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Global Lightening 14, the war games being staged this week by the U.S. Strategic Command (a successor to the Strategic Air Command, General Curtis LeMay’s empire of Cold War and Dr. Strangelove fame–remember when “Bombs Away” LeMay was George Wallace’s 1968 running mate?) with B-52 and B-2 bombers is “unrelated to real-world events,” as its […] Railing against The New York Times is a minor national pastime across the political spectrum, though probably trending toward the over-50 age bracket. It can be exhausting, even when you work there, and a complete waste of time. If there were just a few more American news organizations with similar scope, The Times would not […] Contrary to popular belief, America has maintained a vast socialist economy since World War II: the one that supports the defense industry. A clear picture of how it works is being provided this budget season by the reappearance on Capitol Hill of an “unfunded priorities list” compiled by the military services–basically a letter to Santa […] Gilead Sciences’ blockbuster pill for Hepatitis C, Sovaldi (sofosbuvir), has been causing plentiful sticker shock since it hit the market at a thousand dollars a pop, or more than 80 grand for a treatment course. The Hepatitis C virus, which until 1989 was so mysterious that it was referred to as “non-A, non-B,” is the […] A new order from the Director of National Intelligence, James “Not Wittingly” Clapper, forbids all unauthorized contact between intelligence workers and the media regarding “intelligence-related information,” whether classified or not. Media are defined so broadly that just about anyone not in a vegetative state might qualify. The effect of this insidious nonsense? Journalists will become […] An article in today’s Le Monde investigates the world of French nuclear power industry subcontractors who work the riskiest jobs maintaining the country’s 58 commercial reactors. While not quite as sordid as the yakuza labor underground that has infected the Fukushima clean-up operation, this itinerate pool of some 22,000 men and womenEven small guys viagra […] A new report from the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine gives NASA managers all the moral wiggle room they’ll ever need for approving long-duration space missions that are highly hazardous to human health. The report begins with a corny quotation from Arthur C. Clarke circa 1968, then examines three decision options for when manned spaceflight […] Stymied by strict new safety standards at home for restarting the nation’s nuclear power plants, the Shinzo Abe regime in Japan is doing what any eager-beaver business would: sell it to the gaijin. Yesterday, the Lower House of parliament approved the export of reactors to Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, after Abe cut off […] With Edward Teller and James Schlesinger whipping onward the apocalypse in the decades after World War II, it seems in retrospect that resistance was futile. What on earth was it about these two sons of families uprooted by political chaos in Eastern Europe (Hungary and Lithuania, respectively) during the early 20th century? Their post hoc […] As of October 2013, there were more than 5.1 million Americans who have official access to classified information, according to a new report from the federal Office of Management and Budget. That includes about 3.7 million civilian and military government employees, a million contractor personnel, and 400,000 “others”. The total represents an increase of 4.7% […] |