Review: Pakistan on the Brink–The Future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan

Ahmed Rashid REF A — 12 Years of Lessons Learned in Time for 2014, October 13, 2013 This is an extraordinary book that required a great deal of time, not in the reading, but in the reflection. This will be a longer review than usual, even for me, because this book contains all of the …

John Rappoport: Promoting Diseases That Do Not Exist

Magic trick: promoting diseases that don’t exist The disease/treatment/profit machine requires more and more diseases, even if they aren’t real. Here is an unspoken but largely accepted medical notion of what a disease is: A group of physical symptoms shared by many people, which has a single cause. For example, take the flu. Wikipedia lists …

Review (Guest): The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy: The Revolution in Higher Education

Charles Hugh Smith Publisher’s Overview: With the soaring cost of higher education, has the value a college degree been turned upside down. College tuition and fees are up 1000% since 1980. Half of all recent college graduates are jobless or underemployed, revealing a deep disconnect between higher education and the job market. It is no …

David Swanson: Is USG Tripping on Drugs?

Is the Federal Government a Drug-Induced Hallucination? You laugh, but that could be a side-effect.  Consider: The Capitol Police just murdered an unarmed mother fleeing her car on foot, declared her child “unharmed,” and received the longest standing-ovation in Congress since Osama bin Laden’s Muslim sea burial.  Try holding your breath until Congress takes the …

Penguin: Book Review by Andrew Bacevich — Thank You For Your Service [The Unraveling]

Book review: ‘Thank You for Your Service’ by David Finkel By Andrew Bacevich Andrew J. Bacevich teaches at Boston University. His new book is “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.” Nominally a sequel to The Good Soldiers, his 2009 account of an American infantry battalion at war in Iraq, David …

Kevin Barrett: Saudis Threaten Russian Olympics, Israeli False Flag in Syria, US Spins Round and Round

Phi Beta Iota: We have no direct knowledge. The growth of credible voices denouncing the “official” story on Syria as a web of lies is noteworthy.  As best we can tell, the 900 lb gorilla is now captive to financial and religious forces few comprehend, while the BRICS are emergent as the alternative world order, …