Taking stock of the Snowden revelations

Ever since the Edward Snowden NSA revelations exploded on the scene on June 6, we have been treated to one blockbuster story after another about how the US and UK governments in particular have been spying on practically the entire world and brazenly lying on a grand scale. As far as I know, even though a host of media outlets (The Guardian, Washington Post, Der Spiegel, TV Globo, New York Times, ProPublica) are co-operating in the publication of the 300 and more stories so far, only Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Laura Poitras are in possession of the entire dossier and they are being very deliberate in what they release and how. [Read more…]

What’s happening to Kentucky?

Kentucky is the home of the infamous Creation Museum, the famously ridiculous brainchild of Ken Ham that argues that the Earth is 6,000 years old and rejects any science that says otherwise. So one might be forgiven if one thinks of it as a religiously conservative state. But as I pointed out with my two earlier posts, the state Board of Education adopted a document outlining its new science standards that flatly goes counter to that image. [Read more…]

That word you keep using? It does not mean what you think it means

As a result of the revelations by Edward Snowden of abuse by the NSA, president Obama promised an ‘independent’ review of the agencies activities, a promise that was immediately belied by the fact that he said the panel would work under the supervision of James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, who still has his job despite getting caught blatantly lying under oath. [Read more…]

One big bank finally admits wrongdoing

I have railed before at how the big banks have been able to escape serious consequences for their acts that threw the global economy into turmoil and caused hardships for so many. While they have had fines levied against them, the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, the agencies entrusted with maintaining accountability, were satisfied to simply levy fines on the banks without threatening the senior executives with jail time, which would be the best way to deter future malfeasance. The fines themselves, even though large by normal standards, were usually just a few days’ profits for the banks that they could absorb as the cost of doing business. [Read more…]

This is terrible

Lawrence E. Rafferty writes about the appalling line of questioning that a woman received at a military judicial proceeding over allegations of rape. He quotes from a report in the New York Times:

For roughly 30 hours over several days, defense lawyers for three former United States Naval Academy football players grilled a female midshipman about her sexual habits. In a public hearing, they asked the woman, who has accused the three athletes of raping her, whether she wore a bra, how wide she opened her mouth during oral sex and whether she had apologized to another midshipman with whom she had intercourse “for being a ho.”

[Read more…]

The unfolding tragedy in the horn of Africa

The ghastly events unfolding in a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya unfortunately did not come as a complete surprise to me. Ever since I completed reading Jeremy Scahill’s book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield (2013), where he traces to evolution of the global war on terror, I felt that it was only a matter of time before some atrocity occurred either in that country or Ethiopia or both. [Read more…]

Cutting food aid to the hungry

The House of Representatives voted late last week to cut the budget for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (popularly referred to ‘food stamps’) by $40 billion over ten years. The vote was close (217-210) and the bill now goes to the senate. The Des Moines Register has come out with a scathing editorial against the cutting of SNAP benefits, comparing the meager allowance with how lavishly the state’s members of Congress spend on their own food on trips at taxpayer expense. [Read more…]

Hugh Jackman

The actor Hugh Jackman was interviewed on The Daily Show about his new film Prisoners. I have seen him being interviewed before and he seems to have a very good-natured and engaging personality but I have never actually seen any film of his. Since I am not a big fan of the superhero genre, I have not gone out of my way to see his Wolverine films, which seem to constitute a big part of his oeuvre. [Read more…]