Author Archive for Aaron Elias
Justice Dept. Says Rape Is A-OK
Last year, an unprovoked shooting by Blackwater Worldwide left 17 Iraqi civilians dead and 20 injured in a square in Baghdad. Blackwater is a privatized military firm that provides support for U.S. troops in Iraq, and a law known as Order 17, enacted by the Coalition Provisional Authority, grants all U.S.-employed private contractors blanket immunity [...]
Dropkick Murphys Shipping Up to O.C.
The stereotype of punk music lovers sporting pink mohawks that can get tangled up in telephone wires is nearing an end. The Dropkick Murphys, a band mixing upbeat Celtic music with heavy rock ‘n’ roll and punk, rocked the Grove in Anaheim on Sunday. The band is notorious for implementing an all-for-one, one-for-all environment that [...]
Flogging Molly ‘Floats’ High With New Release
‘The most important album of the year, if not the decade,’ declares Alternative Press. ‘Float,’ Flogging Molly’s newest album, has finally hit the shelves much to the joy of the band’s rabid Guinness-swigging fans.
Flogging Molly is widely known more for incorporating Celtic sounds and styles into its music than for its punk. Its songs [...]
Telecom, Take Two: 2008 is the New 1984
Like something out of George Orwell’s ’1984′ or Stephen King’s ‘The Running Man,’ the Senate has voted to broaden the government’s spying powers and bestow immunity on telephone companies that cooperate with President George W. Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program. After rejecting a string of amendments that would have restricted the government’s surveillance powers and destroyed [...]
Dayan Talks Middle East to Me
Jacob Dayan, the consul general of Israel, visited UC Irvine last Thursday to speak about the Middle East. He compared terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah to groups fighting a country in the movie ‘Goldfinger.’ He noted that they all share the same Islamic fundamentalist ideology, which unfortunately dominates over the less popular secular [...]
Morality Talk
Morals are a common topic of discussion for all the philosophy majors out there. College students are forced to dwell on them when they move to liberal, highly opinionated campuses such as UC Irvine. Issues such as cage-free eggs, vegetarianism, anti/pro-Israel debates, agnosticism, atheism and, homosexuality cause moral tornadoes on our campus every day. Consequently, [...]
U.S. Embassy Makes Fulbright Scholar Dance to ‘Secret Agent Man’
Remember those God-awful ‘Agent Cody Banks’ movies in which totally unsuspecting students are whisked away by black helicopters to execute some badass, secret government mission? That dream almost became a reality for Alex Van Schaick, an American scholar studying in Bolivia. He was ordered by U.S. embassy security official Vincent Cooper to do a little [...]
ACLU Sticks a Pink Slip Up Homophobic Principal
Half the fun of college is finding out who you really are by joining clubs, organizations, fraternities or sororities around campus. These groups are great outlets for expressing our opinions and perfect opportunities for exercising the First Amendment right to free speech.
However, a Florida high school begs to differ. School officials at Ponce de Leon [...]
Study Suggests Link Between Smoking and Alzheimer’s
HEALTH: Recent studies by UC Irvine show that nicotine may worsen progression of Alzheimer’s Disease.
