The US media loves to commemorate anniversaries. But I have not heard of any plans to address the fact that this year marks the 50th anniversary of one of the worst atrocities of modern times: when John F. Kennedy began the bombing of Vietnam. [Read more…]
In the US we are constantly regaled with stories in the media of high-level people in al Qaeda being killed by drone strikes and how few civilians have been harmed. We are constantly reminded of how precise drones are. But of course, all that means is that there is a high probability that a drone hits the target that it was aiming at. It says nothing about whether the target was the right one to begin with, even if one concedes that the US government has the right to target and kill anyone it pleases. [Read more…]
As an immigrant who never studied US history formally as part of a curriculum, my knowledge of it has large holes. So although I knew that Abraham Lincoln was killed by John Wilkes Booth in a theater in 1865 at the beginning of his second term of office during the waning days of the Civil War, I was not aware of the precise motive or that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy that sought to also kill the vice-president and the Secretary of State. [Read more…]
I have bad news.
Orly Taitz lost her bid to become California’s next senator. She came in fifth in the primary, garnering 3.1% or 121,000 votes, which is not too shabby. [Read more…]
Dr. Omar Amin, a 73-year old researcher in infectious diseases and resident of Scottsdale, Arizona, was browsing the children’s section of his local Barnes and Noble bookstore looking for gifts for his grandchildren when a store employee arrived and asked him to leave immediately. [Read more…]
One of the most troubling aspects of the so-called ‘war on terror’ has been the unwillingness of the federal judiciary to rein in the excesses of the administration in its assault on civil rights and constitutional protections. [Read more…]
In the comments to my earlier post on Malcolm Gladwell, commenter sisu pointed me to a link to an excellent and detailed article that exposes how Gladwell was groomed from his early days to be a shameless huckster in the service of right-wing and corporate interests. [Read more…]
I had heard of long-time Georgia congressman John Lewis and his role in the civil rights movement but had never actually seen him. I found this interview with Stephen Colbert quite moving. [Read more…]
South Korea is one of the so-called ‘Asian tigers’, a modern, rapidly developing, and highly educated country with a large and still-growing role in the world’s economy. So it was a surprise to me to read that they are purging the teaching of evolution from the country’s textbooks. [Read more…]
The New York Times had a long article showing how willingly and easily Obama sidesteps the constitution he has sworn to protect, all the while presenting him as someone who grapples gravely with issues. The article provides another striking example, if one were needed, of what I wrote about before, how constitutional protections are being hollowed out, to become mere window dressing. [Read more…]