JEREMIAH GOULKA MARCH 27, 2014 National security think tanks are cheerleading for the shale gas industry with near-complete disregard for climate change and water security. Guess who’s funding the studies? When it rains, it pours, so they say, but pouring rain is not exactly what you want in a drought. The big storm that hit the parched…
b. traven A few weeks ago I wrote that Russia, in occupying Crimea, was mainly concerned about maintaining their basing of their Black Sea Fleet in Crimea. This after their clear understanding that the regime change in Kiev, partially financed by us, was largely part of the U.S. strategy of surrounding Russia with American assets…
W.J. Astore Back in January, James Carroll had an op-ed in the Boston Globe that called for eliminating the Air Force as a separate service. He claimed that the Air Force’s strategic components (its nuclear ICBMs and manned bombers) were now largely irrelevant, that the Air Force’s tactical mission could be folded into the Army…
W.J. Astore CBS News has an article that shows that President Richard Nixon sought to cover up the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. The article draws from notes taken at the time by H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff and hatchet man. The notes suggest that Nixon ordered “dirty tricks” to discredit the…
Richard Sahn How often one hears these days the following line: “Why should I care about government surveillance. I haven’t done anything wrong.” But “wrong” does not mean what it used to mean when I was growing up. “Wrong” today means saying the politically wrong things, expressing ideas and desires which can be interpreted to…
b. traven Funny how politicians start looking for Jesus when the Devil is attacking them personally. Sen. Feinstein, Head of the Senate Intelligence Committee (SIC) didn’t need Jesus when she supinely supported the CIA and NSA’s illegal spying on American tax paying citizens, you and me. When John Brennan, already notorious for his role in…
Michael Murry I watched Rachel Maddow’s new documentary (“Why We Did It”) on why the U.S. went to war in Iraq in 2003. Her answer was “oil,” which is true enough as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go nearly far enough. First of all, a matter of style: I found her breathless “now it…
W.J. Astore The Pentagon brass and bureaucrats can’t win foreign wars, but they sure as hell kick ass in domestic budgetary wars. That point is clear from Mattea Kramer’s new article at TomDispatch.com. Allowing the Pentagon a largely untouchable second budget to fund the ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan is an invitation both to prolong…
b. traven Anyone who pays the least bit of attention to what is going on would know that Russia had to act on our provocation. This thing will decide the next election in this country. Obama and the neo liberals have gotten themselves in a situation that will make them look like fools and the…
Another advantage of the “shortage” of STEM workers: You can stress that education has to focus on “practical” skills in science, technology, engineering, and math, while dismissing the importance of history, humanities, and other “fuzzy” studies. The implicit message: Get hard skills to work within the system, but never acquire a questing and questioning attitude…
The Contrary Perspective 