Author / Alex Kaufman

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  • Demystifying Divestment

    The national movement for fossil fuel divestment has reached Washington University, and several groups on campus have begun an effort to publicize the cause. Divestment is a complex economic and political strategy to address important social issues, and there has already been some debate and confusion over what exactly “divestment” means. The basic idea behind…

  • Hitting the target, missing the point

    I want to say something about the Giffords shooting that so far no one else has said, least of all Democrats.  It wasn’t, as many left wing pundits have been quick to cry, the Republicans’ fault.  It was not vitriolic rhetoric, nor inflammatory rhetoric, nor harsh rhetoric, nor even heated rhetoric that caused this.  It was not Sarah…

  • Why Nukes?

    Jonathan Schell asks this question in “Reaching Zero” (in the latest issue of The Nation). What I wonder is why not nukes? The A-bomb has such a terrifying potential; why aren’t people more afraid of it? Schell thinks it’s because “nuclear strategy” says that we need nukes to protect ourselves from other nukes, etc. That’s the logic behind…

  • Glenn Beck Is A Genius

    Fact: Glenn Beck is a brilliant political strategist.  We might all hate Beck, just like we hated Goebbels, and Lenin, and Mao, but we still had to admit they sure knew how to speak, and how to game their political systems.  Beck does a lot of things very well but I want to focus on…

  • A Murkowski Miracle

    It looks like the incumbent Senatorial candidate form Alaska, Murkowski, has won the election there AS A WRITE-IN CANDIDATE. This is unprecedented, because the whole point of our “democracy” is that you can’t win without the support of a party. Of course, she used to be a Republican, and as the incumbent she had a…

  • Two Rallies One Mission

    Some people seem to think that the twin rallies (albeit one good and one evil) Stewart and Colbert are holding are over the top. Critics claim that they are making a mockery of the system or are simply taking a joke to far. It has been argued that the two shows are the only real…

  • A Matter of Taste?

    A century ago, traveling freak shows–wagon trains of of bizarre humans, creatures, and artifacts–traveled across the United States thrilling and disgusting audiences for a bargain price. Today they have all but disappeared, thanks mostly to the ethical discomfort associated with the exploitation of others’ misfortunes as well as an increasing public distaste for the gory…