Bush's Pax Americana

Mother Jone's magazine has an excellent article by Mark Danner on the Iraq war. Essentially a look at where we are and how we got there. In essence, the terrorist threat has been growing steadily since 9/11 and the main reason why is the war/occupation of Iraq. A very thoughtful analysis.

I especially agreed with the notion that the real weapon of the 9/11 attack was the television:

"In this sense, 9/11 proved the culmination of a long-term strategy, following on a series of attacks of increasing lethality during the mid to late 1990s in Riyadh, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, and Aden. The 9/11 attackers used as their climactic weapon not transcontinental airliners or box cutters but the television set—for the image was the true weapon that day, the overwhelmingly powerful image of the towers collapsing—and used it not only to "dirty the face of imperial power" (Menachim Begin's description of what terrorists do), but also to provoke the United States to strike deep into the Islamic world."

2008 Movies

Here are a couple of movies I saw for X-mas break. Pretty amazing that we were able to see 2 whole movies in an actual movie theater.

1) Juno - Excellent movie. Excellent soundtrack. A very original movie.

2) Enchanted - Didn't know how I would like this movie but it turned out to be pretty good. Amy Adams was excellent in her role.