“There have been times when they slip back into Cold War thinking,” said President Obama in his tutorial with Jay Leno. And to show the Russians that such Cold War thinking is antiquated, Obama canceled his September summit with Vladimir Putin. The reason: Putin’s grant of asylum to Edward Snowden, who showed up at the …
Continue reading “Do We Really Want a Cold War II?”
Russia is the Anglo-American media’s favorite bogeyman these days, and, no, it has little to do with the vicious anti-gay laws they’ve passed, or their reluctance to cooperate with our meddling in Syria: after all, Qatar, with whom we’re cooperating in sending aid to the Syrian "rebels," executes gays, as does Saudi Arabia, and you …
Continue reading “Hating On Russia”
The U.S. military was planning to increase the number of CV-22 Osprey transport aircrafts – tiltrotor helicopters that look like massive, flying crabs – in Okinawa Prefecture, which the U.S. has occupied since the end of World War II. The plans were foiled when a U.S. military helicopter crashed on Monday during a routine training …
Continue reading “Osprey Aircrafts in Okinawa”
At least seven were killed and four more were wounded in light Eid violence.
How is it that the government can charge Edward Snowden with espionage for telling a journalist that the feds have been spying on all Americans and many of our allies, but the NSA itself, in a public relations campaign intended to win support for its lawlessness, can reveal secrets and do so with impunity? That …
Continue reading “Domestic Spying Is Dangerous to Freedom”
As I have become accustomed to nearly every type of outrage here in the land of the BushObamas, it takes quite a bit to either surprise or shock me. But last week was a twofer and I’ll start with the shock. On Thursday morning I was reading my way through a rather silly piece "Rand …
Continue reading “Throw the Bums Out”
Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman based his 2006 warrant for the arrest of top Iranian officials in the bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 on the claims of representatives of the armed Iranian opposition Mujahedin E Khalq (MEK), the full text of the document reveals. The central piece of evidence cited …
Continue reading “Indictment of Iran for ’94 Terror Bombing Relied on MEK”
At least 39 people were killed and 111 more were wounded in continued violence. The worst attack occurred in Tikrit where dozens were killed or wounded. The Kirkuk area also saw a large number of wounded, but those bombs failed to kill anyone.
As Congress and the American people grapple with the fallout from Edward Snowden’s stunning revelations – which continue to come in, thanks to Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian – we are hearing a kind of defense coming from the authoritarians in our midst: none of this is new, they argue, so what’s all the fuss …
Continue reading “America’s Emerging Police State: A Brief History”
Hey, let’s talk spying! In Surveillance America, this land of spookery we all now inhabit, what else is there to talk about? Was there anyone growing up like me in the 1950s who didn’t know Revolutionary War hero and spy Nathan Hale’s last words before the British hanged him: “I only regret that I have …
Continue reading “The Crime of the Century” 
