War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
During these uprisings across northern Africa, a lot of talk has been about national security, or the nearly-mechanical catch-phrase, “police apparatus,’ which is just a soft-lotion locution for an ugly, nefarious secret cop operation. All strong-armed, dictator regimes must have these organizations or they couldn’t exist for very long — the Soviets had the old…
From Aljazeera English, a most-interesting tone concerning the most-immediate future of Hosni Mubarak: Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, said: “It is clear that President Mubarak is in denial over his legacy. “Until Friday we are probably going to watch a major escalation of tension in events both between the demonstrators on the one…
As one can see via the uprising in Egypt, a government has the power to shut down communications, or at least try and control access to transmissions of whatever information to wherever — CNN reported earlier this morning, Egypt’s information ministry took the country offline with the shutting down of the Noor Group, an Internet…
According to a review of official documents, the FBI have compromised the civil liberties of American citizens far more frequently, and to a greater extent, than was previously assumed, and more-over, the actual number of violations that may have occurred from 2001 to 2008 could approach 40,000 possible violations of law, Executive Order, or other…
Egypt is a way-ancient land now exploding via extreme-modern media, but a good reason for all the unrest is as old as time — food. And a near-twist-a-flex attitude in the US, where prices are fairly stable, mainly because American consumers aren’t really paying much for the actual agriculture product. From a NPR report on rising…
In September 2000, a peek into the future. During a Labor Day campaign stop in Illinois, George Jr., oblivious of a mic just inches from his mouth, blubbered an aside to The Dick, which eventually revealed a nasty, two-faced-lying politician. Via salon.com: “There’s Adam Clymer — major league asshole — from the New York Times,”…
In the last couple of years, the US foreign take on the disaster in Afghanistan is to junk on another acronym, ‘Af-Pak,’ in an apparent effort to link Pakistan with the war being lost in the region. And Af-Pak is more than a mouthful. Despite dumping some $1.5 billion a year in aid to Pakistan,…
The Brits feel the ugly pinch of wasted economics: The UK economy shrank by a shock 0.5% in the last quarter of 2010 as Britain’s recovery from recession faltered. … Economists said the first estimate of GDP for the last quarter was much worse than expected, and meant that Britain could now suffer a double-dip…
State of the propaganda of the US war machine. (Illustration found here). Paul Nash (1889-1946) created the above artwork in oil, titled: “We Are Making a New World.” And Nash had a horror epiphany while on the bloody Western Front. He wrote his wife in 1917 (from the link above): I have seen the most frightful…
One wonders at the wonder of technology. I moved last weekend — on Friday transferred the power and gas, and the telephone, to the new address (just a couple of blocks from the old one) in a matter of 120 minutes. My Internet provider, however, took three days to relocate the Web to my laptop’s…