I said that I would wait for evidence before believing the Obama administration’s claims last week that the Syrian government had used sarin. Given the US government’s past history of blatantly lying in order to win public support for its warlike intentions, that seems to be the obviously prudent thing to do. And sure enough, Matthew Schofield of the McClatchy news service writes that chemical weapons experts are casting doubts on US claims. [Read more…]

The recent election of Hassan Rouhani as the new president of Iran is an interesting development. The fact that he is a cleric is undoubtedly a cause for worry since that means that he is unlikely to push for liberalization of some of the government’s policies, especially towards women and the LGBT community. [Read more…]

The microscopic examination of Edward Snowden the person continues with the Washington Post having a long piece tracing his life story from elementary school onwards. The one tidbit that caught my eye was this: [Read more…]

Yesterday was father’s day, one of those bogus celebrations that are meant to pressure people to buy useless stuff by implying that they do not appreciate their fathers if they do not. It is also an occasion to pontificate on the nature of fatherhood. David Mitchell takes aim at those who criticize humor writers for their depiction of characters such as Homer Simpson and say that people like him are poor role models of fathers. In the process, Mitchdell makes an important larger point. [Read more…]

The Q&A with Edward Snowden has ended. While journalists all over the world were dying to directly interview him for an exclusive scoop, he chose instead to answer questions from ordinary people. And the questions and answers were very interesting. In response to one question about why he chose to make his revelations from Hong Kong, he replied that he felt that he could not get a fair trial in the US. [Read more…]

Edward Snowden will be having a live Q&A at 11:00 am Eastern US time today. I will not be able to follow it live but it should be interesting, especially since he is in hiding and you can be sure that the NSA will be trying to track him down. They likely already know where he is but there is nothing they can do at the moment. [Read more…]

The late David Halberstam was an excellent journalist who worked within the establishment framework. His best know work is The Best and the Brightest (1972) that has become a classic in the genre of modern political history. It exposed how a group of elite, Ivy League-educated people in the highest reaches of government during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations led the US government into the criminal disaster that we now know as the Vietnam war. [Read more…]