Breaking the Sound Barrier

WikiLeaks: From character assassination to the real thing

Despite being granted bail, WikiLeaks founder and editor Julian Assange remains imprisoned in London (as of late last week), awaiting extradition proceedings to answer a prosecutor's questions in Sweden. He hasn't been formally charged with any crime. His lawyers have heard that a grand jury in the United States has been secretly empaneled, and that a U.S. federal indictment is most likely forthcoming.

Afghanistan: Wheels in wheels

After years of local budget cuts, more cutting is immoral

Breaking the Sound Barrier

Cancun, climate & WikiLeaks

Cancun, MEXICO — Critical negotiations are under way here in Cancun, under the auspices of the United Nations, to reverse human-induced global warming. This is the first major meeting since the failed Copenhagen summit last year, and it is happening at the end of the hottest decade on record. While the stakes are high, expectations are low, and, as we have just learned with the release of classified diplomatic cables from WikiLeaks, the United States, the largest polluter in the history of the planet, is engaged in what one journalist here called "a very, very dirty business."

Pressure mounts on developing nations to address warming

The U.N. climate summit in Cancun, Mexico is nearing its end, and while the ending will not be as rancorous as last year’s train-wreck in Copenhagen, there will be no global deal on cutting greenhouse gas emissions this year either. However, there is some hope for the longer run.

Breaking the Sound Barrier

WikiLeaks & U.S. diplomacy

WikiLeaks is again publishing a trove of documents, in this case classified U.S. State Department diplomatic cables. Unless somehow blocked, the whistle-blower website will gradually be releasing more than 250,000 of these documents in the coming months so that they can be analyzed and gain the attention they deserve. The cables are internal, written communications between U.S. Embassies around the world to each other and to the U.S. State Department. WikiLeaks described the leak as "the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain (giving) an unprecedented insight into U.S. government foreign activities."

Breaking the Sound Barrier

Health-insurers have vendetta against Michael Moore

Michael Moore, the Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, makes great movies, but they are not generally considered "cliffhangers." All that might change, since revelations made by a whistleblower on "Democracy Now!" news hour that health-insurance executives thought they may have to implement a plan "to push Moore off a cliff."

U.S. exaggerates potential damage from latest WikiLeak

The U.S. government, faced with the publication on the internet of a quarter-million cables sent by U.S. embassies in recent years, has responded just as it did when WikiLeaks posted similar troves of secret messages about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the Web earlier this year. It has solemnly warned that WikiLeaks is endangering the lives of American diplomats, soldiers and spooks.

Small Acts of Resistance

The "tourists" (as South Africans used to call them in deliberate mockery of their attempts to terrorize everybody, and as George W. Bush also called them because he didn't speak English very well) are always seeking to blow up our airplanes. Why else would we employ hundreds of thousands of people to stand around in airports and go through our baggage?

Breaking the Sound Barrier

An anguished cry from Argentina: Close Guantanamo

"Gitmo is going to remain open for the foreseeable future," an unnamed White House official told The Washington Post this week. For guidance on the notorious U.S. Navy base in Cuba, President Barack Obama should look to an old naval facility in Buenos Aires, Argentina.