Nationalism is an infantile disease.  It is the measles of mankind.

- Albert Einstein
 

You'll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

- George Bernard Shaw
 

America's Blinders - Most people think that their own country is special.  But all countries are special - and none.  Neither Americans nor Israelis are blessed by god unless every other country is too.  Agreed?...

May I Still Play Football If I Wear Gloves? - Mr Bush, thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging....

Torture for Dummies - In law school, they call this "salami-slicing."  You start with a seemingly solid principle, then start slicing: If you would torture to save a million lives, would you do it for half a million?  A thousand?  Two dozen?  What if there's only a 2-out-of-3 chance that person you're torturing has the crucial information?  A 50 - 50 chance?  One chance in 10?  At what point does your moral calculus change, and why?  Slice the salami too far, and the formerly solid principle disappears...

War, Politics, Culture - The day after her nomination was announced, the front page of the New York Times carried a photo of Rice gazing adoringly at Bush.  It was quite a kittenish pose; she looked so young and coy one was compelled to imagine that her toes were pointed inward, like Minnie Mouse...

They Speak for Themselves - Cheney: "My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators..."

Joyful Dancing - Resentment against Kim is deeply entrenched in the population.  Even a few of Kim's 450 hand-picked bodyguards apparently attempted to shoot their boss in the mid-1990s...

The Political Economy of Oil - "The hunky-dory crowd" is still telling us the electricity is back on and things are almost back up to where they were under Saddam Hussein.  Now there's a mark to aim for...

Wildfires (and other things) in North Korea - While two forest fires and a normal fire have broken out in South Korea, it appears about 130 fires - possibly forest fires? - are visible in the North...

Prisons and War: Bringing out the Worst - if you deport someone to a country they've fled for fear of torture, and they end up being tortured, you are certainly responsible, no matter how clean you've kept your own hands...

Does al-Qaeda Exist? - What is this al-Qaeda?  Does such a group even exist?  Some terrorism experts doubt it.  Is it time we "defused the widespread image of al-Qaeda as a ubiquitous, super-organised terror network and call it as it is: a loose collection of groups and individuals that doesn't even refer to itself as al-Qaeda"?

The Unfortunate Incident at the Baghdad Zoo - Perhaps this tiger-feeding was a gesture of repentance that unfortunately went awry when the feline bit the hand feeding it.  Just like the Iraqi people, who are supposed to be grateful, keep biting at the occupation, causing similar confusion and violent reactions among the occupiers...

North Koreans Selling Human Flesh on Black Market - "Starvation in North Korea appears to have reached a point where people are abandoning their humanity.  Most North Koreans today are facing a hopeless situation.  Kim Jong Il's policy of executing people involved in selling human flesh is another example of his efforts to "control by terror" people who are desperate to survive..."

North Korea - America faces a diplomatic showdown with a nuclear-armed North Korea.  How on earth did containment turn into a crisis involving the world's two maddest regimes (some would say, three maddest regimes) in just a couple of years?

Just Suppose Your Dad Was Involved! - "I wish we could all just get along," said one of the mourners.  "But it's hard to offer an olive branch to a cult of religious fanatics whose main tool is violence and who insist on calling us the Dark Side."

Into the Muck: Protecting Liberty in a Permanent War - It is chilling to realise that the president is insisting that all he must do is invoke the magical incantation "enemy combatant" and an American citizen can be stripped of his most fundamental constitutional rights without any meaningful scrutiny by the judicial branch.  A place where that is possible is not the America we have known...

It's Just That Simple - ...federal agents now watch citizens more closely than ever.  Such scrutiny seemed over the line to retired phone company worker Barry Reingold, after the FBI got interested in remarks he made at his health club.  After loudly criticising the war Reingold, 60, had unexpected visitors a few days later.  "I said, you know, 'Who's there?'  And they said, 'It's the FBI...'"

Blow the Bugle, Draw the Sword - The survey, carried out by Gallup among 10,000 residents of Islamic countries found that in only two - Lebanon and Turkey - did a majority have a favourable view of the US.  Not one considered the war in Afghanistan justified, and in all a substantial majority disliked Bush...

Germ of a Modern Idea - Australian scientists have accidentally created a smallpox-type killer virus that wipes out its victims' immune systems, sparking fears that it could be used in biological weapons.  The virus, created during attempts to make a mouse contraceptive, does not affect humans, but could act as a blueprint for terrorists wanting to develop a similar killer for people...

The Patriotism Enforcers: Mis-educating the Young on Freedom - "Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism," Margaret Chase Smith said, "are all too frequently those who ... ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism - the right to criticise, the right to hold unpopular beliefs, the right to protest, the right of independent thought..."

