n April 24, a woman walked up to a crowd of Iranian pilgrims on a street leading to the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, Baghdad’s most revered Shiite holy site. The woman headed straight towards the Iranians and detonated the explosives strapped to her body, taking the lives of over two dozen people with her. Five minutes later, a man who walked into the aftermath did the same, killing another two dozen people with a round of explosives. The wounded totaled over 120. The confirmed dead: 60.

There were over 20 major attacks in Iraq during the month of April. A coalition of Sunni terrorist groups is largely responsible for the recent surge of violence in Iraq. Their goal: to upset whatever relative calm has settled over Iraq by staging more and more spectacular attacks in supposedly secured areas of the country. In Mosul, their present staging ground in the north of Iraq, the insurgents have done everything in their power to hold on to the last terrorist foothold in the country.

Meanwhile, the headlines have featured everything but Iraq. In mid-April, that Scottish singer on Britain’s Got Talent took the media spotlight away from… Obama’s new puppy. Meanwhile, the deadly string of attacks remained relatively ignored. What is it about these attacks that seem to dive under the radar back home? Are people beginning to forget that we’re in two simultaneous campaigns—two ongoing, seemingly never-ending conflicts to which we have committed billions of dollars of American treasure along with the lives and safety of over a million soldiers and American civilians? In Iraq, there are just as many Americans in danger as have been for the duration of the war. Have we forgotten?

One veteran is sure of it. “It’s easy to see the progression of thought,” remarked Oakland, California native Neil Smithe, a veteran of the war in Iraq and a participant in the second battle of Fallujah in the fall of 2004. “The war starts. Everyone gets excited and patriotic and all that. Then it starts to get a little bad. Then it gets really bad. Headlines, headlines everywhere, protest groups, whatever. Then comes the surge and the slow steady decline of violence. Then, all of a sudden, people stopped listening. Not all of them, no. But a lot.” Asked about the lack of attention on Iraq and Afghanistan, Smithe responds, “It affects me personally because I still know some guys over there. They haven’t forgotten any part of it, no matter how ‘calm’ people say it’s been. Violence is up in Afghanistan, remember? People need to wake up.”

The media has also failed to fulfill their responsibility to informing the public about Iraq. The nightly news programs on major networks offer little to no coverage of the war—not anymore, at least. The 24-hour news channels are more concerned with reporting the size of Michelle Obama’s biceps, Meghan McCain’s feud with Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin’s various unimportant and uninteresting breaches of state ethics laws. While the reporting done by the Baghdad Bureaus of the New York Times and the Washington Post are reliable, a story about Iraq hardly ever hits the front page. Are there bigger stories out there? Sure. Are there more sensational headlines available? Of course. But when two hundred Iraqi civilians and almost twenty American soldiers and sailors die in that faraway front line, the blip on the national radar shouldn’t be so miniscule, so seemingly unimportant to the top brass of Big Media. It should not just barely register in the national consciousness.

Almost a week after the bombing at the Musa al-Kadhim shrine, the United Kingdom made the final decision to get the hell out of Dodge. Six years of British combat operations in Iraq ended on April 30 and the multinational forces in Iraq shrunk by one more country. In fact, despite being labeled a “coalition,” the forces that invaded Iraq in March 2003 were made up overwhelmingly of American and British soldiers.

Now, six years later, we’re officially dissolving the partnership between the United Kingdom and the United States in this forever-disappointing conflict. Unfortunately, even as the British wrapped up and pulled out of Basra, their last outpost in the southern end of Iraq, the story of this rather important development was buried deep into the world news section of the New York Times. In many other media outlets, it was mentioned briskly, if at all.

Mauricio Jovel, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and a native of Echo Park, California, puts the situation bluntly. “I look at civilians when I come back home and it’s hard not to judge them. I mean, I used to be a civilian, I used to walk around without all the knowledge. But we’ve got a million guys [in Iraq and Afghanistan] and nobody seems to remember anymore. We shut down all the insanity that happened in 2006, but the levels of violence are still high. The war’s not over, but people are acting like it is. I served, I did my duty, but not so that people back here can just forget about the guys I said goodbye to who are doing another tour. That kind of ignorance is not something I really anticipated, but I have to tell you, I’m not really shocked.”

