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(03/10/05 4:27am)
What could be fairer than the lex talionis: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth?\nThe answer is, of course, the Bush Directive: freedom for glory.\nIn the post-9-11 world, God's replacement for an ailing Pope, George W. Bush, has been granted deistic powers on Earth. Bush is only too happy to oblige. After 2,986 lives were mercilessly extinguished that Tuesday afternoon, the response was mercilessly extinguishing the lives of countless thousands of innocents in the systematic carpet bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq. And like so many Americans, I shook my head and voted for Kerry.\nBut in a Feb. 28 New York Times column titled "It's Called Torture," and again in a March 6 Times article, "Rule Change Lets C.I.A. Freely Send Suspects Abroad to Jails," it's come to light that the president, working through the CIA, has finally overstepped the bounds of basic human decency.\nThe still-classified practice is known as "extraordinary rendition." Essentially, the CIA and the Justice Department have been granted the unusually broad sweeping power to kidnap a human being and ship him or her without charges or trial to countries that are known to use torture as a means of forcing these stolen lives to speak.\nAs if suspending due process wasn't enough for the United States, we've now crossed the line into pure Orwellian territory. And this, after the president flew around the world preaching "the rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."\nOne such human being is a Canadian (because Bush's jurisdiction doesn't stop at the border) named Maher Arar, according to the Times article. He has a wife and two children. He was wrongly accused of having ties to "terrorism." A year after his abduction and subsequent torture by the Syrian government, he was returned just as secretly as he was taken.\nThe article also asserts that the Syrians were unable to find any link between Arar and terrorism. \nOther detained persons include Khaled el-Masri, who was flown to Afghanistan where he was "beaten and drugged." Another man, Mamdouh Habib, was "beaten, humiliated and subjected to electric shocks" for 40 months before being released without being charged, according to the Times.\nFrightened? We should be.\nHow many more people will "disappear" at the hands of a Stalin-esque secret police force on a whim and be subjected to cruel torture and unusual punishment? How many more people will never see their families again? Will never have their freedom returned? How many men, women and children will it take until we say enough is enough?\nWe're a nation built on laws -- on fundamental principles of human rights -- yet our government, this administration, is torturing people by proxy. \nPerhaps more chilling than the thought of a human being lying bloody and beaten on the floor of some foreign prison is the fact that this program of rendition is "lawfully conducted."\nThe Bush White House denies the program exists, but former White House officials estimate 100 to 150 living, breathing, free human beings have been flown to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan.\nThe unnamed official quoted in the March 6 Times article claims that the United States receives assurances that the detainees are being treated humanely, but God only knows what that really means. If they really were being treated as human beings, why have they been denied due process, and why are they not in American prisons?\nLand of the free, indeed. I'm ashamed to call myself an American anymore. We impeached Clinton for less, even Nixon resigned, but a regime that endorses torture policies is where we need to draw the line. We ousted President Hussein for similar practices in Iraq; is it time we ousted President Bush?
