War, Politics, and Life by Bruce Maulden
End of the week and bad war-related shit. Beyond the US domestic horror of Joe Lieberman, military exercises in the Middle East are becoming way-more frightening than any paranormal or blair-witch fantasy could envision, creating a deep hole-drain in anything that remains of a moral fiber in the facade of a so-called American Ideal. The…
Music is kind of like trash and treasure — it’s all in the appreciation. Last week, the National Security Archive filed a series of petitions (pdf) under the Freedom of Information Act seeking all kinds of data “concerning the use of loud music during detention and/or as a technique to interrogate detainees at U.S.-operated prison facilities used…
UPDATE/ADD-ON BELOW Yes, the Edwin Starr song paraphrased is the counterinsurgency of fighting dumb-shit wars. Last month on PBS‘ “Frontline,” an interview with Andrew Bacevich, a retired US Army colonel and a level head in this era of military idiots. He’s also a professor of international relations and history at Boston University, a Vietnam veteran and…
A life-long favorite is no more: Soupy Sales dead at 83. Even with all his funny shenanigans, Soupy Sales appeared as a really nice guy. His show was one of my favorites as a kid and I loved all the characters he created, including the never-seen ‘naked girl,’ and he seemed to have great fun…
A few scant seconds can mean the difference between truth and a lie. Such as the case of Desiree Jennings, a 25-year-old training to become a Washington Redskins cheerleader, who has claimed the noted swine-flu vaccine she took last August gave her a rare, but terrible disease. And from that came the “flu girl hoax”…
There’s little doubt we’re alive in one of the most-interesting periods in world history as all kinds of nefarious enterprises are starting to come to real-bad fruition — unlike other past-historical upheavals, however (there’s a shitload of these chaos-in-civilization scenarios), we’ll be able to practically watch it unfold right before our collective eyeballs — and…
Journalists covering the White House, especially those from TV, sometimes tend to think of themselves as above the crowd, as better than the average asshole reporter digging for stories down in the trenches. As Nadia Bilbassy, White House correspondent for the Dubai-based satellite TV network MBC, told Think Progress last month: I found that I think…
Beware of feel-good economic news… (Illustration found here). Even as the US stock markets post some high gains, even as the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which has risen over the past six sessions, also finished Monday at its highest level in a year, and even as those infamous banks appear to slowing on losses…
A few short years ago, anyone who discussed subjects like “peak oil” were considered a crank (not to be confused with, for instance, ‘Will my car crank without fuel?’) or a nutcase or just a plain worry-wart-conspiratorial fruitcake (not to be confused with a Dick Cheney), but nowadays there’s enough evidence from authentic sources to…
US troops slugging through Afghanistan are sick of it and according to their chaplains: “The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale,…