As of May 1, the United States Department of Defense confirmed the death of another American service member in Iraq, bringing the total to 4,273 confirmed deaths since the invasion. Petty Officer Tyler J. Trahan of East Freetown Massachusetts is, as of this writing, the latest American serviceman to be killed in Iraq. Unfortunately, he most assuredly will not be the last. Although the Defense Department has not released their names and have thus not affected the official count of the war dead, three American servicemen were killed in Iraq on May 1st.

With the departure of President Wright at the end of the school year, we risk losing a great reminder of what veterans have done for us over the years and what they will continue to do for us in the future. A former Marine and a vigorous activist for people who wear the uniform, Wright has spent a significant amount of his tenure reminding the students of Dartmouth about sacrifices young people have made for this country and for its citizens. Wright has also reminded us of the contributions these young people have made as students at this campus and at other colleges across the country. So many aspects of Wright’s tenure will be missed, but this will be one of the most important of them.

With the economy in a tailspin and the relative success of new strategies in Iraq, the seemingly willful ignorance permeating the halls of this campus and the rest of the country almost make sense. Almost. Seniors are having a terrible time looking for jobs, and of course this is a priority. All around the country, people are losing their livelihoods and their savings. But in Iraq and in Afghanistan, the men and women who volunteered to serve so far away from home face dangers far beyond our looming post-graduation plans. “We forget about it,” Smithe continues. “We forget about it and we don’t even notice. Everyone’s got problems, that’s not supernatural, that’s a fact. It makes sense, if you’re looking for a job, you’re not going to be thinking about much else. But we’re in a real war, whether you want to believe it or not. And as much as it looks like it’s getting better at one end, there’s a leak that’s springing up at the other.”

But with so many of the veterans I’ve spoken to, no matter how hard their jobs are and no matter how many times they’ve cursed themselves about volunteering for this often lousy and ridiculously dangerous endeavor, at the end all they ask is that people not denounce, devalue or ignore what they’ve done.

That’s simple enough, isn’t it?

ive United States Congressmen stepped behind yellow police tape at the Sudanese embassy in Washington D.C. and waited for police to give them their three warnings while a small crowd chanted “Peace now!” before the politicians were led away in plastic hand-cuffs. The demonstrators were bringing attention to President Omar al-Bashir’s expulsion of 16 aid organizations from Sudan $mdash; a move the U.N. fears will endanger the lives of 1 million people. While this is a serious problem, it is compounded by another big issue facing Sudanese refugees: warehousing.

Refugee warehousing is the practice of restricting refugees’ freedom of mobility and right to provide for themselves, subsequently forcing them to depend on foreign aid. This is essentially what refugee camps, which currently house 7 million (out of 12 million) of the world’s refugees, are. Usually camps provide aid and shelter for refugees temporarily; however for long periods of time, camps often accomplish the very opposite of what they set out to achieve and are apt to become centers that encourage disempowerment and make refugees feel they no longer have control over their lives. A refugee in Uganda recalled feeling “just like a child now. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where to go.” In addition to fostering this feeling of utter helplessness, the camps’ ultimate goals are sometimes never reached — they are usually situated too close to borders to provide real protection and have often become havens for disease. In’94, some 50,000 Rwandan refugees died of cholera and dehydration in an overcrowded camp in Zaire. A U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees officer even confessed that “there is no doubt that refugees are better off living outside camps.”

So why do these camps even exist ? Simply put, they are an easy pseudo-solution for some of the problems associated with refugees. Countries cannot send refugees back to the very countries they fled, and waiting for voluntary repatriation can take a while when people are escaping decade long conflicts. Host countries often see refugees as burdens due to the cost of integrating them. However, keeping million of still-suffering refugees reliant upon aid is even more expensive in the long run. It’s frankly surprising that this is not a topic of protest. Even more disturbing is the fact that this issue hasn’t attracted global condemnation. According to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI), “Refugees languishing year after year in inhospitable, dangerous, desolate no-man’s lands near remote and often contested borders are no one’s favorite assignment or story. As a result, warehoused refugees tend to fall off the radar screen of international attention and into the Orwellian memory hole.”

