Category History
Medea Benjamin crashes the party
So if you were out of touch (no google, no tweets) Thursday, you probably didn’t hear about Medea Benjamin of Code Pink crashing Obama’s friendly little press conference about the drone strike policy and also the detainees at Guantanamo. As she was ‘escorted’ from the room, Medea reportedly said this: “Can you tell the Muslim […]
At Last! The GOP ‘fesses up about Willard’s taxes!!!
As at least 35 of you know by now (I know–I check hits daily), I followed the story of Willard Romney’s taxes and what he paid into the IRS for much of the last election. This was following up on the allegation by Harry Reid that the Mittster hadn’t been paying anything for a ten-year […]
Occupy Sandy Staten Island report
Those of you who don’t listen to Sex and Politics may have missed out on what is a continuing story here in NY–in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy (which hit last OCTOBER), there are still big pockets of damage and hardship. My guest was Goldi Guerra of the Guitarmy, a great group of musicians in the […]
Healthcare and Hostage Capitalism
I’ve written here about my dad and alluded to some of his pet peeves. Dad was something of a moocher in life, and when he had to pay for things, he got… intense. And one of the things that made him crazy was price gouging. He had a point–if you go to a ball game […]
Hacking, Phreaking, Anonymous and Asymmetrical warfare
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I was following the antics of the wildly amorphous phenomenon known as Hacking. Short history: Hacking originated at MIT in the 1950’s as part of their model train club. In the days before phones and computers became almost identical, people like John Draper became the godfathers […]
Don’t know much about a Cornucopia of Conspiracy Theories
In my play HOW TO STOP THE EMPIRE WHILE KEEPING YOUR DAY JOB, the character known as Jerry takes on the issue of the people who deride him as a conspiracy theorist–and those who use the phrase ‘conspiracy theorist’ as a pejorative term: “People call me a conspiracy theorist for saying that Obama signed the […]
Obama ducks a drone hearing!
(a video from the Bureau For Investigative Journalism’s ‘Naming the Dead‘ project ) Thanks to the Huffington Post, we’ve learned that officials from the Obama Administration decided to skip Tuesday’s Senate hearing on the Drone Strike program and targeted killing. “I am disappointed that the administration declined to provide witnesses to testify at today’s hearings,” Senate Majority […]
The Wikileaks event at Judson–a short summary
Last week on WBCR, I told you about Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the Icelandic MP and Wikileaks member who was in NY to talk about the Bradley Manning case. She was at a round-table event last Friday at Judson Memorial Church in New York along with a group of journalists who’ve been covering the case for those of […]
Maggie Thatcher and the victory that bankrupted Britain
So we’re mourning (obviously not ALL of us) the death of Margaret Thatcher. I’m not a blasphemous man. She was a human being with feelings, she nurtured children and grandchildren. But in the US, we seem all to ready to give a pass on the public actions of our leaders in order to ‘spare the […]
Don’t know much about history: Waterboarding is torture
My ire is piqued today by this report out of the Washington Post. In 2005, a woman working in a senior capacity for CIA Clandestine Operations took it upon herself to sign off on the destruction of videotape the agency had made of what critics have described as ‘torture’. It almost certainly includes waterboarding. That […]
The Brooklyn Culture Jam 