Control Information and You Control the Battlefield, We’re the Battlefield

May 20th, 2008 | Trento's Take | | Leave a comment

Photo: The Daily Show
Photo: The Daily Show
Dave Barstow’s story on April 20 in The New York Times on how former military officers were being fed information by the Pentagon for their paid television appearances as unbiased analysts is unfortunately the latest example of how governments and intelligence services use propaganda to influence public opinion. In this case, defense contractors and the bloated Pentagon bureaucracy worked together to mislead the American public.

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Trento’s Column: Big Pharma’s Real Discount Drug Program

March 10th, 2008 | Trento's Take | | Leave a comment

The Associated Press tested drinking water in a number of places and discovered that traces of a wide range of Big Pharma’s products are reaching people through their local water supply. The AP story is important, but, sadly, an old story without, so far, a very happy ending.

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Trento’s Column: Letter From Challenger Whistleblower Roger Boisjoly

August 21st, 2007 | Trento's Take | | One comment

Roger Boisjoly, whose prophetic warnings about the deadly defects of the Challenger space shuttle were ignored by NASA, shares his thoughts about the current state of NASA’s management.

Hi Joe:

Well the idiots that continue their attempt to manage NASA by sticking their heads in the sand when it concerns Flight Safety have been caught once more by the infamous Mr. Murphy of the very well known “Murphy’s Law” – simply stated as, what can go wrong will go wrong. There isn’t an engineer worth his/her salt that doesn’t know that to fool around and tempt Murphy’s Law is a losing proposition and that Murphy will always eventually prevail and often with the least expected timing.

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Trento’s Column: NASA – President Bush’s Other New Orleans

August 13th, 2007 | Trento's Take | | Leave a comment

While most of us have been wondering what Bush and Cheney were going to break next – after Iraq and Afghanistan, we made the mistake of looking overseas when we should have been looking toward the heavens: We should have been covering NASA.

First, the Bush Administration attacked NASA’s climate scientists who had the temerity to point out the world was warming up. So political hacks at the top of NASA dissembled and clubbed the NASA scientists who spoke out like baby seals. The then NASA administrator did nothing to protect his scientists. The press reported it but did not dig. Just like before Challenger and then the Columbia tragedies we accepted the exciting pictures and astronaut interviews but not our own responsibilities as reporters.

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