Posts tagged Andy Essa
America’s Victims: How Intervention led to Breaches in our National Security

The mainstream narrative that we are sold by the media about migration into the United States is simple: the poor come to this country to escape the plights of their home countries and follow the American dream to become rich and prosperous. While this idea sounds star-spangled awesome, there is a dark side to why people have moved to the US in the past century. While there are clear and present dangers to people in lower-income countries, such as natural disasters, the main culprit is social immobility. In the United States, there is a vague belief that anyone can be anything: The American Dream.

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Is Egypt willing to save itself?

Less eggs, less meat, and more chicken feet. While at first glance this may sound like a bizarre nursery rhyme for some, Egyptians know all too well that this is what state-run media in Egypt considers a good alternative to the crippling inflation that has become impossible for anyone in the country to ignore. When speaking to Egyptians today, it is clear that many are starting to lose patience with the consistently ailing economic situation. “We legitimately don’t know where the country is headed.

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Powering the Future: Nuclear Power and America’s Energy Independence

Three Mile Island. Fukushima. Chernobyl. The three worst nuclear disasters in human history, and yet they barely account for a few hundred deaths, as opposed to millions of deaths caused by the fossil fuel industry. Nuclear energy has a stigma of being inherently bad for the environment, toxifying whole cities, and spreading radioactive material. That is exactly what fossil fuels do, yet the lobbying efforts against nuclear power center the danger of nuclear power and brush off the harmful impacts of fossil fuels to scare the public against clean energy.

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The Blind Tyrants: How (Mis)information has Shifted the Tides of War

Shall we play a game?

No, this is not a 1980s film about Mattew Broderick staving off nuclear disaster, but another age-old game that we have been playing since humanity existed: war. As with the board game with the same name, war involves risks, either taking them or accepting them based on the cards you are dealt. Unlike the board game, however, the fog of war clouds the capabilities of the enemy, and leaders risk either diving headfirst into a body of cool water, or solid concrete.

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Cyberwar: How it Started, Where its Going, and Why We Should Care

Cyber attacks are becoming an increasing threat to the international community and United States national security. Such attacks are no longer dominated by solo figures but have been increasingly sponsored by national governments as a new type of weapon in their arsenals. To understand why cyber weapons and cyber defenses are critical to our national security now and in the future, we must answer some key questions. Why are cyber attacks becoming increasingly attractive to governments, and what are their pitfalls?

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Final Exam: Canceled. How Strikes have Impacted the UC System

Within the last week of Fall Quarter, professors have been rolling out updates about the final exams and end-of-quarter assignments in consideration of the UC-wide academic worker strike that has persisted since Nov. 14. In acknowledgment of unfair labor practices and low wages in relation to high cost of living, members of the academic union swept the California campuses, administrators’ homes, and Sacramento streets in the past month. A mass strike halts grading, discussion sections, and all regular functions that allow undergraduate students to receive grades and move on to the next quarter without financial or academic conflict.

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The Importance of Public Debate In the Modern Era

Last Saturday, the Davis Political Review hosted a public debate between the Davis College Republicans and the New Liberals club. The event was the first of its kind in Davis where student panelists questioned other students with differing perspectives on topics ranging from freedom of speech, campus violence, foreign policy, and inflation while providing them with a platform to civilly discuss their different opinions. We would like to thank the New Liberals club and the Davis College Republicans for their participation in this debate. As a nonpartisan organization, we in the DPR understand the value of our free speech, and most importantly the duty we hold to protect it.

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The Hypocrisy of the Warmongering Western States

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has placed the Russian Federation on center stage, with all eyes looking at the bear’s next steps. The Ukrainians are being bolstered by the European Union and the United States, under the guise of protecting national sovereignty and promoting democracy. The blatant disregard for the damages the West has caused around the world and the sudden interest in the well-being of a white nation is a testament to what the West actually cares about: their domination of global affairs. There was no international outcry for the atrocious war crimes committed in Iraq.

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To Nuke or Not to Nuke

When nuclear weapons come to mind, there is often hysteria associated with them, the end of the world, destruction of the Earth, end of life as we know it. The public has a vague idea of what nuclear weapons are and what their purpose is in grand strategy, and it’s time to change that. The media consistently overplays the threat of nuclear annihilation, but since the inception of these weapons of mass destruction, they were only ever used twice.

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The Afghanistan Project: American Jingoism Gone Wrong

The American populace, fueled with rage and revenge following the attacks on September 11, 2001, and the George W. Bush Administration took that anger and radically shifted the geopolitical position of the United States. Initiating the War on Terror, Bush placed the blame for the attacks on the Taliban, a militant group which had taken control of Afghanistan only a few years earlier in 1996.

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The Sum of all Fears: Russian Expansion and its Geopolitical Ramifications

The world is at a precipice of a new Cold War embroiling the Russian Federation with the United States of America. Since its inception after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian bear has clawed its way through Ukraine and Georgia, and has thrown itself into conflicts in the Middle East and diplomatic spats with Europe. As during the Cold War, the Russians are labeled as a direct threat to US strategic interests, a label which has not been printed since 1991.

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