Dark dark horse
What say you to the progressive, 37-year-old, gay mayor of a mid-western city with barely 100,000 people—a man with an unpronounceable last name—as President?...
25 February, 2019
Reporter as inquisitor: Wapo’s Annie Linsky v. Sen. Elizabeth Warren
The ritualized, forced apology has now been acted out with enough granularity to satisfy the Washington political reporter who took responsibility for adjudicating its sufficiency, but Linsky seems deaf to the character of coerced apologies....
11 February, 2019
How great is thy bounty, metadata?
When documents released by Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency (NSA) routinely hovers hoovers up metadata on telephone calls made and received in that country, officials first lied about the practice, then defended it on grounds the information obtained was trivial. President Obama insisted the gathering of metadata amounted only to "modest encroachments on privacy" and "a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us being able to protect our people." He emphasized that NSA was "not looking at content." A new, crowdsourced study shows that telephone metadata—information that includes the date, time, and length of phone calls, and the numbers called, but not the...
18 March, 2014
If you’ve done no wrong, why fear NSA surveillance?
A catchy little ditty about surveillance of citizens, en français. In partial translation: If you have nothing to hide, then you could put a camera in your bedroom and your bathroom, and publish images on internet. Or if you have nothing to hide, then you can get your login and your password on facebook or in google, publish and everyone can go dig it. Our lists of things to do Our soft sms Our writings of anger And our address books Our favorite pubs Our schedules pool Our sworn enemies And the name of the neighboring Nothing, nothing, nothing to be ashamed of nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing to hide H/T: Bethany Horne...
08 February, 2014
The growing clamor to grant Edward Snowden clemency
[caption id="attachment_13208" align="aligncenter" width="550"] A Washington, DC, city bus[/caption] Briefly, because I can't say it better than these people did, please check out the links below for eloquent arguments about the value of Edward Snowden's lawbreaking, and the Obama administration's pernicious folly in persecuting him. On the last day of October, from his exile in Russia, Snowden wrote a letter seeking clemency. On the first day of January, a New York Times editorial endorsed his request. Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and...
02 January, 2014
Two veterans get the last words
A Connecticut reader who describes himself as a paratroop veteran from the Korean War era who was lucky to be assigned to Germany, "rather than that slaughter house of Korea," writes: I find this convention that has developed of saying, "thank you for your service" off-putting. It immediately shuts the door. Nothing more to say except, "Thank you." Puts us in a box. You will never hear veterans speak to each other this way. Besides, the dirty little secret is most of us had the time of our lives. It was great fun. Another reader sends along this message from his brother, a Vietnam vet....
12 November, 2013
Out of sight, out of mind: 175 dead children
Pitch Interactive, a data visualization shop in Berkeley, California, has produced an interactive infographic illustrating the results of US drone attacks in Pakistan. I can't embed it, but clicking on the link will take you to a 90-seconds chronological overview. Clicking on the ATTACKS, VICTIMS, NEWS, and INFO links in the upper left corner of the infographic adds background information and sources. Less than 2% of the victims are high-profile targets. The rest are civilians, children and alleged combatants. This is the story of every known drone strike and victim in Pakistan. Since 2004, the US has been practicing in a new kind of clandestine military...
23 October, 2013
Charting the rise in natural catastrophes
The number of "significant" natural catastrophes in North America causing more than $1 billion in losses of more than 50 deaths, 1950-2012: Number of natural catastrophes in North America, 1980-2011: For the climate change skeptics in the audience, these charts come not the Ecology Action Centre, the Natural Resources Defence Council, or the Pembina Institute, but from Munich Re, a $265-billion company that is one of the world's leading reinsurance brokers. (A reinsurer is an outfit that re-sells insurance liabilities when the risk becomes too great for a single retail firm, so it is on the front lines when catastrophic events loom.) Bear...
10 July, 2013
When Henry Kissinger almost visited Cape Breton
In the summer of 1976, Tom Enders, Canada's Ambassador to the United States, and officials of the US State Department were negotiating the details of a meeting between Foreign Affairs Minister Allan J MacEachen and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Since Kissinger had called upon MacEachen in Ottawa the previous October, the assumption was that the next meeting would take place in Washington. As recorded in a confidential August 7, 1976, State Department memo to Kissinger, one of more than 1.7 million U.S. State Department cables dating from 1973-1976 released last week by Wikileaks, MacEachen suggested an alternative plan: AMBASSADOR ENDERS HAS ALSO INFORMED...
10 April, 2013
How many Americans have guns killed since Sandy Hook?
100? 500? 1,000? The correct answer is much higher: more than 22 fatal shootings per day in the first 98 days since the horrific elementary school massacre. Huffpo has an interactive chart: (Please don't just look at the graphic. Click on the link and then on "next.") Astounding....
29 March, 2013