Posts Tagged With: News

BBC NEWS | Business | Wal-Mart boss sentenced for theft

Tom Coughlin, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Smykowski from the movie Office Space, was sentenced to jail for stealing from Wal-Mart. His doctors testified he was 'in too poor health' to go to jail, which sounds to me like bullshit. If you're rich, and you have apnea, don't worry about committing crime because you might not have to do the time. Of course if you don't have fantastic lawyers or doctors there exists no such protection. I am for the rich and famous serving the same sentences as the poor.

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What about Darfur

Nicolas Kristof makes a good point in his latest column, that we've basically ignored Darfur but we sure raise a giant stink about Israel and Lebanon. The solution is easy enough - just get important people to notice what's going on and publicize it to death until the weight of public opinion crushes the administration into action. This isn't as easy as it sounds though, which kills, literally. Murders are committed daily because of inaction. If anyone knows a good place to donate money to or a way to help besides making the murders known, please let me know. Maybe we need to think of a term with worse connotations than genocide. Something like "the slaughter and rape due of hundreds of thousands of humans due to indifference" and use that instead of the word genocide.

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The State of Iraq

In latest news, General John Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraq may well be headed to civil war. To take a long view, in 2002 we invaded a relatively stable, poor country. Our aim was, initially, to prevent them from using their weapons of mass destruction. Now, our leaders say the goal was to remove Saddam from power. Today Saddam is safely in our hands, but over 50,000 Iraqi lives have been lost, as well as 2000 plus American soldiers. Moreover, the fact that we are in Iraq, and the occasional abuse/murder scandal, are excellent recruiting tools for Islamic extremists. The price of oil has skyrocketed, I feel less safe than at the beginning of the war, and now that Iran and North Korea have nuclear weapons, we are powerless because our troops are stuck in Iraq. Removing US troops may save US lives, but is unforgivable. We cannot invade a peaceful country and then pack up and leave it to civil war. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't heard any solutions or strategies being proposed or implemented with any degree of success. This much is clear: whoever becomes elected in 2008 will have a gigantic mess on their hands. I don't think this administration's trying too hard to fix things before they leave.

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