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Bet you haven’t heard how Iraqi agriculture has been destroyed since the invasion—and how US agribusiness benefits. That’s a huge story, and one you won’t see in the corporate-owned US media. It’s a sad story, a tragedy, something that provides infinite perspective on the purposes and consequences of unnecessary war, and begins to explain why […]
Here’s an ominous development that is likely to pass almost unnoticed: a congressman requesting that the federal government identify to him everyone who has made a request under the Freedom of Information Act. The requester is Darrell Issa, the new head of the House Oversight Committee. He of course paints his initiative in benign terms—he […]
Events keep on underlining the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. Nowhere is this more true than with the disparity between the way we talk about our soldiers and their service and the way they are actually treated. (And if we become indignant about this, we might also get a little indignant about the […]
During the president’s speech, I kept my eyes and ears peeled for anything that a journalist might want to pursue. Here are some random thoughts: Obama and Congress paid tribute to Gabby Giffords, on the mend from the massacre in Tucson—but Obama said not a word about the explosion of guns into nearly every corner […]
So have you heard? Any day, there will be these mini-drones, little unmanned planes, following you around. And no, you won’t have to be a member of the Taliban. Just an American who is suspected of something or other. When you aren’t panicked about this new, inevitable expansion of the police state, you can at […]
A common theme runs through a variety of news stories: there isn’t enough money around, and so working people must take a hit. But is that really the only solution? First, let’s look at the stories. There’s growing talk of letting state governments declare bankruptcy so they can get out of paying pension benefits to […]
This week, NBC News ran an important report about improprieties at a particularly well-connected bank. According to NBC, JP Morgan Chase has been forced by a lawsuit to admit that it has been overcharging thousands of military families for their mortgages—and had improperly foreclosed on more than a dozen such families. Now, news that a […]
Bravo to the The New York Times for publishing Adam Hochschild’s January 17 op-ed, An Assassination’s Long Shadow. The piece marked the 50th anniversary of an event long forgotten in the United States: the U.S.-sponsored removal and murder of a democratically elected leader in Africa. Three days after the murder, our own democratically elected leader—one […]
A couple of gun items—both not new but relevant—that seem worth noting. In one, Bloomberg reported several days after the Tucson shootings how sales of Glock semi-automatic pistols doubled in Arizona right after the tragic events. In the other, the Dallas Morning News reported on how reporters in Texas are getting gun permits as way […]
Here’s an intriguing interview with the founder of the first “Leaks” site, Cryptome. (Click “Read the Rest” To See Video) A few excerpts: “Beware of the Internet, which is a large-scale spying machine” “Secrecy is the enemy of democracy; it’s way overdone.” “Sites like ours…are left in place to watch who comes there….The reason we […]
Did you hear this? Howard Kurtz, the longtime dean of mainstream journalists who critique other journalists’ standards and practices, made a huge booboo—then waited about forever before acknowledging it. It’s a doozy: he wrote up an interview with the new House investigations chief, Rep. Darrell Issa—but didn’t realize he was actually speaking with an Issa […]
The other day, USA Today ran an article reporting that 2010 had tied 2005 as the warmest year since record-keeping began in 1880. That’s disturbing data, or course. But what really caught my eye was who they chose to question the significance of the news: a climatologist with….the Cato Institute. That’s a policy outfit heavily funded by the very companies whose emissions heat up the earth’s atmosphere.