when i was in moscow, i knew many people who had lived through the stalin period. mainly the parents and grandparents of my friends. it was a fearful time and people did what they could not to be fingered. they never knew who might report them, what the consequences might be of a loose word here, an incautious observation there. as one of the writers from the nation boldly notes, this seems to be the direction that the united states is taking now. As a legal concept, can someone explain the difference between George W. Bush’s “enemy combatant” and Josef…
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If you refuse where you have always granted you invite to theft. some days you just look up from your book and find that the world is rich in reflection and sense. for me such a day was when i discovered one of the maxims of publilius servus, the first great author of mimes (circa 80 BC). very little of his writing survives apart from his maxims. but they are as applicable today as when he wrote them. the roman world was perhaps the most similar of all the ancient ones to our own. what makes us so similar? good…
Leave a Commenton my flight back to canada for a family funeral, i have at last come across something to give me a sense of pride in my nation. a happy change from the regular despair at the consumer morass and wretched architecture of modern day north america in its canadian iteration which makes up every trip back across the atlantic. the international herald tribune, as imperialist a rag as pravda, saw fit to take notice of canada in its lead story. canadians had almost become americans before 9/11, they note. but american jingoism, intolerance, christian bigotry and aggressive military action has…
1 Comment“The Queen has every right to feel insulted at the way she has been treated by Bush. The repairs will cost tens of thousands of pounds but the damage to historic and rare plants will be immense. They are still taking an inventory.” from the sunday mirror.
Leave a CommentEditor and Publisher’s Carl Sullivan noticed an interesting item about previous presidents’ appetite for news and how they compare with the current occupant of the Oval Office…. Dwight Eisenhower read nine newspaper a day. Bush likes to get his news “filtered.” “I glance at the headlines, just to get kind of a flavor,” Bush told Fox News… “I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who probably read the news themselves….the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening…
Leave a Commentwhat originally inspired the post was below an article in fastcompany about walmart. the scale of walmart’s operations is unbelievable. they are four times larger than the second biggest retailer in the us and larger than exxon or mobil. while this article focuses more on the issue of losing jobs overseas, it does not ignore the consequences of the walmartization of all aspects of life. walmart is leading the charge to lower prices and lower quality of life. americans seem to be waking up to the consequences. Wal-Mart has also lulled shoppers into ignoring the difference between the price of…
Leave a Commenthere in vienna, prices at the supermarket are magnitudes (between one and half and two times) higher than in toronto or elsewhere in north america, especially for cheese and produce. happily, the cheese and the produce are far better than what one is accustomed to in toronto. after a summer in carinthia and on the island of hvar, i became even more particular, so i still try to buy my fruits and vegetables at the freyag market on thursdays. the native fruits and vegetables of austria (apples, onions, beets, carrots, lettuce of various sorts, squash of all kinds, brussel sprouts,…
Leave a Commentone of the few americans to have made sense throughout the entire 9/11-afghanistan-iraq fiasco still unfolding is gore vidal. a man with his views, despite his enormous reputation, is not going to get a lot of air time in george bush’s america. but this week the la weekly interviewed him. vidal did not mince words, nor does it look like they edited him down much. run, do not walk, to one of the darkest and most amusing evaluations of the contemporary american and world political situation. on electronic voting machines: We don’t want an election without a paper trail. The…
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