Intro by Stuart Lyle It is not hard to spot creeping authoritarianism in the US. The Snowden document cache makes clear that the government has a voracious appetite for data, our data: the digital traces we leave whenever we are online. It is no longer an unsubstantiated suspicion. The UN has documented and ranked the…
Glenn Greenwald. Introduction by William Astore. What is a patriot? To my mind, someone who stands up for the best of America. Someone who remembers that the government serves the people and not vice-versa. Someone who knows that democracy and freedom are based on transparency and honesty. And someone who is willing to sacrifice, even…
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…
Imperial Proconsul Bremer, desert boots and all, in a distinctly American moment Michael Brenner There are more reasons for Americans to feel aggrieved today than at any time since the Vietnam War ended nearly 40 years ago. At no time before or since has there been so little effort to remedy those conditions. That contradiction…
Richard Sahn In contemporary American society virtually every adult citizen knows how difficult it is to obtain medical information regarding one’s spouse, parents, or other close relatives. Agencies–notably insurance companies–are adamant about not revealing even payment data if you are not the patient. Agents or receptionists working for health organizations fiercely insist they are not…
b. traven For those Democratic voters who still, after five years of bitter experience, retain the forlorn hope that a real liberal or progressive heart beats in Obama’s chest, the recent revelation in The Washington Post that it was Obama who, in 2011, empowered the National Security Agency to go after Americans’ private communications should finally end…
b. traven The five o’clock whistle is on the blink/ the whistle won’t blow and whad’ya think? I fondly recall these lyrics to a popular World War II song about factory workers unknowingly working overtime because the whistle didn’t blow to signal the end of their shift. This time the whistle did blow, thanks to…
The National Security Agency (NSA) has always been highly classified, a fact captured by the joke that NSA really stands for Nonesuch Agency. Lately, with all the revelations by Edward Snowden about “inadvertent” and “unintentional” spying on Americans, the NSA seems to be defining a new acronym for itself. Call it the Nothing to See…
b. traven On a trip to Berlin my son and I spent some of our time looking into the crannies that elude most visitors. In Europe I have researched how some countries memorialize (if at all) their resistance to fascist occupation during World War II. The French Resistance Museum is a disgrace! It’s poorly lit,…
The Contrary Perspective 