War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
Jeremy Scahill, noted national security correspondent for The Nation, spoke this past weekend on the bottom line for the US drone wars: It’s murder — it’s mass murder — when you say, ‘We are going to bomb this area’ because we believe a terrorist is there, and you know that women and children are in the…
History is relative. And in this 24/7 nowadays it’s way-hard to imagine any kind of life without electrical power. Hence, last week Leon Panetta spelled it out: “Well, there’s no question that if a cyber attack, you know, crippled our power grid in this country, took down our financial systems, took down our government systems,…
Obvious the strange, though, deviations are not that unfamiliar. In the wake last week of some nefarious-images of face eating and kitten strangling, the entire human system appears to be heading off into a bad direction in which there’s no happy ending. As people we tend to see tomorrow, or the future, in a sense…
Celestial crazy continued yesterday in New York City with “Manhattanhenge†— the rare, though not unheard of phenomenon when a setting sun perfectly aligns itself with the Manhattan street grid and invoked native daftness: “Taxi cabs and cars were all slowing down trying to figure out what these crazy New Yorkers were doing looking West…
In the outward appearance, the whole-wide world has gone bat-shit crazy, maybe as a run-up to some real-bad episodes coming for mankind and its immediate offspring. In Seattle, of all places, and in a “very mellow” coffee shop, this guy shoots and kills four people, later kills another during a carjacking, then later blows his…
A clear, quiet early morning here on California’s northern coast, and compared to the remarkable heat-wave blasting the eastern part of the country this week, the weather around these local parts is near-envious. The environment can change quick, though, as I was outside a minute ago on a smoke break and it’s getting a bit…
In the wake of another attempt this morning to fight modern life in Afghanistan — 160 girls were poisoned at a north Afghan school, the second such incident in a week — the conflict there is a telling example of failure, and the dodge-ball concept of leadership. Not only is Afghanistan been considered “the graveyard…
Welcome Memorial Day 2012. In Afghanistan, where war has raged seemingly forever, and where US GIs have been maimed and killed for near 11 years, comes the family-gathering-remembrance of a NATO airstrike that wiped out an entire family — dad, mom, six kids: “Shafi was not a Taliban. He was not in any opposition group…
Us boys here at Compatible Creatures are changing some of the looks of the site, and how it can get more appealing — maybe more-better reading material — but like a lot of stuff, it’s takes some time. So the site might look a little different, maybe odd at times, until we have all the…
Although recent prices at national gas pumps are down 16 cents from a year ago, there’s no real sense behind it all, as this genius comments: “We might move a little lower, we might move a little higher,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst of the Oil Price Information Service, the firm that compiles the…