(02/25/05 4:23am)
You know the commercials. It looks like a sexual deviant's version of the Brady Bunch: The Astroturf lawn looks especially green, and someone calling himself "Bob" is recommending you shell out $59.95 for a trial period of Enzyte, the once-a-day pill for natural male enhancement. \nFor years, you've been ignoring those e-mails and pop-ups, but now that it's on television, suddenly nine inches sound mighty appealing. You'll be strutting all the way to the (sperm) bank.\nBut Michael Coluzzi, a particularly gullible sucker from New Jersey, isn't strutting. Instead, he's suing Alzare LLC, the makers of Enzyte, and the female version, Avlimil, because he "experienced no increase in penis size" after dropping $60 on the homeopathic alternative to a BMW, according to an article by Reuters News Service. Coluzzi's lawsuit, and two others filed last year, accuses the manufacturers of falsely claiming to increase the size of his penis up to three inches.\nSo enthralled with the idea of a more impressive manhood and so convinced by Smiling Bob's eerily maniacal grin, the plaintiffs apparently neglected to notice the disclaimer: "These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration."\nIt turns out that the edible ego-boost is a grab bag of wholly ineffective herbs, including "vegetable cellulose," "Swedish flower pollen extract" and, incredibly enough, something known as "horny goat weed extract" (I kid you not). Individual results might vary so much, in fact, Enzyte has a money-back guarantee if the user is not 100 percent satisfied. Of course, the makers of the 640 mg tablet are betting by the time the user realizes just how naïve he actually is, he'll have swallowed every pill and empty promise with a tall glass of hindsight. \nI guess I shouldn't be surprised someone was sending money to the makers of the Smiling Bob commercial. People seem to be ready to fork out piles of cash for anything with a jingle or an appealing promise. \nHow many other times has the American public been duped into buying things that don't quite deliver? Enzyte and like-products tap that niche of the market traditionally dominated by women's beauty products: wrinkle reducers, skin rejuvenators and push-up bras. And what, if not a third leg, is a man's most important feature?\nIn the age of Cosmo, People and E!, and the recent advent of the "metro-sexual," women are not the only ones feeling pressured to reach some impossible standard of physical excellence. Men are becoming increasingly obsessed with whatever it is that defines manliness. \nOnce upon a time Levi's jeans and a five o'clock shadow embodied all there was to being a man. Now even bottles of moisturizer have racing stripes and lightening bolts. But because the word "moisturizer" doesn't bring to mind images of firefighters and lumberjacks they call it "Gillette Skincare: The best a man can get." The fact remains: these "medical wonders" are just selling more promises to men who need to feel more appealing to women. The makers of these products have no intention to make you a better person, or even more attractive. The real motivation behind Coluzzi's lawsuit isn't the false advertising claim but Enzyte's threat to deprive him of his most sacred masculinity. \nThere was a time men could mock women for stocking a medicine cabinet as if it were a CVS, but today, the average guy is convinced he needs a veritable mechanic's shop to keep himself tuned-up and running smooth.\nHonestly guys, just open your eyes and think twice next time you whip out your wallets.
(02/11/05 4:25am)
Last week the President told us the state of our union is "confident and strong." What he neglected to mention was that it was Opposite Day at the White House, and the definition of "confident" was "blindly arrogant," and "strong" really meant "crashing and burning."\nBut the blame doesn't lie on the current administration alone. The infected wounds of this society have been festering since the 1960s. \nThe Greatest Generation fought Nazi tyranny and died for our freedom. They spurred the economic growth of the 1950s that pulled the United States and the world out of the Great Depression. They even rebuilt Europe and Japan.\nThen the baby boomers came along, a pathetic follow-up. Their self-indulgent, irresponsible egomania has created a world in which they're ashamed to rear their own children. \nWith the environment near ruin and economic difficulties on the horizon, the baby boomers have opted to indulge themselves in accumulated wealth and have left nothing to their heirs but a hole in the ozone layer, nuclear waste and strife.\nThe world we will inherit is more violent than it has ever been in human history because of our parents' short-sightedness. In Iraq and Afghanistan, our weapons are being used against us by people we promised to help 30 years ago. Those terrorists are the men and women who rightly feel betrayed. The animosity that fuels their aggression is the result of big words and empty promises.\nThe gluttons heading for retirement have been feeding on McDonald's, chocolate bars and dollar signs for the better part of a half-century. In America, obesity will soon become the No. 1 cause of death, and reported cases of diabetes have risen 40 percent in the 1990s. \nFor years, the baby boomers have ignored war-torn Africa. I hardly need to mention that the inability or unwillingness to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic will be the death sentence of millions in sub-Saharan Africa, and the solution seems to be to wait until the infected die off. \nThe Greatest Generation ended the genocide of the Jews, are the Sudanese worth any less?\nSocial Security is just another example of the baby boomers' irresponsibility. Congress refuses to put aside partisan politics for the good of themselves and the children they profess to love so much. How can our parents preach "for the children" when almost 36 million Americans live below the poverty line?\nBut I'm generalizing, of course. No individual is at fault. However, there comes a point when we have to say that policymakers at the federal, state and local levels are doing more harm than good. There comes a point when we have to say that the immoral behavior of our society is nothing but the realization of a greedy generation living for its own pleasure and luxury.\nAlthough, it's not as if our generation has exactly done its part. Our own apathy is as destructive as anything our parents have done. What has the under-25 crowd given the world: MTV and TheFacebook. We must get involved and remedy the crises that have developed during the last 50 years. \nOur parents have trained us to hate what they hate and bicker amongst ourselves. Gandhi once said that we're supposed to be the change we want in the world, yet we sit around ranting to each other instead of chanting in picket lines or lobbying causes.\nThe last generation has left us bitterly divided against ourselves. Our campus is divided along party lines and ideologies, when we should be united against the damaging men and women in power that squandered Social Security, increased our national debt to some $7.8 trillion and started wars we have to fight and finish.\nWe always say we're going to be nothing like our parents; let's make that happen.
