Trouble is breaking out all over. Ukraine – This is the epicenter of the latest cold war eruption. A gang of thugs backed by Russia is contending with another gang of thugs backed by the US and the EU for control of this bankrupt, historically problematic former...
Ukraine is exploding, and the force of the eruption may plunge not only the country but also Europe and the US into an abyss out of which there is no easy extrication. First, a primer for those who have missed the rapidly escalating events of the past few days: mobs...
In all the brouhaha over Edward Snowden’s exposure of the National Security Agency’s invasion of our home computers, we seem to have forgotten about a long-dormant threat that is now rearing its ugly little head: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Created in...
As the masterful drip-drip-drip strategy employed by Edward Snowden drops bomb after bomb on the National Security Agency's formerly secret Panopticon, we are getting closer to the central purpose of what the world’s most famous whistleblower dubbed "the...
The media is our window on the world – but what if that window is dirtied and blurred? How can we really know what’s happening in, say, Venezuela, where an increasingly authoritarian government with Marxist inclinations is up against a rebellion by middle-and-working...
The movement to end the Surveillance State is finally getting serious. With the failure by Congress to rein in the NSA – although the heroic Rep. Justin Amash nearly succeeded in doing so – activists on the state level are mounting a campaign that promises to hit Big...
I was going to write about this very interesting essay by David Rieff in The National Interest today, and weave in another fascinating piece by William Lind in The American Conservative – unfortunately, necessity has dictated another course. The response to our...
Any illusions some naïve soul may have had about the objectivity of the US media has been dispelled by their embarrassing performance at the Sochi Olympics: the chorus of whining complaints might as well have been written for them by the US State Department –...
For years, this space has been arguing – railing, really – that the ideological and legal currents unleashed by America’s response to the 9/11 attacks have been leading us down the road to dictatorship: see here, here, here, and here. Back in those halcyon days, circa...
Why is the talented journalist Barrett Brown in jail – awaiting trial on charges that could keep him there for one hundred years? A writer for Vanity Fair, the Guardian, and at one time an unofficial spokesman for the internet pirates known as "Anonymous,"...
