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Category Archives: Creeping Totalitarianism

A bit more on “free trade”

Thursday, December 12, 2013

A bit of a follow up to a recent post on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership pact. Dean Baker, who I mentioned in my post, takes issue with Paul Krugman's comments that the trade pact is no big deal. Baker agrees that as a trade deal it's a nothing, but that is not the point: Anyhow, […]

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Here’s hoping for failure

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

I urge anyone who comes across this to educate themselves on the proposed Pacific Rim Trade Agreement. More knowledgeable people than I have reported on this. You might start with Dean Baker's blog and work from there. Suffice to say that the United States is not just trying to engineer another massive corporate giveaway, it […]

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Cynicism 101

Friday, August 9, 2013

It’s raining here in Vermont, else I’d be doing something other than ranting, but when life deals you lemons… Okay, so I’ve done my feel good post for the week, meaning I can go back to cynicism and decrying the death of the American Republic. But speaking of cynicism: President Barack Obama met with Apple […]

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Privatizing the security state. What could go wrong?

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Digby raises a good point at Hullabaloo, about the fact that there is a lot of money to be made by expanding the security state. We pour billions into collecting haystacks of data and then start searching for the needles, and some folks are getting very rich indeed as more and more of the work […]

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The Free Press, Post 9/11 edition

Monday, June 24, 2013

A few weeks ago I commented on the fact that the mainstream press has a very limited attention span, and that the recent re-revelations about the extent to which Washington is spying on us all had effectively driven a number of faux scandals off the front page and out of the mass media mind. Now, […]

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Yet another Modest Proposal

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

It seems clear that the chink in the armor of the National Security State is the fact that a lot of normal human beings-the kind that have consciences and know right from wrong- are given access to state secrets. It can’t be avoided. We need drones to handle this stuff. There is only one solution. […]

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The least surprising news of the year

Thursday, June 6, 2013

Why am I not surprised that the NSA is monitoring our phone calls? Why am I not surprised that this intrusion into our private lives is the one issue in which the cherished goal of “bi-partisanship” has been reached, for Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike seem to think it’s great. The real question is: why […]

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Storm is threatening

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

I wrote last year about the likelihood that we’ll be seeing right wing movements in Europe, as the bankers put the screws to the common folks so they can preserve their own privileges. Since the Greeks are getting screwed the most, it only stands to reason that it’s most likely, especially given recent Greek history, […]

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The Keyboard Commandos Get Their Due

Thursday, February 14, 2013

This was one of my favorite Gary Larson Far Side Cartoons: Of course, back in those innocent days, no one could have expected that there really would be rich rewards for saving the Princess, much less that the military would be awarding medals to men and women who bravely rain death and destruction upon the […]

Also filed in National Security | | Comments (1)

Puzzling

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Obama is damned by the right wing for claiming to shoot skeet, something they absolutely refuse to believe he does, not that it matters. They accuse him of violating our liberties because he made an incremental change in the law that might enable more people to afford still overpriced health care. They would love to […]

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