Opinion

As Thanksgiving passes and Christmas nears, the spirit of giving should drain out all ears. Yeah, I’m not quite sure what that was supposed to mean, but what I do know is that we need money.

There is a new energy within the UC student movement. Throughout the state, students are marching, occupying and joining together in solidarity against the fee increases. But the movement is not just about the fee increases. Although the protest at UCLA was certainly a wake-up call for many of us, the movement did not begin there.

Dear Students: This has been an intense week for our university. Protests against fee hikes have occurred on our campus and throughout the system. The reasons for the protests are clear: the promise of an affordable UC education for all is under siege, victim of a state and nation reeling in the midst of a historic recession.

“Might hurt just a little bit — just a little bit — but it’s going to help a lot!” That is a line from a song that Sid the Science Kid and his computer-generated pals sang on a recent episode of Sid’s eponymous public television children’s show. In every episode, Sid has a “Super-duper-ooper-schmooper” big idea. Last week, on a show entitled “Getting a Shot: You Can Do It,” Sid’s big idea was that getting vaccinated is a good idea.

We work too damn hard for our keep, both as students and as Americans. That is the real pretext behind these student protests, isn’t it? Sure, the flyers and picket signs might have pithy puns about repealing the 32 percent fee increase, about impeaching Mark Yudof — hell, even about abolishing fees and debts altogether, but the real meat of our outrage is over our work.

Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perceptions Index report listed Iraq and Afghanistan in the top five most corrupt countries. Both countries are on the receiving end of billions of dollars in foreign support, mostly from the U.S. Putting aside Taliban strongholds, the official Afghan government works closely with the U.S. — not surprising given common foreign policy and security issues, American financial contributions, and the ongoing military procedure in Afghanistan. Yet despite this partnership, which is professedly for the furtherance of democracy in Afghanistan, recent developments have revealed widespread fraud originating from current President Hamid Karzai.

Remember what happened last year on Black Friday? People died. Some were injured, including a 28-year-old, eight-month pregnant woman. What does that say about our American culture? A lot.

When Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the “mastermind” behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, would be put on trial in New York along with four other terrorism suspects, there was a predictable outcry. The right wing claimed it was a foolish decision to give terrorists the same legal rights afforded to American citizens. The decision, however, is wholly appropriate and consistent with judicial precedent and the high moral standards the very same right-wing people always uphold as American ideals that need protecting. When the time comes to practice them, the right wing is reluctant to prove how effective they are.

The United States of America, while not an officially Christian nation, is certainly a nation populated mostly by Christians. Because of this fact, changes in American religion will always be accompanied by changes in America itself. Specifically, the teachings of American churches will influence the way Americans live their lives, at least to some extent.

Curfews are, constitutionally speaking, a gray area. The government orders certain citizens to be in their homes by a certain time, all in the name of upholding a highly subjective “public order.” Failure to comply with this order could result in legal consequences. Here in modern America, the whole thing seems very reasonable: we use curfews to keep those under-aged hooligans off the streets and away from the liquor stores and heroin dealers. But just replace “America’s youth” with “Jews” and you’ve got Hitler’s Germany. Replace it with “Japanese-Americans” and you’ve got the level of paranoia that plagued our nation following Pearl Harbor. Replace it with “African-Americans” and you’ve got America, 1776 to 1865 – much later in certain parts of the country.

UC students everywhere are feeling the pressure after the UC Board of Regents approved a 32 percent fee increase on student fees last Thursday. This vote will make it even more difficult for students currently struggling to make ends meet to get the quality education they expect from the University of California, quality that has been called into question.

On the islands north of Seattle, WA, teenage Colton Harris-Moore is becoming much more than the stuff of local legends. In the months...