I have been fighting a nasty cold for the past few days, so I have been a bit out of it. Anyway, while working today I made the mistake of listening to Gen. Petraeus’ testimony before the House. I was struck by the blatant duplicity and obfuscation of the report he offered. His, and his [...]
Earlier this week, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell gave a lengthy and somewhat duplicitous interview with the El Paso Times. Mr. McConnell made available a number of interesting assertions and revelations. For instance, this is the first time a government official acknowledged that private firms (such as AT&T and Verizon) had been aiding the intelligence [...]
Robert Greenwald has done a nice video summation of the push for war with Iran:
The media has been particularly lazy in trying to understand or present the complexities of both Middle Eastern and Islamic culture and politics. For instance, I am sure that you have not heard that Al Qaeda has been threatening Iran with [...]
Carol, my intrepid wife, stenciled the above image on the front of our coffeehouse last week in protest of the Protect America Act of 2007. Of course the more we actually learn about the act the worse it seems. It has now become apparent that expiration date of the act is not the six months, [...]
Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed S.1927 – The Protect America Act. The act passed early Saturday morning by the Senate gives the president unfettered power to surveil any person, or persons, within the United States as long as he ‘believes’ that his is also surveilling someone outside the country as well. The [...]
Max Abrahms has published a fascinating paper showing the ineffectiveness of terrorism as a strategic political tool, particularly when civilians are targeted:
This study analyzes the political plights of twenty-eight terrorist groups— the complete list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) as designated by the U.S. Department of State since 2001. The data yield two unexpected findings. [...]
I have been slowly catching up on some of my online reading, and was struck by an apparent argument occurring between Glen Greenwald, Ann Althouse, and others regarding the use of term ‘Christianist’, as a Christian version of the popular usage of ‘Islamist’. I don’t wish to re-hash the entire set of arguments (please read [...]