The USCRI is right: refugee camp stories are rare, and once they are covered, they are seldom brought up again. They were a news item about three years ago and despite the media’s indifference, refugees are still languishing in under-resourced, overcrowded camps. The genocide in Sudan garners sporadic attention, though usually only when Congress members are arrested for the cause. Aid organizations need to be let back into Sudan but they also need to be monetarily supported in countries where they are allowed to operate. The Congressmen engaged in civil disobedience to end the genocide— let us hope they continue taking action and get support in Congress to end refugee warehousing.

hat if there were a new energy source, one that had no harmful emissions and boundless availability? Instead of curtailing our oil consumption and starting wars in the Middle East, imagine if we could simply snap our fingers and have almost an unlimited source of energy at our disposal. Would this not render superfluous all of our current huffing and puffing over saving the world? Will the search for the ultimate energy source play out as a tragedy or comedy? I argue for the latter.

This holy grail of energy is a process called nuclear fusion, the reaction that powers the sun and thus makes life on Earth possible. First reproduced by Earthlings in’29, and subsequently crafted into the multi-megaton “H-Bomb” in’51, nuclear fusion has always been the untamable cousin of nuclear fission, the process used in current nuclear power plants. The problem with fusion, at least so far, is that it requires a huge amount of energy to get particles to fuse — more energy than the process produces.

Back in the’80’s, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleishmann, two esteemed American scientists, claimed that not only had they harnessed the power of fusion $mdash; that is, produced a net surplus of energy – but they had also done it at room temperature. No flaming orbs of gas, just some electricity, palladium (a stable metal), and deuterium (a chemical found in seawater). Just imagine the potency of this energy: cold fusion was touted to use a gallon of seawater to produce ten-times as much energy as a gallon of gasoline can. Unfortunately, they were unable to reproduce the results of their initial experiment. Their claims were discredited, and mainstream scientific opinion overwhelmingly rejects the idea that cold fusion is possible. Some scientists, fixated on the possibility of a nearly unlimited and easy to harness energy source, continue to pursue cold fusion. However, there is no evidence that cold fusion is anything more than a dream.

But the skeptics received a surprise last week when CBS ran a special on 60 Minutes titled “Cold Fusion is Hot Again,” which highlighted recent advancements in the technology. Apparently, there is a new crop of scientists across the world that claims success with a process very similar to the one used by Pons and Fleichmann, the original “discoverers” of cold fusion. This includes the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), arguably the most prolific scientific think tank in the United States— they invented the Internet and GPS. Although people have claimed to have achieved cold fusion in the past, never has there been such widespread hype from such respected sources. These claims still have not garnered validation within the scientific community at large, so it remains to be seen what will come of these supposed developments. But the point of this article is not to talk simply of the cold fusion debate. Instead, it is simply to pose the question: what would happen if we could have virtually free energy?

Everything we do as a civilization requires energy. The ability of Homo sapiens to harness energy sources in the environment $mdash; like the cavemen who discovered fire, or those frazzled geeks who were behind Manhattan Project$mdash; is what makes us uniquely civilized animals. Every time energy becomes more abundant, it is as if every load is lightened, and every distance shortened. Any of the varied currencies which motivate the actions of humanity $mdash; blood, money, land, information, transportation $mdash; can be easily translated in terms of energy and its limitations. Our greatest strides into the future have always been marked by a widespread transfusion of fuel, from food to coal and gasoline, to wind and sunshine, and finally to plutonium.

Ever since that radioactive growth spurt in the aftermath of World War II, it seems that our energy advancement has slowed down. Meanwhile, we are suffocating in our collective exhale of CO2, and it seems that time is running out unless we do something drastic. What if nuclear fusion is exactly what our society needs to get itself out of this quagmire and finally hurdle us into the age of Science Non-Fiction?

Unfortunately, it is not that simple. It remains unlikely that anything resembling fusion will power our lives in the foreseeable future: for now, we’re stuck with trying to eke efficiency out of solar, wind, and geothermal power. But how people react to the prospect of nuclear fusion affords us a thoughtful insight into the nature of environmentalism, philanthropy, and new-millennium pessimism. It is worth considering the long-term effects of such a breakthrough.

Let’s say the year is 2050, and nuclear fusion is finally practical. Imagine that for the past forty years, every developed country in the world has been churning out fusion reactors. They are selling the energy to the international grid so that everyone can get a share. People are happy and energy bills are lower than ever. Here we encounter the first question: what happens to those countries that are not developed enough to build the reactors? Well, they become even more reliant on other superpowers, and suddenly third world countries become fourth world countries, forgotten and left behind.

