William Fitzgibbon writes at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism When the government told the people of London that the eyes of the world would be on it during the Olympic Games, it failed to mention one particularly powerful watcher; a new software programme used for tracking potential troublemakers. In the September edition of Wired Magazine, […]
Romney and the ‘Missing Evidence” Instruction (Sullivan)
John Sullivan writes in a guest column for Informed Comment: A Cabinet nominee or a Supreme Court nominee produces decades of tax returns to the Senate for confirmation. Romney should meet that criteria. The deduction for the horse included over $2,000 in medical expenses. Medical expenses are not deductible for taxpayers unless they exceed 7.5% […]
Romney, Reid, Taxes and the Un-Macho
Mitt Romney told notorious media bully and propagandist for the American Far Right, Sean Hannity, that it is time for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to ‘put up or shut up.’ Reid had pointed out that an investor with Bain capital, Romney’s former company, had alleged that Romney had not paid taxes for ten years […]
Poisoning the Seas to get out Oil that Poisons the Atmosphere (Banerjee)
Subhankar Banerjee writes at Tomdispatch.com: Walking the Waters: How to Bring the Major Oil Companies Ashore and Halt the Destruction of Our Oceans When you go to the mountains, you go to the mountains. When it’s the desert, it’s the desert. When it’s the ocean, though, we generally say that we’re going “to the beach.” […]
Obama signed finding to help Syria Uprising
The Syrian opposition continued to hang on in the northern commercial center of Aleppo on Thursday, and even launched a daring new raid. Rebels used a tank they captured to attack the Menagh air force base near Aleppo. They are attempting to forestall its use by the regime to launch helicopter gunship and jet attacks […]
Sanity and Insanity in American Politics (Bachmann, Sessions, Romney, and Chicken)
Sanity: Former US officials and academics (including me) call on the Congressional leadership to remove dangerous conspiracy theorist Michele Bachmann from the House Intelligence Committee. Bachmann has not only embarrassed herself and Congress by saying that the federal government is riddled with “Muslim Brotherhood moles,” but her crackpot ideas have hurt US diplomacy in Egypt. […]
“Algerian Tuareg” (Painting by Youcef Ben Mahammed)
Youcef Ben Mahammed. “Algerian Tuareg.” Youcef Ben Mahammed (b. Oran, 1973) is a Tunisian-Algerian artist based in Montreal.
The Collapse of the Climate Change Contrarians and the End of Coal
It is not proper to speak of “climate skeptics,” since all scientists (including we social scientists) are skeptical of all data and theories every day, all the time, and are willing to change our position if enough information and analysis emerges to challenge the old paradigms. But beyond just skeptics, there are always in any […]
Mission Failure: Afghanistan (Engelhardt)
Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com Mission Failure: Afghanistan:A Message Written in Blood That No One Wants to Hear By Tom Engelhardt Imagine for a moment that almost once a week for the last six months somebody somewhere in this country had burst, well-armed, into a movie theater showing a superhero film and fired into the […]