There have been 4,729 coalition deaths — 4,410 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 5 Georgians, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1 Kazakh, 1 South Korean, 3 Latvian, 22 Poles, 3 Romanians, 5 Salvadoran, 4 Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thai and 18 Ukrainians — in the war in Iraq as of May 5 2010, according to a CNN count. { Graphical breakdown of casualties }. The list also includes 13 U.S. Defense Department civilian employees. At least 31,860 {31,839 last month} U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. View casualties in the war in Afghanistan
Every Fourth of July, Americans gather to celebrate the country’s declaration of independence from … um, what country was that again?
If you answered the above question with the word “England” or “Britain,” you would be obviously correct. But a new Marist poll finds that more than a quarter — 26 percent — of Americans polled couldn’t bring to mind the name of the country from whom the original 13 colonies gained independence.
Results were especially poor among the young: Of respondents aged 18 to 29, only 60 percent correctly identified Great Britain. A full one-third were unsure.
Maybe history class was too long ago. Or maybe, as the New York Daily Newswould have it, Americans are “pretty dumb.”
Overall, 20 percent of the population answered “not sure” to the question, while six percent declared it to be a country other than Great Britain. “Among the countries mentioned are France, China, Japan, Mexico, and Spain,” Marist reports.
China? Maybe all this poll tells us is that six percent of people who answer surveys like to screw around with them.
Consider that a good 10% of Americans probably have Alzheimer’s. Then another 5% are just regular crazy people. And probably 11% of Americans got offended that some annoying academic called them up during dinner to ask them this single, inane question and answered “the United States won its independence from the country of My Ass.”
Let’s hope Stuef is right. Or this country is in big trouble.
(Reuters) – The United States’ top field commander, General David Petraeus, warned on Saturday of a tough mission ahead a day after arriving to take command of the 150,000-strong NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan.
Petraeus told hundreds of guests at a U.S. embassy party held to mark U.S. independence day that it was essential to show unity of purpose to solve Afghanistan’s problems.
“This is a tough mission, there is nothing easy about it,” he said at the sprawling and heavily fortified U.S. embassy complex in Kabul, Washington’s biggest foreign mission anywhere in the world and boasting 5 ambassadors.
Sociologist David Harvey, Professor in the Graduate Centre of City University of New York, asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just, and humane?
Harvey’s influential books include The New Imperialism; Paris, Capital of Modernity; Social Justice and the City; Limits to Capital; The Urbanization of Capital; The Condition of Postmodernity; Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference; Spaces of Hope; and Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography.
This narrated animation is based on a lecture, “The Crises of Capitalism”, given by Professor Harvey in April this year at the RSA. For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress.
Radical sociologist Professor David Harvey visits the RSA to explain how capitalism came to dominate the world and why it resulted in the current financial crisis.
Taking a long view of the current crisis, Professor Harvey exposes the follies of the international financial system, looking closely at the nature of capitalism, how it works and why sometimes it doesn’t.
Examining the cycles of boom and bust in the world’s housing and stock markets, and the vast flows of money that surge round the world daily, Harvey shows that periodic episodes of meltdown are not only inevitable in the capitalist system but, in fact, are essential to its survival. Harvey argues that the essence of capitalism is its amorality and lawlessness and to talk of a regulated, ethical capitalism is to make a fundamental error.
Can crises of the current sort be contained within the constraints of capitalism? Or is it time to make the case for a social order that would allow us to live within a different type of system – one that really could be responsible, just, and humane?
I was sitting on my front steps the other evening talking to one of my favorite neighbors, a Democrat, and happened to mention that I couldn’t believe the congress put SS and by default, medicare, at risk in a supplemental funding bill for that damn war in Afghanistan. “What have we done, become, I am so damn angry at our country now.” Okay, I meant leadership which seems to be about 10 steps behind the polls. She narrowed her school marm eyes and started backing away (uh, uh) so in a placatory (and let’s face it, stupid move) I began talking about Obama’s penchant for charter schools instead of properly funded public schools and how I didn’t trust Obama. She turned and moved quickly away from the offending neighbor.
When living in Chicago, I often picked up my anti-war, anti-bombing of Iraqi children signs and walked down the street to the bus stop for the next rally. On the way to the bus stop, a large family of adults who always seemed to be home sat on their steps and glared at me muttering various and sundries which I couldn’t always make out – but words sometimes floated – “commie”, “bitch”, “terrorist lover.” Festooned on their porch and really any place where possible, were American flags. And they each wore pins, red, white and blue t-shirts, and a scowl for the unworthy traitor passing by. Ironically, I had a flag on my porch after 9/11 for about two weeks in honor of the victims and my uncles who had served (some died) in WW II, and my lefty friends disapproved. When my godchild visited from Italy where she lived now, she was confused at the proliferation of flags and other symbols. What was the purpose? I understood we needed to do something – a symbolic need, a communal need. My flag disappeared after a bit. Hmmm -who would do such a thing? BTW, at the beginning of our rallies, many bystanders hurled plenty of names at our somewhat small groups, which swelled and outnumbered them as the days passed.
Iraq, Rapidly becoming the Forgotten War!!
Sociologist 