Putin’s One Weapon: The ‘Intelligence State’ ,Russia’s leader has restored the role its intelligence agencies had in the Soviet era — keep citizens in check and destabilize foreign adversaries.By John SipherMr. Sipher, a former chief of station for the C.I.A., worked for more than 27 years in Russia and other parts of Europe and Asia.…
“This planet will not be secure or peaceful when so few have so much, and so many have so little — and when we advance day after day into an oligarchic form of society where a small number of extraordinarily powerful special interests exert enormous influence over the economic and political life of the world…
“that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and Senators and Congressmen and Government officials but the voters of this country.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the U.S., 1933-45 BACK
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow1807-82 “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” outre-mer, 1833-4 BACK
As I watch Donald Trump sow confusion and chaos in a nation that heretofore has been known to the world as a standard in all that is good in human nature, and as I watch his own political party stand aside in silence in the face of his selfish and destructive behavior, I am reminded…
An hour after putting up my previous post, this story was published by the Associated Press: The Trump Administration is Holding Thousands of Migrant Kids in Mass Shelters. This is a prime example of what I was talking about. Dr. Jack Shonkoff, who, heads Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child said of the 14,000 migrant…
While reading of our current American Chaos in the morning’s paper (yes, actual newsprint), I was reminded of a phrase and a quotation that seem apt considerations for our national dilemma. The first is the Latin phrase “cui bono”, which means “to whose profit?” or “to whose benefit?” It is most often used today as…
Carl Jung “Evil needs to be pondered just as much as good, for good and evil are ultimately nothing but ideal extensions and abstractions of doing, and both belong to the chiaroscuro of life. In the last resort there is no good that cannot produce evil, and no evil that cannot produce good.” Collected…
The following is from an NPR Frontline notice I received as a subscriber. I know I’ve got a lot of posts recently hammering Facebook, but it seems that finally a lot of people are waking up to the platform’s dangers. There are good things about FB, undeniably. But nothing is ALL good. Facebook’s dark side…
This article in Mother Jones is an important summary of recent issues confronting Facebook, and how they’ve manipulated their response to the public and their users. I first saw this mentioned in a tweet by James Fallows. It’ll set your hair on fire. We can thank the British Guardian and the New York Times, for…