Perhaps the technology would not be owned by the government, but rather by a private firm. Now, you all know about John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil, and the figurehead of the transition from coal energy to crude oil. Now, imagine someone who dealt in energy with TEN TIMES the profit margins of Rockefeller. We are talking trillions of dollars here. It is never a good idea for a single man to rank as an international superpower.

Ignoring the practicalities of implementing the technology and ensuring its widespread availability, there is still that lingering question of whether or not Planet Earth would really be a better place. According to the “Rebound Effect,” increasing efficiency does not always result in decreased scarcity. Sometimes, because energy is cheaper, people consume more goods, thus outweighing the efficiency benefits of the new technology. Or, new energy technologies allow for new production possibilities, contributing to increased consumption. So, even if fusion comes to fruition, it may not be the ultimate solution to humanity’s energy needs.

Breakthroughs in nuclear fusion are undoubtedly good news, and the existence of such an energy source would certainly buy us some time, but inventing efficient nuclear fusion is not the hardest part. There are many things that could go wrong, and we must usher our civilization into the future with careful discretion: we must use our technology, not the other way around. This could be our last chance to catch a sustainable wave and ride it off into the future.

here’s something about watching a small bird sliced in half onstage that makes a play particularly compelling. In the case of Miss Julie—the Dartmouth Theater Department’s student production of the classic August Strindberg play—the winning potion includes a band of merry and musically inclined servants, a repugnant and bird-killing valet, and a maniacal and suicidal young lady of the house.

Miss Julie, an‘88 play by Swedish playwright August Strindberg, confronts issues of power in’th century aristocratic society. The title character, played by Sarah Laeuchli ’11, has a particularly awful relationship with her father’s valet, Jean, played by Harrison Davies ’09. Jean, an ambitious and particularly well-read, well-spoken servant, desperately wants to elevate his status in life.

Miss Julie, the emotionally unstable, borderline psychotic daughter of Jean’s employer, seeks enjoyment in life in order to eclipse the emotional trauma of her family’s tumultuous and unfortunate history. Ultimately, this is not a great idea. As Miss Julie and Jean spar, their relationship takes a sharp turn. An assertive male, unconcerned with aristocratic decorum, Jean slowly but surely picks apart Miss Julie’s vulnerabilities, manipulating her, insulting her and driving her closer and closer to insanity.

This show is not a comedy. If the audience laughs, it is not out of comedic pleasure, but rather in reaction to the shockingly abrasive behavior by Jean, who has mastered the art of douchebaggery (in fact, the audience quickly comes to the conclusion that this man is the biggest douchebag in the long, long history of douchebags). But don’t be deterred—the play draws its audience into the insular world of aristocratic’th century Sweden, following Miss Julie and her lover through the entirety of one single, fiery, crackling, emotionally powerful night.We wait, throughout, with almost morbid anticipation for a bitter end sure to come.

These two characters offer us a paradoxical relationship defined by its inevitable, almost elegant connection. On the surface, Miss Julie and Jean come together out of a lust neither can resist. Yet thanks to the artful subtlety of David Mavricos’s direction, we see two distinct social castes battling for control. Revulsion and irresistible attraction existbetween these characters, creating one of the most tortured relationships this reviewer has ever seen on stage. Both Miss Julie and Jean are deeply intrigued by the other’s lifestyle, yet utterly repelled by each other.

The performances are stellar, especially Laeuchli’s, whose character’s slow, winding shift toward madness confirms yet another paradox—this one played out among the audience. We find Miss Julie both compelling and repulsive, jocular yet supercilious. We laugh at her amusing pomposity and grimace at her increasingly caustic attacks.

This play is Strindberg through and through—fundamentally rooted in Naturalism, an uncompromisingly realistic approach to performance and theater. Knowing this, Dartmouth’s production of Miss Julie provides a series of powerful performances, a collection of masterful design elements, and a profound lesson in the perils of lust, rage, and the unfortunate nature of whatever it is that drives someone to so casually butcher a delightfully petite bird in front of us. Excellent.

Miss Julie will be performed May 8th at 8pm and May 9th at 2pm in the Bentley Theater. Do it.

n a slap-to-the-face that made even Rosie O’Donnell drop her donut and say “Damn, that’s cold,” the FOX network denied Obama’s request for airtime—the airtime the administration wanted to fill with a primetime televised press conference. This quarrel was delicious fodder for White House gossip last week and has continued to have national reverberations.

