Do We Really Want a Cold War II?

"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...

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Hating On Russia

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...

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Osprey Aircrafts in Okinawa

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...

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Domestic Spying Is Dangerous to Freedom

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...

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Throw the Bums Out

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...

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America’s Emerging Police State: A Brief History

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...

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The Crime of the Century

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...

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