MCDOWELL CREEK, Kan. - It is hard to get out of a gilded cage, and that's what we Americans live in when it comes to fossil fuels. We like the cheap food and transportation that fossil fuels provide, and we take for granted the availability of inexpensive products made of plastics and other oil-derivatives. We can't imagine living without comfort and convenience, and so all too often we prefer to see only the glitter, not the bars.
But for many people in the world, the hard iron is all too visible. This discrepancy between what we see and what others see is the subject of Julia Baird's recent essay in Newsweek, "Oil's Shame in Africa." Baird quotes CUNY School of Law professor Rebecca Bratspies: "Problems associated with oil production are usually invisible to those of us who consume vast quantities. We don't see how dirty it is. [The recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico] is a more extreme version of daily events in Nigeria, where the oil companies have had a complete and total disregard for the environmental implications of their actions." According to Baird, what the Nigerians have gone through has not been deemed newsworthy in the West.

MANHATTAN, Kan. - Noted sociologist Gay Seidman will be visiting Kansas State University to deliver the 10th Annual Donald J. Adamchak Distinguished Lecture Monday, March 8th (International Women's Day) at 7 pm in Forum Hall of K-State Union. The lecture is free and open to the public.
WICHITA, Kan. - Friends, if you don't think the mainstream media plays a major role in the formulation of American foreign policy, I would politely suggest you are living in denial. If a hayseed from Kansas like me figured out from multiple news sources that the Bush administration was lying about the "Iraqi threat" prior to the invasion in 2003, how could a majority of Americans and Congress members become so thoroughly fooled and panicked that they virtually clamored for America's first-ever "pre-emptive war"? 