“In our last cabinet meeting concerning the economy,” explained Sec. of State Hillary Clinton as she groomed her hair with a brush made from the bones of fallen political foes, “Barack just kept vigorously stabbing the letter from FOX with his presidential letter opener. He didn’t even want to talk to me about it over our weekly mani and pedi. We’ve never missed a trip to ConstitutioNAIL.”

Much to Barack’s chagrin, FOX’s “compelling new drama” Lie to Me was aired instead of the press conference marking his first 100 days in office. The event was featured on NBC, CBS, and ABC. “I texted Roger Ailes, the President of FOX to see what was up,” sniffled Obama as he stared forlornly at his Blackberry, “but all he wrote back was ‘LOLZ.’ Do they not know who I am? Do they even care anymore?”

I was determined to get to the bottom of this White House wrangle, so I paid a visit to the FOX headquarters. After being charged a five-dollar tax at the door because I voted against Bush and then being forced to walk the thirty flights of stairs because the elevator was “Republicans Only,”

I finally reached the executive offices.

Wheezing from my Everest-like ascent, I walked into the conference room where they were discussing the addition of a laugh track to their Monday night broadcast. “We found that viewers responded better to footage of swine flu-ravaged children and the mutilated bodies of ethnic Palestinians when coupled with pre-recorded laughter,” chortled the FOX producer. The entire scene chillingly reminded me of ancient sacrifice rituals, only instead with lower ranking FOX sycophants chanting “Bring Bush back.”

After the conference, I was lucky enough to again run into the executives while at a local high-class eating establishment, Denny’s. I asked them to explain why they had backhanded the president’s simple request.

One of them, double-fisting two hot-dogs, laughed, “Apparently his economic stimulus package does not extend to the TV networks. Besides, who cares about our nucular [sic] relations with North Korea or whatever it’s called anyway?”

Added another Armani suit, “Our reality filters are down, and we can’t risk having things said on our channel that haven’t first been heavily coated in conservative ideology.”

Not buying either of these responses, I gave them the Melinda Bailey stare from Grey’s Anatomy and asked them the real reason why. After looking at each other and breathing destitute sighs, one finally spoke. “We here at FOX made the decision not to deviate from regular scheduling. Our reasoning? America didn’t listen to us when we wanted to save this nation and voted McCain, so why should we listen to them?” The anonymous executive went on to stick his tongue out at me, chanting, “THEY STARTED IT!!! THEY STARTED IT!!!” The man later threatened that the company has planned to air a two-month continual marathon of Bill O’Reilly on the network if Obama is not replaced by McCain immediately.

Back at the White House, the situation was far more ominous.

“I noticed something was severely wrong,” Michelle said quietly, “when Barack ran into his room crying and locked the door. I tried coaxing him out with his favorite MLK plush toy, but he just kept screaming ‘FOX is SOOOO not invited to my 100 days party.’”

Sasha looked up from petting her new puppy and whispered sadly, “Daddy won’t let me watch American Idol anymore. He said playing FOX shows on the TV will make Bo die.”

Obama’s emotional tears have spilt into his political agenda. Obama is planning on bypassing many political figureheads to create his health plan out of fear of further rejection. Any promises of bipartisan cooperation have been tossed into the wastebasket like a used tampon.

The office where I was interviewing Obama’s cabinet fell silent. Obama had emerged from his room with frumpy hair and mascara running down his face. Although he was somewhat confused as to where he was and what had happened, he agreed to give me an interview.

I asked him why he had become so upset because, after all, he was in the most powerful position in the world, so why should he care?

“Why?” he thundered, “I’m a put-on-a-show kind of guy, I don’t like the backseat, gotta be first. I call the shots.” He paused for a moment to deliver an overtly suggestive dance solo, and then continued, “I’m like a firecracker, I make it hot.”

“How much do you think this will affect your presidency?” I asked.

He stared out the Oval Office window with his ever-popular gazing-into-the-future stance before responding, “I’m over it. I don’t need them. I’ll just a sign a bill that heavily taxes their corporation tomorrow. We need to spread the wealth to help the nation in its economic plague. Furthermore—”

Barack Obama stopped suddenly and angrily stared out the window.

“OMG,” blurted the President, “Is that Hillary going into ConstitutioNAIL with Tim Geithner? I’m so going to tell everybody about her dry heels.”