Boo, the cute doggy

The Price of 9/11 - Joseph E. Stiglitz

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org

LINK: Full article

2011-09-01                 

NEW YORK – The September 11, 2001, terror attacks by Al Qaeda were meant to harm the United States, and they did, but in ways that Osama bin Laden probably never imagined. President George W. Bush’s response to the attacks compromised America’s basic principles, undermined its economy, and weakened its security.

The attack on Afghanistan that followed the 9/11 attacks was understandable, but the subsequent invasion of Iraq was entirely unconnected to Al Qaeda – as much as Bush tried to establish a link. That war of choice quickly became very expensive – orders of magnitude beyond the $60 billion claimed at the beginning – as colossal incompetence met dishonest misrepresentation.

Indeed, when Linda Bilmes and I calculated America’s war costs three years ago, the conservative tally was $3-5 trillion. Since then, the costs have mounted further. With almost 50% of returning troops eligible to receive some level of disability payment, and more than 600,000 treated so far in veterans’ medical facilities, we now estimate that future disability payments and health-care costs will total $600-900 billion. But the social costs, reflected in veteran suicides (which have topped 18 per day in recent years) and family breakups, are incalculable.

(...)

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, a Nobel laureate in economics, and the author of Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy.

Bukowski - Relentless as the tarantula

relentless as the tarantula

they're not going to let you
sit at a front table
at some cafe in Europe
in the mid-afternoon sun.
if you do, somebody's going to
 drive by and spray your guts
with a submachine gun.

they're not going to let you
feel good for very long anywhere.
the forces aren't going to let you
sit around fucking-off and relaxing.
you've got to go their way.

the unhappy, the bitter and the vengeful
need their fix - which is you
or somebody anybody in agony,
or better yet dead, dropped into some hole.

as long as there are
humans about
there is never going to be
any peace for any individual upon this earth
or anywhere else they might escape to.

all you can do is maybe
grab ten lucky minutes here
or maybe an hour there.
something is working toward you right now,
and I mean you and nobody but you.

 Appears in Relentless as the Tarantula (1986) and You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense (1986)