Airport Security - After passing through a security checkpoint, Steinberg took a quick photo of a female National Guard trooper, with passengers in the foreground.  The guard did not approve...

On Travelling and Passports - She asked Cody for his social security number.  He told her he didn't have one, that he lived in New Zealand.  First, she told him that it was impossible to get a passport without a social security number.  He showed her his old passport (which had been issued in NZ) as proof that it could, indeed, be done.  She said a new passport would cost $500 without a social security number...

The 3-ounce container rule is silly - what stops someone from carrying several small bottles each full of the same substance?  But consider the hypocrisy of TSA’s confiscation policy.  At every concourse checkpoint is a bin or barrel brimming with contraband containers taken from passengers exceeding the volume limit.  The assumption is that these are potentially hazardous.  If not, why seize them?  But if so, why dump them into a nearby trash?  They're not quarantined or given to the bomb squad, just thrown away.  TSA knows these things are harmless but steals them anyway - accept it or don’t fly...

Weeds in the Garden - address global disparities?  Or "just kill the bastards?"  Two views...

Killing Other People's Children - Wounded in the stomach and with her left arm shattered, she had to flee before she could bury her children.  "They're bombing anything that moves," she said.  Rukia covered her face and started to cry when asked what she wanted to tell the Americans about the loss of her 5 children.  She thought a while before responding: "Destroy, finish, terminate America."

New McCarthyism - "We needed 4,000 stamps for a mailing and I asked for ones not with the American flag on them."  The postal clerk asked if statute of liberty stamps were OK.  "Yes, we love liberty."  She asked us to step aside from the counter, and she went to the back, out of view.  I knew something was up because this was a bit out of the ordinary.  Andrew said, "She's calling the cops," but I didn't believe him...

Humanitarian Killing - Rampant lawlessness on the part of the world's leading nuclear power is perversely depicted, Chomsky adds, as a "'new internationalism' that heralds a wonderful new age, unique in human history..."

War - What Was It Good For? - now that it's over, does anyone see any reason for our having invaded Iraq?  I realise that's what we all kept trying to figure out before the invasion, but don't you think it should at least be visible in hindsight?...

Why Be A Good Person? - A cartoon depicts an older married man marooned on a deserted island with a younger woman.  He asks her to have sex, arguing, "no one would ever know."  The woman responds, "I would know."  The "I would know" test of good character is a useful one...

How to Talk a Good War - ...maybe it's 1984, and War Is Peace, and Slavery Is Freedom, and Ignorance Is Strength - or maybe that's bullshit served up on a silver platter, the servers telling us it's really Goose Liver Pate.  My Grandma says: "You can call your ass a turkey, but that doesn't make it Thanksgiving..."

Concealing the Truth - "Then a silence came to the river, A hush fell over the shore, And Bohs that were brave departed, And Sniders squibbed no more; For the Burmans said That a white man's head Must be paid for with heads five-score..."

Painful Lessons - Imagine what it would've been like to see the American-supported coup in Chile in 1972 with CNN giving us a blow-by-blow on video - suppose we'd all seen the people gunned down in the stadium, tortured with cattle prods, punished for the crime of supporting their democratically elected government?...

US Ignores Religion's Fringes - the greatest threat will be our continued blindness to the darker religious forces that drive some men's souls - and deeds...

Response Ability - "I am 16 years old, lying in bed at my home in London on a noisy night in September 1940.  I am violently hostile to the British Empire and everything it stands for.  I hate London, with its grandiose buildings sucking wealth from every corner of the world.  I lie in bed listening to the bombs exploding.  What joy to hear, after each explosion, the delicious sound of buildings falling, the great British Empire audibly crumbling..."

A Window: Pain - "Under normal circumstances at least a quarter of all Afghan children do not live to see their fifth birthday, and only about 12% of the entire population have access to clean drinking water - but circumstances are now far from normal..."

What Will Replace the World Trade Centre? - The winner, I'm sorry to say, was not really my favourite...

Twisting Skyscraper to Replace New York's World Trade Center - The building dubbed the "Freedom Tower" will be the world's tallest at 1,776 feet when it is completed by the end of 2008 and is intended to reclaim part of Manhattan's famous skyline...

Anthrax Is Spread by Resentment - H G Wells, only a few years after development of the germ theory of disease, first realised the value of bacteria for terrorist purposes.  In 1895, he published "The Stolen Bacillus," in which an anarchist revolutionary worms his way into the confidence of a bacteriologist to obtain cholera germs to put in London's water supply...

The Anthrax Killer - I don't know what's scarier - not knowing who mailed the anthrax letters, realising that there appear to be multiple people perfectly capable, perhaps even eager, to do it, or thinking multiple scientists have been unfairly accused of this, will never be charged, and so can never be found innocent...

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