War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
(Illustration found here). The US drone war is the one conflict that’s always continually escalating — even as the US vacates an isolated Pakistani base from where UAV aircraft were launched will apparently not slow the operations down at all. From Wired: The CIA just got kicked out of a major Pakistani launching pad for…
I have given my whole life to newspapers. I am convinced that they have abandoned their functions, and in an abject and ignominious manner, in the present war. Nine-tenths of them, and even more than nine-tenths, print the official blather without any attempt to scrutinize it… It is a disgraceful spectacle, but I do not…
Print journalism has lost another body part, this one right close to home. Next Thursday will end the 110-year-old life of the Humboldt Beacon, a weekly covering mostly the southern part of the county, a victim to both financial and media woes. Last week, from the only daily in this neck of the woods, the…
From the police playbook of mob control: A woman shot pepper spray to keep shoppers from merchandise she wanted during a Black Friday sale, and 20 people suffered minor injuries, authorities said. … Fire department spokesman Shawn Lenske said the injuries to least 10 of them were due to “rapid crowd movement.” And the pepper-sprayer…
As events go, 1981 had its share of weird and nefarious shit — Ronald Reagan was inaugurated president in January, was shot and wounded in March and recovered enough by July to nominate Sandra Day O’Connor as the first female Supreme Court justice; Pope John Paul II is shot in May; Charles and Diana marry…
Ralph Waldo Emerson, America’s greatest philosopher, visited Thoreau in jail. Emerson asked: “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau replied: “Why are you not here?” — In protest of the Mexican War, 1846 In those crackdowns this week on the OWS, a deep, sinking feeling of nefarious, dark workings: Questions about the Department of Homeland Security’s…
Being sick is a total bitch — and I say that in a nice way for all you female dogs out there. My youngest daughter came down out of the mountains a week or so ago just finishing up a bad cold, and promptly gave it to me, thank-you very much! Now after plying myself…
The MSM in the US has gotten worse and worse — the whole outfit wasn’t pretty to begin with and the ugly is getting worse — and CBS News should know better. A whole shitload of people don’t deserve any kind of forum, much less on national TV. On Sunday, nit-twits appeared all over the…
Another version of an international tall tale popped up this week with the initially alarming news of an official Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador at a DC restaurant via Mexican drug cartel gunmen. A tale so convoluted it turns out that David Mamet would have a hard time trying to decipher the plot. Yesterday,…
As the movement across the US takes an even more wide-spreading appeal, the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon has snagged a big endorsement from a popular source. Via Raw Story: “We know the media will either ignore you or frame the issue as to who may be getting pepper sprayed rather than addressing the despair and…