Category: Current Affairs

Friedman criticizes people my age and younger for not keeping up globally. As he tells his own kids, "Keep working. The kids in China and India are hungry for your jobs." In a way it’s a good rhetorical strategy, for as much as it lays blame on his audience for the problem, it also offers […]

Four years on, another September tragedy. This month our NeoVox student writers are addressing the theme of "the war on/of/in/about terror." Next month’s theme is "mother nature as Medea," which originally came about in relation to the tsunami disaster, but now will obviously also include Katrina. Though clearly very different events, 9/11 and Katrina have […]

In the news today the US Supreme Court upheld a ban on juvenile executions by a narrow margin of 5-4. Basically that means that if you murder someone while you’re a minor, you can’t get sentenced to death. Writing in dissent, Sandra Day O’Connor maintained that "Chronological age is not an unfailing measure of psychological […]

I haven’t heard many arguments in support of ROTC on our campus. I’m sure I just don’t travel in those circles, that they are out there somewhere. I am reminded to day on this very snowy afternoon that the only argument I have heard for on campus ROTC is that current ROTC students sometimes have […]

piddely pum, the more it goes, piddely pum, on snowing.” Perhaps you recall that old A.A. Milne rhyme. More than 900 years ago, the First Crusade resulted in the establishment of the Crusader States in the Holy Land. Brief history lesson: the ostensible purpose of the Crusades were religious–to protect Christendom from the infidel Muslim […]

ahhh, the republican convention has just passed. It reminds me of that old Lee Greenwood song. How’s it go? “I’m proud to be an American, cause at least I know I’m a fascistic murderer bred on hormones and pesticides.” Something like that.

As mentioned in an earlier post, Critical Arts Ensemble founder and fellow SUNY professor, Steven Kurtz was charged with bioterrorism under the Patriot Act earlier this year. The charges stemmed from some harmless bacteria found in his home after authorities responded to a 911 call he made upon finding his wife had died. Kurtz used […]

We’ve likely all heard this question in the past few months. But some Americans are already being pressed into service by our government. And it is to the discredit of all American journalists that I end up going to the UK Guardian to read this story. In a nutshell, soldiers seeking to leave the military […]

Those of us who have been involved in new media studies recognize the contributions of the Critical Arts Ensemble. Now one of its members, and a fellow SUNY colleague, Steve Kurtz, has been arrested under the auspicies of the “Patriot Act.” This site details the events and provides further information. Though I cannot speak to […]

Steven Shaviro writes a compelling version the plight of Lynndie England. Undoubtedly, it is possible that the crimes that have been uncovered are the acts of individuals acting outside the chain of command. However, it is certainly plausible that these acts of humiliation and torture were encouraged and facilitated by the military if not directly […]