History is the collective memory of a society. Individuals can be manipulated by tampering with their recollections (see Christopher Nolan’s eerie Memento), but doing this to societies is much easier. Personal memory is at least derived from human senses,...
WAR PARTY DUMPS BUSH?
It had to happen sooner or later, and I don't want to sound too full of myself, but I did predict it: I mean the attempt to tie the Saudis, Al Qaeda, and the Bush administration into one gigantic conspiracy and cover-up. Headlines are being made by Newsweek, which ran...
Homeland Security Is the Largest Federal Expansion in 50 Years
The administration and Congress put the finishing touches on the monstrous Homeland Security bill last week, creating the first new federal department since the Department of Defense at the end of World War II. Laughably, the new department has been characterized as...
Deck Chairs on the Ship of State
Well, President Bush has his Homeland Security Agency. I hope he’s happy. I doubt that American taxpayers and citizens will be especially pleased when it all shakes out, but the president has parlayed this year’s election results into the appearance of...
SABOTAGE!
It's strange what the media has focused on in the extraordinary excerpts from Bob Woodward's Bush at War published in the Washington Post. A single sentence about how Roger Ailes advised the President in the days after 9/11 has them all in a lather, but my eyes nearly...
TOTALLY CLUELESS
The latest scheme to enslave us in the name of waging a "war on terrorism" is so bizarre, so obviously the product of a nascent megalomania, that it seems like something out of a very bad novel. According to published reports, the U.S. government is...
‘An Irresponsible Exercise in Political Chicanery’
On Tuesday, the Senate voted 90-9 to approve the landmark Homeland Security bill. What follows is the full transcript of Sen. Byrd's remarks during the conclusion of the Homeland Security debate. We have come to the end of a long, long road. For nearly five months...
‘An Irresponsible Exercise in Political Chicanery’
On Tuesday, the Senate voted 90-9 to approve the landmark Homeland Security bill. What follows is the full transcript of Sen. Byrd's remarks during the conclusion of the Homeland Security debate. We have come to the end of a long, long road. For nearly five months...
The Incoming Hu Era
The culminating change in China’s 20 year transition from a communist country paralyzed by revolution and poverty to a capitalizing golden child of businessmen around the world is passing before us this month. Jiang’s era is ending and a new group of leaders...
Making the Balkans Connection
In two commentaries this past week, Empire’s Balkans adventures were brought up in connection with the planned invasion and occupation of Iraq. They didn’t say, though they could have, that the new UN resolution paving the way for weapons inspectors was akin...