The Article: US Weapons at War by the Arms Trade Resource Center. And here I was, thinking that they hated our freedoms.

The Text: A new report by the New York-based World Policy Institute finds that a majority of U.S. arms sales to the developing world go to regimes defined as undemocratic by our own State Department. Furthermore, U.S.-supplied arms are involved in a majority of the world’s active conflicts.

“Billions of U.S. arms sales to Afghanistan in the 1980s ended up empowering Islamic fundamentalist fighters across the globe,” notes report co-author William D. Hartung. “Our current policy of arming unstable regimes could have similarly disastrous consequences, with U.S.-supplied weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, insurgents, or hostile governments.”

Little Birdie, Little Birdie

Come, sing to me your song,

I’ve a short time to stay here,

And a long time to be gone,

I’d rather be in some dark hollow,

Where the sun don’t ever shine,

Than to see you be someone’s darlin’

And to know you’ll never be mine,

Little Birdie, Little Birdie,

What makes you fly so high,

It’s because my own true love,

Is waiting in the sky,

Little Birdie, Little Birdie,

Come sing to me your song,

“Men have a stake in believing that we are not really like that. Women have a stake in believing that men really don’t see them that way. For each party, facing the truth often feels as if it is too much to bear. So we turn away and pretend.”

Robert Jensen in Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity.

Incroyable! An interesting discussion between Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul that essentially represents the dynamics of the Iraq debate for not only Republicans, but for a large portion of the American electorate. Especially considering the wonders of the past week witnessed at the Democratic debate, it’s refreshing to see these kind of conversations happening.