J. Ojanpera

Last night me and J were talking about how the US might have been carrying on Great Britain's imperial pursuits ever since the whole tea party thing. Then we discussed The Roman Empire, and how it grew so large that no one had any idea what was on the fringes. Some locations under Rome's thumb didn't even have governors present. Empires have always been glorified, presumably because they control popular culture; or rather consume it. We decided that it made for very interesting history, and that maybe one day the current state of the US could be analyzed in the same way. It all seems so horrid and impersonal now. We humans tend to glorify the past though, so future generations may view our actions as noble -in a science fiction sort of way. Though I doubt it now. The only difference in warfare through the ages has to be our ever-expanding reach. Instead of meeting on a field with hundreds of troops and horses, we can spy on every corner of the Earth from space, or ...

Now that journalists and filmakers aren't the only lens through which we view the world; conspiracies abound. I believe it to be simple enough to spin a semi-believable tale, write it down, and throw it out into the world for people to think on. It really amounts to no more than a television show. The subtle difference is that it might be true. It will be forever debated, and we should practice caution when considering activism. There are stories that I have been told, and have been sucked into, that seem plausible enough to spend a few minutes rationalizing a way to make it true. A rational approach doesn't always reap the truth, and that is where we must rely on our imaginations. Our imaginations are what fill in the blanks when the "real" elements of a conspiracy are exhausted. Once this happens, we find ourselves in a world of fiction. There is a huge market for fiction, so not all is lost. I used to wonder why the DC auctioneers were so tight-lipped about certa...

The term "failed state" has many interpretations. It is generally assigned to nations that cannot sustain order through responsible government, infrastructure, social programs, or protect itself from military sources outside of the popular army. For instance, when rebel forces topple an already weak government, the people generally flee, creating a refugee situation. This is the case in Syria at the present. In the case of Afghanistan, they haven't been given the opportunity to flourish on their own due to international interlopers, bent on robbing them of the potential mineral assets their land could possess. The puppet government that the US has installed is largely ineffective; as usual. The greatest question that remains to be answered is what will become of their sovreignty when the American death squads and hunters depart? Have we doomed them to failure? Once again, American greed forced upon a culture through war has yielded little. The largest consequences for t...