No, we’re not kidding. Help us stop this unwarranted attack. Action Alert! The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, a division of the US Treasury Department, recently sent letters to several producers of kombucha, warning them that since their beverages supposedly exceeded the allowable alcohol limit, they must be labeled as alcoholic beverages and be subject to alcohol regulation or face hefty …
Andrew J. Bacevich – On Building Armies (and Watching Them Fail)
First came Fallujah, then Mosul, and later Ramadi in Iraq. Now, there is Kunduz, a provincial capital in northern Afghanistan. In all four places, the same story has played out: in cities that newspaper reporters like to call “strategically important,” security forces trained and equipped by the U.S. military at great expense simply folded, abandoning their posts (and much of their U.S.-supplied weaponry) without even …
Robert Parry – MH-17: The Dog Still Not Barking
The Dutch Safety Board report concludes that an older model Buk missile apparently shot down Malaysia Airline Flight 17 on July 17, 2014, but doesn’t say who possessed the missile and who fired it. Yet, what is perhaps most striking about the report is what’s not there – nothing from the U.S. intelligence data on the tragedy. The dog still …
Nicholas Colas – And Now The Bad News: Millennials Will Need To Withdraw $270K Per Year From Their Retirement Accounts
Which profile fits a money manager’s ideal customer – a “Mass affluent” 50-year old or a dead broke 20-something? The wealth management industry would do well to run the numbers, because it is the latter that will generate a larger fee stream over time. How can that be? The short answer is that millennials will live longer, require far more in retirement …
Chet Bowers – Is the Digital Revolution Sowing the Seeds of a Techno-Fascist Future?
Before criticizing the title of this piece as excessively alarmist, the guiding ideology of the digital revolution, as well as the cultural changes it has already introduced, need to be compared with the characteristics of fascism. It is also important to recognize that fascism differs between cultures. Italian fascism was different in several important ways from German fascism, and if …
Peter Van Buren – Post-Constitutional America: What We’ve Lost Since 9/11
Ed Snowden is right. We have lost too many of our freedoms. What the hell happened? The United States has entered its third great era is what happened. The first, starting from the colonists’ arrival, saw the principles of the Enlightenment used to push back the abuses of an imperial government and create the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. …
Christian Christensen – US Violence Breeds a Language of the Grotesque
Another week, another series of school and university shootings in the US, and another chance to hear phrases such as “active shooter” and “campus lockdown” repeated over and over by police, school administrators and journalists. These phrases – chilling in their clinicalness – are not only stark examples of the militarization of the language of everyday life, but also reminders of how the language …
Charlotte Silver – “We are the masters,” says Israeli mayor as 3 more Palestinians are killed
On Monday, Israeli forces shot dead three Palestinian youths, bringing the total number of Palestinians killed since heightened violence erupted on 1 October across the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and inside present-day Israel to 27. More than 1,300 Palestinians have been injured by live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets, according to the Palestinian Authority health ministry. In the same period, four Israelis have been killed …
David Griffin – Climate Denial
According to a recent report from Inside Climate News, scientists hired by Exxon had concluded in the 1970s and ’80s that continuing to burn great quantities of fossil fuels would likely produce “catastrophic events” that could endanger humanity. Therefore, said these scientists, Exxon should begin a transition away from fossil fuels to renewable resources. But in the late ’80s, the …
WikiLeaks: US Government Plotted to Assassinate Bolivian President
Cables leaked by U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning reveal an apparent plot by the U.S. government to assassinate Bolivian President Evo Morales and overthrow his administration. The cables in question were published in August in “The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire,” a book in which multiple journalists along with Julian Assange analyze the contents of the treasure trove of …










