According to the Associated press, Tobacco alone is predicted to kill a billion people this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, if current trends hold. This humongous number begs for a morbid illustration. If you lined up the dead bodies of one billion dead smokers end to…
Earlier, I wrote about the tendency of suburbanites to feel they have limited options, and how such a life can seem unfulfilling or failed. At the time, I inspected the personal shortcomings that have a hand in this, as well as the human predisposition to discontentment. But it appears that yet another factor contributes to the often portrayed suburban dread: the structure of the suburbs themselves.
Prior to the Second World War, most suburbs had what architects and city planners call a “traditional” or “mixed-use” structure. Towns of this type have closely arranged, small city blocks intermittent with other amenities such as shops, restaurants, churches, and public buildings such as schools and post offices. To get a better idea of a town of this type, picture the typical conception of a small New England village or city. This traditional structure made pedestrian activity both easy and inviting, claims Andres Duany, one of the authors of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.
In the 1950’s and beyond, building codes began to prevent such a seamless blend of commerce, public activity, and personal residence from organizing. Most American towns now have much more rigid building codes the divide all the realms of society into isolated sections: a housing district, a shopping center-like area, and government buildings shoved somewhere else. Duany describes the trend this way:
…“It’s an architectural version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Our neighborhoods are being replaced by soulless
I've been thinking about why terrorism is such a hot topic these days. I mean, bombs aren't new; they've been around for centuries. Religious fanatics obviously aren't new; they've been around for millenia. Fear isn't new; it's been around since the Dawn of Mankind. People who are desperate or angry…
In November 2003 a major from the judge advocate general’s office working on establishing an Iraqi judicial process told me that there were at least 7,000 Iraqis detained by American forces. . . . A lieutenant colonel familiar with the process told me that there is no judicial process for the thousands of detainees. If the military were to try them, there would be a court-martial, which would imply that the U.S. was occupying Iraq, and lawyers working for the administration are still debating whether it is an occupation or liberation. Two years later, 50,000 Iraqis had been imprisoned by the Americans and only 2% had ever been found guilty of anything.
The above was reported by Nir Rosen. On his website, Rosen describes himself as follows:
Born in New York City in 1977, Nir Rosen is a freelance writer, photographer and film-maker who has worked in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and other popular tourist destinations.
Rosen, who speaks Arabic and who passes as Middle Eastern, recently wrote “The Occupation of Iraqi Hearts and Minds,” a piece that was published on Truthdig.com. In this disturbing piece, he sized up the American occupation of Iraq:
…In reality both Abu Ghraib and Haditha were merely more extreme versions of the day-to-day workings of the American occupation in Iraq, and what makes them unique is not so much how bad they were, or how embarrassing, but the fact that they made their way to the media and were publicized despite attempts to
Americans agree strongly that it was a mistake for the United States to invade Iraq: An Associated Press-Ipsos poll last month found that 59 percent of Americans say the United States erred in going to war in Iraq. Among Democrats, 84 percent said the war was a mistake, up from…