Bob Herbert of the New York Times has it right:

…we are still left with a disaster of a war in Afghanistan that cannot be won and that the country as a whole will not support.

Winning in Afghanistan & Pakistan will require that Saudia Arabia stop using our oil dollars to fund the Taliban, their Wahhbi [...]

Farooq Hassan has a new article:
In a historical context, we have yet to conceptually realize the philosophical foundations of the 2008-2009 public affirmation of the country’s [Pakistan] judiciary. I do not recall a single modern historical precedent wherein the elected government of the day was almost swept from its incumbency by popular revolt that resulted [...]

In the Depression era, a question was posed: Are you for the Money or the People?
Today, we need to reflect on the lack of meaningful change and the seemingly unchangeable ancien regime of 20th century America.
The Boston Globe ran a front page story on how Corporations invested $100 million per month for ten months, [...]

John Gray’s current essay in The New Statesman is a strong argument for inventing Modern Era 2.0.
“… The reality, which is that western power is in retreat nearly everywhere, is insistently denied. Yet the rise of China means more than the emergence of a new great power. Its deeper import is that the ideologies [...]

If we cannot provide public educational excellence to our own citizens, nor universal healthcare, nor rebuild cities such as Detroit, nor sustain a robust Main Street, nor provide meaningful, well paying jobs to all who want them, how can we be expected to provide any of these basics foundations of a civil society to anyone [...]

People who delve into the world of biochar pretty soon find themselves learning a whole lot about soil. Soil, contrary to the Industrial view of the world, is not, it turns out, a simple dirt substrate we act on. To get a glimpse of the biological view of soil as a dynamic living organism [...]

Trees and grasses are approximately 50% carbon.
The critical question at hand is simply this: Can the carbon captured by photosynthesis and converted by pyrolysis to stable agricultural charcoal, Biochar, properly inoculated with minerals, microbes, fungi, etc, be used today to:
1. improve soil quality &  crop yields?  Are our soils at an optimum carbon content level [...]

The news about the H1N1 flu pandemic is turning out to be very interesting in unexpected ways.
It is critical to understand that, starting in 1980 with Pres. Reagan, our public health infrastructure has been eviscerated. After all, if the government can do no good and is by definition “the problem”, why pay for a public [...]

Perhaps we need to confront an old myth:
Myth X: The market functions well enough today because it’s pricing function is accurate.
My thesis is that the pricing function we have today is actually pathological and is based on playing with crooked dice and marked cards. We want the answer to be “cheap” — so we lie [...]

In 1776 Thomas Jefferson wrote:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the [...]