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Praying For Armageddon
"This attitude would be creepy enough if many of those marching us into a Middle Eastern blowout didn't believe in a literal Armageddon. Not helpful either that a full 59% of Americans polled say they believe in the apocalyptic events predicted in the Bible's Book of Revelations: when the Messiah returns on Judgment Day, believers will be lifted to glorious Heaven while sinful non-believers will be "left behind" to do battle with the Antichrist. All of this is complicated by the belief that the Messiah can return only if a new temple is built on Temple Mount, one of the holiest - and most contentious - sites for Islam, Judaism and Christianity combined."
Joe Strummer: Armagideon Time
"Joe Strummer's sudden death on 22 December 2002, possibly from a heart attack, came as a shock. For the last three months of 2002 I had been re-exploring the agitpop legacy of The Clash, the influential punk band that Strummer fronted with guitarist Mick Jones, bassist Paul Simonon and drummer Topper Headon. Strummer had wisely avoided the multi-million dollar offers for a reformation and American stadium tour, preferring to concentrate on his new band the Mescaleros. He had just finished a United Kingdom tour with the Mescaleros and was planning a third studio album. But in press interviews Strummer had also made peace with his past. He had made up with Jones: ending a split that tore apart The Clash at their commercial peak. He now disowned the disastrous follow-up album Cut the Crap (1985). And, poignantly, he gave his approval to a one-night reformation of for their March 2003 induction into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Now we'll never know what could have been."
Everything You Know Is Wrong: Fission Stories: Nuclear Power's Secrets
"I graduated in June 1979 from the University of Tennessee with a degree in nuclear engineering. The meltdown at Three Mile Island had occurred less than three months earlier. For the next seventeen years, I worked at nuclear power plants in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut. This prompted me to join the Union of Concerned Scientists, where, as their nuclear safety engineer, I monitor safety performance of all US nuclear power plants. In more than two decades, I've studied literally thousands of reports on nuclear plant accidents and near-misses. Many of these reports are publicly available, but they're very obscure and their information is veiled in technical jargon and acronyms called "nukespeak". The following stories, which examine some basically unknown and unpublicized problems since 1968, provide a glimpse behind the nuclear curtain."
The Powell Doctrine: Baghdad/Jenin/My Lai
"Moral of the story? Truth is often the first casualty of war. Before we hang our hopes on heroes or unquestioningly believe what we hear from even the most reliable sources, we need to dig deeper to find the real story. Second, while the US was appropriate to be outraged at the targeting of its civilians in the September 11 attacks, we should extend that outrage to scenarios in which our government targets, or is complicit in targeting, civilians elsewhere."
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