(SOMEBODY’S) “WAR GAMES” BEGIN IN SYRIA—BUT WHOSE GAMES AND TO WHAT PURPOSE? These are questions without definitive answsers as devastating air strikes hit targets near Damascus. Syrian officials, noting that only Israeli forces would have the firepower in the area to deliver such blows, accuse Israel of perpetrating them, though Israel officially denies this. [...]
FEDS WANT MAJOR EXPANSION OF SECRET WIRETAP POWERS OVER WEB-BASED SERVICES. Facebook, Google, Skype and other brand names behind your favorite internet sites and programs are chafing at proposed new rules from the Obama administration that would force companies to comply with sweeping wiretaps and information requests from the FBI and Justice Department. While companies [...]
A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING EUROPE AND AMERICA: AND IT’S NAME IS AUSTERITY. The literally killing effects of austerity measures undertaken as a solutions to the “financial crisis” are documented in a new book by David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu. Decimation of health support services is blamed with creating epidemics of everything from HIV and [...]
BOMB AT BOSTON MARATHON KILLS 3 PEOPLE, INCLUDING 1 CHILD AND THERE IS AN OUTPOURING OF U.S. SYMPATHY FOR THE VICTIMS. A secret C.I.A. counter-terrorist raid in Afghanistan kills 17 people, including 12 children. Sympathy out-pouring?—not so much, at least in the U.S. Not so, however, in Afghanistan itself, where the PM Hamid Karzai [...]
MILITARY UBER ALLES: LIBERTARIAN WRITER DECRIES THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICAN LIFE. Jason Raimondo examines two chunks in the edifice of the structure of military dominance of the culture. (1) the recent decision to allow women into combat roles, which he sees as a triumph of equality over liberty, an “opportunity” for women to share in the [...]
THE HISTORIC FAILURE OF THE BLACK POLITICAL MISLEADERSHIP CLASS. Bruce A. Dixon thus describes the spectacular failure of these leaders to stem the tide of privatization of schools and other public institutions—or the massive gentrification of black neighborhoods—or the criminalization and incarceration of huge portions of the black population. Dixon spares not even Martin [...]
FIRST THE SENTENCE, THEN THE VERDICT: THE WAR ON TERRORISM IN WONDERLAND. Lewis Carroll’s classic depiction of a trial of Alice evokes the kind of “legal procedure” in which people are convicted and punished before or even instead of being found guilty after presentation of the evidence of their crimes. A legal memorandum from the Office [...]
U.S. DEVELOPING NEW EXCUSE TO DELAY WITHDRAWING FROM AFGHANISTAN. The U.S. government “reluctantly” agreed to transfer detainees from Bagram prison to Afghan ones, expressing concerns about a history of detainees being tortured in local prisoners. John Glaser sees this as a false reason for prolonging the American presence in the country, as human [...]
HAS THE WORST CASE SCENARIO FOR ARCTIC DRILLING BEEN REALIZED IN ALASKA? Warnings from scientists and environmental activists that unchecked oil drilling in the Arctic could lead to a potential disaster may have come to some semblance of fruition after a massive Shell Oil rig became grounded in a remote section of the pristine [...]
DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS: ISLAMOPHOBIA TAKES A SET-BACK. Irving school officials, responding to a rash of complaints that school children were being “indoctrinated” with pro-Islamic propaganda, hired a “socially conservative” educator to evaluate these claims. What he found, instead, was that the school curriculum in fact lacked such propaganda, and that pro-CHRISTIAN [...]
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