What's really plaguing Africa
It wasn’t as if domination was their manifest purpose. They claimed they were there to help. And some of them believed it. The objects of their assistance were underprivileged and backwards, nobly trying to grasp the concepts of a new era but disastrously unable to do so. What they needed was the golden touch – the magnanimous muscle of giants born into privilege.
I speak, of course, of foreign aid. Or maybe old world colonialism. The similarity between the two is a theme woven throughout a groundbreaking narrative by experienced aid worker Michael Maren entitled, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity.
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Tags: Essays · Books · Foreign Aid
Washington super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff is falling fast-and taking a lot of Capitol Hill's corruption with him
A congressional plague is reaching critical mass.
“I don’t think we’ve had something of this scope, arrogance and sheer venality in our lifetimes,” writes Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank. “It is building to an explosion, one that could create immense collateral damage within Congress and in coming elections.”
Patient Zero of this plague is Washington K-Street lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Patient Zero of this plague is Washington K-Street lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The Plame case might grab the headlines, but Abramoff is regarded as the sharpest stake pressed against the heart of the Republican Party. He will become a household name in 2006.
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Tags: Current Events · Corruption · Lobby · Politics
On the fifth day he realized his only hope of escape was to amputate his own arm
The human body is a marvel of perfectly synchronized chemical reactions choreographed to perform optimally in a relatively narrow range of external conditions. While it is possible for the human organism to adapt to environmental stresses, it doesn’t take much for its symphony of physiology to collapse into chaotic discord. When deprived of water, food, or oxygen these processes begin to break down. If internal body temperature varies by more than four degrees, malfunction is imminent. Despite this fragility, when put to the test the body can prove to be extraordinarily resilient. […]
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Tags: Essays · Nonfiction · Canibalism · Survival
A frequent criticism of the popular television series Star Trek: The Next Generation centered around the unremarkable physical appearance of its various alien species. In nearly every episode, the crew of the starship Enterprise would encounter a “new” civilization– a society of life-forms that had supposedly developed in complete isolation from other worlds. Amazingly, the overwhelming majority of these aliens barely differed in appearance from humans, typically distinguished by a small wrinkle on their forehead or nose. This absurdity prompted a critic on Trek’s own website to dub them “Forehead Aliens of the Week.” Even more preposterous than their physical similarity to humans, however, was the utter lack of divergent philosophies and sociopolitical ideals exhibited by these “aliens.”
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Tags: Essays · Cultural Diversity
The Adverse Effects of the Free Market
When Thomas Jefferson determined the “pursuit of happiness” to be one of humankind’s unalienable rights, he could not have foreseen the consequences of dangling this elusive proverbial carrot under the noses of subsequent generations. For the average proponent of free market economics, and by extension the average consumer, this phrase is synonymous with the accumulation of capital. If this notion were rooted in truth, one would expect the beneficiaries of the most successful marketplace in history – the American middle-class – to be living in a veritable state of pure ecstasy.
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Tags: Essays · Addiction · Depression · Mental Illness · Society
