Now that Frank Lautenberg has died, the race is on to replace him for the New Jersey senate seat. In that reliably Democratic state (Republican Chris Christie’s election as governor notwithstanding) whoever wins the Democratic party nomination in the primary in August will likely become senator at the special election in October. [Read more…]
The story of Samantha Power, president Obama’s nominee to be US Ambassador to the UN, provides a telling example of how the political and media system filters out those who do not conform to the narrow spectrum of views required to rise in either government or the media. [Read more…]
I have my own personal gauge of how well the Obama propaganda system is working. It consists of my social circle, almost all of whom are strong Obama supporters. They read newspapers, watch a lot of CNN and MSNBC, and despise Fox News. They see themselves as well-informed about current events and politics. So whenever there is an occasion when many of them are gathered together, I usually raise a current topic to see what their reaction is. [Read more…]
M. J. Rosenberg says that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ramping up the rhetoric on US media and that Iran now plans to actually launch a military attack the US, and the Israel lobby led by AIPAC is joining him in urging that the US take military action against Iran or at the least impose even greater sanctions against that country. [Read more…]
You know what is a major problem with most religions? They are killjoys. The thought that people are engaging in enjoyable acts somehow bothers them, hence the prohibitions against ordinary pleasurable activities like eating, drinking, singing, dancing, films, sex, and contraception (because it allows people to have more sex). Most of the time these prohibitions stay is the realm of the laughable and absurd but sometimes become deadly. [Read more…]
Earlier attempts by privacy and civil liberties advocates to sue the NSA over it data gathering activities were rejected by the courts because of a two-pronged government defense strategy: (1) refuse to confirm or deny that such programs exist on grounds of national security and then (2) argue in court that since the plaintiffs could not prove that they had been under surveillance, they had no right to sue. Shamefully, the courts accepted this Catch-22 style argument. [Read more…]
Employees of the Department of Homeland Security (an Orwellian name if there ever was one) have been warned not to read on an unclassified machine an article in the Washington Post because a slide shown in the article is one of the classified slides revealed by Edward Snowden. [Read more…]
In a news report that appeared in the German magazine Der Spiegel, former president Jimmy Carter is reported to have said that the leaks by Edward Snowden were “beneficial” to the country and that “America has no functioning democracy at this moment.” [Read more…]
My post on why I supported Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning produced quite a strong reaction in which some people took issue with my harsh criticism of Barack Obama. I wrote a follow-up that addressed some of the concerns and I would strongly recommend that people particularly read the responses by Jeffrey Johnson that appeared in the comments to the latter post because he very thoughtfully took issue with my stand. [Read more…]