Bits and Pieces

Play Me


Lubbock Left

"Wow!
I never thought I would live to see the day when more Lubbockites participated in the Democratic Primary than in the Republican Primary in the second most conservative city in the USA. Let’s hope the trend continues through election day (where, for once, the Democratic precinct conventions will get the nice big rooms in the voting locations!).
This is an exciting time to be a Democrat!"

Tom Hayden returns to Vietnam

As I walked through the busy Christmas streets, however, I was gripped by the question of why the Vietnam War was necessary in the first place. Why kill, maim and uproot millions of Vietnamese if the outcome was a consumer wonderland approved by the country's still-undefeated Communist Party? The whole wretched American rationale for the war, that Vietnam was a dangerous domino, a pawn in the cold war, seemed so painfully wrong. Was there any connection between destroying so much life and causing the Vietnamese to go Christmas shopping? Would the same outcome--a one-party socialist government leading a market economy--have occurred in any event, without the destruction? Now that US naval ships were paying peaceful visits to Da Nang, this question nagged at me: is it possible that Marxism and nationalism won the war but capitalism and nationalism have won the peace?

Just Another day in Iraq

5 US Troops Killed;
25 Dead, 70 Wounded in Violence;
Turkey Bombs Iraq