As the deadlocked US government moves inexorably towards a shut down, it may be good to see how it has come to this. Last Friday, I attended a discussion led by one of my colleagues in the political science department. I have always found him to be very enlightening because he takes a hard-edged, data-driven approach to politics and he did not disappoint this time either. He shed many interesting insights into what lies behind the current situation. [Read more…]

The real danger of propaganda is when the people who spout it start believing in it themselves. This is particularly prone to happen in a successful propaganda system as exists in the US where the filters work so effectively that we end up with government and the media living in an echo chamber where the same myths and lies are repeated endlessly. It then becomes only a matter of time before people take as fact things that are flat out untrue. [Read more…]

International politics is even more complicated to understand and difficult to predict than domestic politics, and things can sometimes take a surprising turn. But although hard to foresee, one can sometimes look back and see significant evens that set in motion a chain of occurrences. [Read more…]

In a post titled Threat inflation, Stephen M. Walt takes the case of the US response to the recent events in Kenya to bemoan the practice of the US viewing any terrorist action as a potential threat to the US that needs to be countered. He asks whether al Shabab, the ones who carried out the shopping mall attack, really poses a threat to the US. [Read more…]

Cory Doctorow writes that a coalition of groups under the name of Stop Watching Us are organizing a mass rally and protest in Washington DC to protest the NSA’s massive spying programs. [Read more…]