Archive for April, 2011
Mediating Abortion – A Catch-22?
Growing up in a predominately conservative and Christian family, the abortion debate was never even considered a controversial topic for my family. Simply put, there was no other option to believe – Abortion was wrong. Always. Looking back, I have a hard time deciding whether this stance was brought about by my families strong political […]
Army ROTC on Campus
This week in Peace Studies, our class had the unique opportunity of engaging in dialogue with several fellow students members of the Gustavus chapter of ROTC. Before our discussion, I knew very little about the program aside from the generals: they are always in Lund at the crack of dawn and they become soldiers after […]
Humans not Positions
The abortion debate makes me standoffish. Yes, it’s a controversial topic, but I’ve never liked how it provokes such strong reactions from people—murdering abortion doctors or using illegitimate methods of abortion to get rid of an unwanted baby girl, for example. For those reasons I’ve tried to remain distant from the abortion debate. It has […]
When stubbornness meets structural violence
At a time when Aljazeera’s homepage constantly details Syria’s violent crackdown on protestors, the BBC proclaims the same and then some in Libya and Afghanistan, the New York Times discusses the latest in murder and mayhem, and the Peace Studies course address the militant tendencies of the United States, it is easy to overlook some […]
The Influence of War
In class yesterday we talked about the influence that war has on our culture. Something that really stood out was how the war influenced the production and sales of toys. It amazes me how a topic that is actually very violent can create such a popular attraction for kids. This seems wrong to me in […]
The Focus of Anonymous
The other day in Intro to Peace Studies, we viewed some propaganda from the group Anonymous. During their call for Operation Payback, to avenge Julian Assange after several major companies (Amazon, MasterCard, &c) withdrew their support for WikiLeaks, Anonymous called access to the Internet “a basic human right,” and that Anonymous’ chief complaint is that […]
Death Penalty for Terrorists? For Anyone?
It was announced today that the military is pursuing the first capital punishment case against terror suspect. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is being charged with planning the bombing attack on the U.S. Navy vessel, which was in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen and with heading the aborted attack on the destroyer USS The Sullivans in […]
Is The US Becoming More Militarized?
Today in America I believe that we view our country as being “all powerful” and in some aspects this assumption may be true. However, I do not believe that we are becoming more militarized by any sense. Sure we may have spend more money on homeland security and deployed more troops overseas than in the […]
Is the U.S. becoming more militarized?
Beyond a doubt, yes. There are those who point to the ridiculously disproportionate military budget. According to an article called “Our Taxes are Off to War,” by RandomNonviolence, military spending accounted for 51% of the 2010 discretionary budget, compared with 8% toward education and 5% toward health. Accounting for inflation, from 2010 to 2011 military […]
Military Force to Protect the US status
I do believe that the United States is becoming more militarized. My reasoning can be supported by the term Military Metaphysics. This, as Bacevich has described it, is the idea that because we have solved many problems in the past with military action, we will continue this trend and use military action in many problems […]