How much longer can the majority of industrialized / militarized societies hide from reality? Not long. Foundations of power structures are fracturing from every direction, many critical issues are finally beginning to come to light. Though this is, in many ways, a leap in the right direction, it also leads to unbridled desperation on the part of those who wield …
Jon Queally – This Wondrous National Park… Brought to You By McDonald’s?
A controversial set of new rules quietly given final approval over the recent holiday—allowing national parks in the United States to expand corporate sponsorships and commercial contracts with private companies—is being called a “disgrace” by those who say the move is a betrayal of what the nation’s parks should be. Despite outcry from citizens, documented in public testimony and hundreds …
Chuck Spinney – Why Are Defense Policy Wonks So Ineffectual?
Today, America’s foreign policy is a shambles. Its primary features are (1) a perpetual war on terror, and (2) the seemingly inevitable march into a new and unnecessary cold war against Russia and China. At the same time, President Obama is leaving his successor with a budget plan containing a front loaded and political engineered* procurement bow wave that guarantees steeply rising …
Pentagon Claim That War Crimes Must Be “Intentional” Called “Flatly Wrong”
The U.S. Department of Defense on Friday released its redacted report on the military’s deadly October 2015 airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, which found that the bombing was a mistake—and thus, not a war crime—a conclusion which human rights groups called “an affront” to justice and accountability. The report follows an announcement on Thursday …
Chet Bowers – Is the Digital Revolution Sowing the Seeds of a Techno-Fascist Future?
Before criticizing the title of this piece as excessively alarmist, the guiding ideology of the digital revolution, as well as the cultural changes it has already introduced, need to be compared with the characteristics of fascism. It is also important to recognize that fascism differs between cultures. Italian fascism was different in several important ways from German fascism, and if …