A look at the big picture. EducationGuardian.co.uk | eG weekly | Paul Rogers: Peace studies in our time (education.guardian.co.uk):

He explains the thesis: 'The real long-term conflict in the world is between an elite and the marginalised majority.' In it he describes the spectacle of a World Bank conference on poverty cocooned in a five-star hotel amid the squalor of Dhaka, in Bangladesh, and the grotesqueness of a gated community in South Africa surrounded by a 33,000-volt fence.

It seems obvious that the developed world is pushing the overall world into a variety of painfully unjust, inequitable situations, and that there is resistance to this. What's funny is how rarely this situation is acknowledged.

He doesn't read the newspapers. Or the editorials. Or the interviews. Or the blogs. President Gives Both Reassurance, Warnings on Iraq (washingtonpost.com, 12/18/05):

'I don't think I got it wrong,' Cheney said. 'I think the vast majority of the Iraqi people are grateful for what the United States did. I think they believe overwhelmingly that they're better off today than they were when Saddam Hussein ruled.'

Like a bad penny, he's back! Iraqi Oil Minister Resigns to Protest Higher Fuel Prices (washingtonpost.com, 1/2/06):

...over the weekend, the government named Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi as oil minister.

No way! NO WAY!

What the so-called war on terror is costing us at home, or, the perils of a government that engages in purposeless domestic spying. Judges on Surveillance Court To Be Briefed on Spy Program (washingtonpost.com, 12/22/05):

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

'For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap,' said the official. 'They couldn't dream one up.'

They couldn't dream one up? What does that tell you about the folks doing the spying?

A Life, Wasted: Let's Stop This War Before More Heroes Are Killed, by Paul E. Schroeder (washingtonpost.com, 1/3/06) is an eloquent clarification of what it really means to LIVE as a hero, and a challenge to the near silent opposition to the war of so many.

He was a hero before he died, not just because he went to Iraq. I was proud of him before, and being a patriot doesn't make his death okay. I'm glad he got so much respect at his funeral, but that didn't make it okay either.

It's a good, but sad, read.