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Archive for the 'Terrorism' Category
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
by Mike
Make sure to read this excellent article by Stanley Fish, Law Professor and New York Times opinion contributor. This gist of his observation is this:
“If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But [...]
Posted in Crime, Disasters and Tragedies, Racism, Terrorism | No Comments »
Thursday, July 15th, 2010
by Mike
There is an interesting opinion piece today by Timothy Egan on nytimes.com about mutually assured destruction (MAD). MAD is a Cold War era policy that says essentially “if you nuke our cities, we promise to nuke your cities”.
Egan assumes, like many people do, that MAD kept us safe during the Cold War. But [...]
Posted in Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism | 4 Comments »
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
by Mike
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates just this past week announced the details of the Obama Administration’s Department of Defense budget. For once, it isn’t the size of the budget that has made a lot of waves, but instead the details of the budget. Gates and Obama want to radically restructure the military. [...]
Posted in Fiscal Issues, Obama Administration, Terrorism, War in Iraq | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
by Mike
Dick Cheney is on a whirlwind tour trying to justify the Bush Administration’s record on the War on Terror, especially their decision to torture detainees. Mostly he is trumpeting intelligence gleaned from a supposedly high-level al Qaeda operative who was held and tortured at Guantanamo. Meanwhile his critics are countering his claims, noting [...]
Posted in Abuse of Power, Bill of Rights, Bush Administration, Terrorism | 1 Comment »
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
by Mike
Given the date, I thought it would be a good day to go over the differences between the two presidential candidates when it comes to The War on Terror. (If you were hoping that I’d discuss whether or not Senator Obama believes that Governor Palin is a barnyard animal, I’m sorry to disappoint.) [...]
Posted in 2008 Election, Bill of Rights, Central and Southern Asia, Foreign Policy, Terrorism, War in Iraq | No Comments »
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
by Mike
I am constantly flabbergasted by how “common knowledge”, even and especially among experts in a particular field, can so often be so wrong. And I don’t even mean “wrong if you really know what you’re talking about”; I mean “illogical at face value”. I’ll start with a couple examples from football (it is [...]
Posted in Football, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism | No Comments »
Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
by Mike
Right now, the United States is an active participant in two civil wars: Iraq and Afghanistan.
Posted in Central and Southern Asia, Foreign Policy, Terrorism, War in Iraq | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
by Mike
The GOP is trying to turn this election, in part, into a referendum on President Bush’s handling of the War on Terror. In particular, conservative pundits (cheered by both the White House and the McCain campaign) have attacked Obama for praising the response to the first World Trade Center attacks, bringing back the charge [...]
Posted in 2008 Election, Abuse of Power, Foreign Policy, Terrorism | No Comments »
Thursday, November 29th, 2007
by Mike
One of the big issues in this primary season is how the War on Terror should be fought. On the one hand, you have the Democratic candidates, plus Senator McCain and Representative Paul, who believe that the War on Terror is fundamentally a public relations war that the United States can only win by [...]
Posted in 2008 Election, Bill of Rights, Foreign Policy, Terrorism | 2 Comments »
Monday, November 5th, 2007
by Mike
I’ve bee hearing these kinds of reports for years, but they just keep coming: the Department of Homeland Security backed down off of regulations about the storage and use of industrial chemicals. We’re told that, for our own safety, we need to have our phones tapped, have guards see us almost nude at airport x-ray [...]
Posted in Bush Administration, Terrorism | No Comments »
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