From the new Rolling Stone I learned that Beck has a new album coming out October 3rd, called The Information. As I was reading about it (which sounds like another crazy Beck album) I got to the part where it said, “The disc comes with a blank cover…” which made me groan. How many more artists are going to put out albums with blank covers, I thought? So lame! The Beatles did it, it was a huge hit, but copying them again is just silly. Then I kept reading, “…that fans can customize with included stickers–an idea that captures the mix-and-match flavor of the project.” Now wait there just a minute… That sounds kind of cool! Make your own CD cover. Now there is an idea. Every CD can be different. That’s kind of far out.

Also in that Rolling Stone was an article about the current situation between Israel and Lebanon that just made me angry. The United States media sucks. Just about every major media outlet blamed Lebanon for starting the current conflict, citing the kidnapping of the two Israeli soldiers as the start of the fight. But in fact,

“There were at least three Israeli missile strikes on Palestinians in the weeks before the June Hamas raid, killing as many as twenty people and injuring nearly fifty, most of them women and children. And there was intense fighting across the Lebanese border by both sides in May.”

Why don’t we hear about any of this? Because our government likes to use our ignorance of the Middle East to inflame renewed racism towards the Muslim “terrorists” that hoard “our” oil. We might not like the Jews, but at least they aren’t Muslims. The Jews are our buffer between them and us.

What also really makes you think is: What technically is the definition of a “terrorist”? So far in this current conflict there are “around 1,150 dead in Lebanon, mostly civilians, mostly women and children; 160 killed by Hezbollah, mostly soldiers; and 900,000 displaced Lebanese, out of a country of nearly 4 million.” So wait a minute, who are the terrorists here, really? Lebanon is a very Western democratic country where only ten percent of the government is run by Hezbollah. “Surely a quarter of the people are not terrorists. Its old women and its children are not terrorists. If they are, the definition of terrorism itself has genocidal connotations.” It makes me think of all my studies on Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews. Or, for that matter, our treatment of the Iraqis, who have technically done nothing to us to make us so pissed off at them.

I sit here most days thinking. “Why does our country suck so much”, I wonder? If only things could be decided by a make-your-own-cover sticker album.