Tiny (URL) Tips (2009)

The Tiny Tips column from the October 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the worst events can bring out the best in people,why can’t that impulse be sustained in everyday life?

As Solnit notes, “the real question is not why this brief paradise of mutual aid and altruism appears but rather why it is ordinarily overwhelmed by another world order.”

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The United States spent $75 billion over the past year to finance worldwide intelligence operations that employ 200,000 people, according to an unprecedented disclosure by the nation’s top intelligence official:

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At the Charter School for Excellence, a school in South Florida inspired by Gothard’s draconian principles that receives $800,000 in state funds each year, children are indoctrinated into a culture of absolute submission to authority almost as soon as they learn to speak. A song that the school’s firstgraders are required to recite goes as follows:

Obedience is listening attentively,

Obedience will take instructions joyfully,

Obedience heeds wishes of authorities,

Obedience will follow orders instantly.

For when I am busy at my work or play,

And someone calls my name, I’ll answer right away!

I’ll be ready with a smile to go the extra mile

As soon as I can say “Yes, sir!” “Yes maam!”

Hup, two, three!

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New research indicates that 80% of Afghanistan now has a permanent Taliban presence and that 97% of the country has “substantial Taliban activity.”

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Are you totally reprehensible and feeling lonely? Or maybe you’re just a struggling business looking for some instant online companionship? The firm Usocial has the answer for you — buy Facebook friends and fans:

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“But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it’s, it’s not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?” : Barbara Bush on ABC – Good Morning America,

March 18, 2003….Six years later…. The Obama administration’s freak out… over the …. circulation of a photograph of a dying US soldier in Afghanistan..

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A millionaire in northern China paid four million yuan (600,000 dollars) for a dog and ordered 30 luxury cars to come to the airport to greet her and the animal:

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