Officials at the San Onofre nuclear power plant in California are investigating why they found coolant mixed with oil in their safety equipment. Investigators are now trying to determine if the incident was an act of sabotage by an employee.The Southern California Edison’s San Onofre nuclear power plant has often …
The stakes couldn’t be higher for the $60 billion global diamond industry, and Israel’s burgeoning diamond industry in particular, as the dynamic forces of economics, human rights, and politics careen towards a major showdown in Washington. The fallout is likely to blow the lid on a cozy cartel that has kept the …
If President Barack Obama, in his first debate with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney earlier this month, left his supporters asking WTF at the president’s lackluster performance, Tuesday night’s performance should find them taking heart. In a contentious town-hall style debate at Hofstra University in New York, Obama came out …
The yacht sailed from Naples, Italy on October 6 as part of the “Freedom Flotilla” movement [AFP] Israel has warned to confront by force a Gaza-bound ship if it tries to break the blockade of the Palestinian territory, a Finnish foreign ministry spokesman has said. “The foreign ministry has been …
Medications are nutrition. That’s essentially the rationale behind a couple of Big Pharma corporations’ decision to give a failed Alzheimer’s drug a second chance. In early August, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson said they were ending large-scale clinical trials of their experimental drug bapineuzumab in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, …
When the United States decided to invade Afghanistan to grab Osama bin Laden—and failed, but stayed on like an unwanted guest—could it have known that the Afghans were sitting on some of the world’s greatest reserves of mineral wealth? We’ve raised this topic before (see here [2])—where we noted the dubious 2010 …
It took less than 24 hours for Obama’s “inspiring” convention speech to be smothered by the reality of the job crisis. The August national jobs report showed that the U.S. economy failed to create enough new jobs to keep up with population growth. More importantly, in August 368,000 Americans completely …
In the 1973 science fiction film Soylent Green, directed by Richard Fleisher and starring Charlton Heston as Thor, the government combined with industry to euthanize people deemed of low social utility and use their corpses to make a food source called Soylent Green, which was then fed to a starving …
After more than 10 years of war against al Qaeda and the accompanying global “war on terrorism,” we have failed to learn that our actions create reactions. Our presence creates destabilization, then radicalization. Occupations create insurgencies. In Afghanistan, we have fueled the very insurgency we struggle to fight. Al Qaeda …
Never bet against Washington’s imperial plans. New tactics follow failed ones. Efforts to oust Assad continue. Proxy killers can’t do it alone. They’re no match against Syria’s superior military strength. It’s committed to rout them. Expect NATO intervention anytime or perhaps post-US November elections. Libya 2.0 looks increasingly likely. …
Some images remain like scars on my memory. One of the last things I saw in Iraq, where I spent a year with the Department of State helping squander some of the $44 billion American taxpayers put up to “reconstruct” that country, were horses living semi-wild among the muck and …
The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) web site says it has 115 members “representing the interests and priorities of developing countries.” Wikipedia calls NAM a 120 member body with 21 observer countries. Member states include India, Egypt, Venezuela, and Indonesia. Observer ones include China, Russia, and Brazil. NAM originated from the 1955 …
French moralist/essayist Joseph Joubert (1754 – 1824) said it’s “better to debate a question without settling it than settle a question without debating it.” He wasn’t alone. Debating is an ancient tradition. Socrates and Plato debated political, social, and other issues. The Socratic method involves opposing sides asking and answering …
Various cybersecurity acts threaten constitutional freedoms. On March 27, HR 4263: SECURE IT Act of 2012 was introduced. Now in committee, no further action was taken. On April 26, the House passed HR 3523: Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) of 2011. On June 27, …
On this day in 1945 the United States demonstrated that it was as morally bankrupt as the Nazi machine it had recently vanquished and the Soviet regime with which it was allied. Over Hiroshima, and three days later over Nagasaki, it exploded an atomic device that was the most efficient …