(01/21/05 4:04am)
Until last week, I lived alone in my room, typing out pages and pages for a seemingly endless barrage of assignments. That is, until I was reintroduced to that devil in a box of glass and traded my soul for MTV, Fox News and "American Idol."\nAfter what felt like a mere 10 minutes, four hours had passed, and my blank Word document was like a mirror of my inner self: devoid of meaning, purpose and form. I could've wept, but Conan O'Brian was wrestling the Crocodile Hunter, while some model was begging me to buy a new Mustang or drink Miller Light ... I can't remember which. \nHeavy in my hand was the remote control, but it was the television that was controlling me.\nThe Center for Research on the Effects of Television at Cornell University has divided the effects of television into two categories: direct and indirect. Direct effects include increased tendency towards violence and insensitivity to the suffering of others. Indirect effects include lower reading scores, obesity and attention deficit disorders.\nWhile researchers have yet to come to a consensus on the connection of television violence to aggressive tendencies, there's widespread agreement that the use of TV as a means of escape has become more common during the last 50 years.\nAccording to the American Academy of Pediatrics, regular to excessive exposure to television results in poor brain development because of lack of interaction between the viewer and the TV. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that video addiction is a "primary factor of ADHD in children."\nThe human body burns more calories during sleep than while watching TV. Studies at Johns Hopkins, the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control have determined that TV is the "primary cause of obesity," which in turn results in diseases, including diabetes and hypertension. \nSo why, then, given all this research on the horrors of television, is it still so popular? \nParents use it as a baby-sitter because it's easy and cheap, then complain that their kids don't do anything but plug into the tube. They teach early on that TV is a perfectly acceptable drug. It's usually on during family dinners, stifling even the most basic human contact, even during commercials.\nBut it's more than that. Before I had a television in my room, people would look at me like some sort of criminal if I hadn't seen "The OC." Television is so much a part of our culture that to not watch it is to be ostracized from the community. We're all tools of "The Man," sucked nightly into that vacuum tube of other people's opinions, advertisements and values. Just ask yourself when was the last time you finished a book, and when was the last time you finished a movie. It's no surprise that many people's "favorite books" have recently been adapted to film.\nTelevision is an easy escape; it's a drug like marijuana or alcohol that brings you to a level of pseudo-consciousness. You're only barely aware of the world around you as you absorb hour after spirit-crushing hour of mindless drivel.\nWe've replaced reality with reality TV, we've come to expect depressingly poor journalism, and corporate media is nothing more than a silencing of the masses.\nWhere religion left off, the power of celebrity has taken over. What does it say about our society if the best social commentary is four animated kids and a talking Christmas poo? We should be interacting with society, not having society defined by shows.\nSo what can we do? Turn it off, and pick up a book. It's cold outside but not at the gym. We complain incessantly about nothing ever being on TV anyway, so stop looking.
