have been released, 110 are scheduled for release, around 70 are to stand trial, and around 250 “may be held indefinitely”. Only ten have been charged with anything at all.

Visionary Terms

The race for the 2008 Presidential election is off on a premature start, and the results are already being polled by the most respected polling firms. The promises are being rolled out by the truckload, the platforms are being polished and set up for viewing with the utmost fanfare and hooplah. None of this [...]

Digging Dirt on Obama

Like many of you, I sat down to watch the February 10th declaration speech given by Barak Obama with some trepidation and not a little cynicism. I had seen him speak before, and my original impression had been simply that he was an impressive speaker. Sitting through his speech on Saturday, however, I had [...]

Where Orwell Was Right

When contemplating similarities between our current western culture and George Orwell’s 1984, most discussions quickly turn toward debating the slow decline of personal privacy, the standards of government intervention, or a discussion of rat phobias. While all of these make for fascinating (if perhaps repetitive) conversation, it was not here that Orwell demonstrated his [...]

A Question of Privacy

Privacy is a much-touted concept, an intangible property we all feel we have a right to own. But is it really that important? How much privacy can we really expect, in a world where more and more of our lives take place online? How much do we really care?
Right now, I know that an ex-boyfriend [...]