Month: November 2003

Except for maybe Sichuanese and (Inner) Mongolians, Chinese aren’t really the fist fighting type. Of course a fight breaks out every second in a country of 1.3 billion, but relatively speaking, most Chinese will yell and point and have the neighbors gather before they let fly with the fists and low-cut black dress shoes. But … Continue reading “Taiwan, the Errant Son”

Mosul, recently held up as an example of our successful occupation of Iraq, was where two American soldiers were shot, dragged out of their car and had their bodies pummeled with concrete blocks by a mob that had quickly gathered. All of this happened recently in broad daylight in the heart of the city. Would … Continue reading “Occupation Is a Lose-Lose Proposition”

As outlined in Project for the New American Century’s statement on post-war Iraq, the geopolitical objectives of the Carlucci-Woolsey-Kristol Pax Americana include complete disarmament of the Iraqis, the maintenance of “territorial integrity,” and the installation of a state. I believe that all three of these objectives can be easily discredited with careful consideration. We have … Continue reading “R.I.P. Sykes-Picot”

‘The Motive for the Invasion‘ If the motive for the invasion was chaos and devastation for the purpose of extracting oil from the Iraqi corpse, what, in your view, would be the motive behind the motive? Global nuclear war? World domination? Political suicide? If any of these, why, and what do you think is the … Continue reading “”

The forcible shutting down of the Al-Arabiya news channel in Baghdad is the first act of a new dictatorship shedding its teeth in the increasingly undemocratic Iraq. What is a dictatorship? A classic definition clarifies that it is "a form of government in which the ruler is an absolute dictator (not restricted by a constitution … Continue reading “Media War: The Rise of a New Dictatorship in Iraq?”

Uighur separatists from China are likely to be mistreated if they are returned to Beijing’s custody from the Guantanamo Bay naval base as the US administration is reportedly considering, says the group Human Rights Watch (HRW). More than a dozen members of the Muslim ethnic group are being held at the base in Cuba with … Continue reading “US Freeing Guantanamo Inmates to Torture?”

On Sunday, November 23, I took part in a nonviolent civil disobedience action at Fort Benning, GA, to protest the U.S. Army´s School of the Americas (SOA, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation – WHISC) Shortly after more than two dozen of us entered Fort Benning and were arrested, US Military Police … Continue reading “Hogtied and Abused at Fort Benning”

Furor over the strong showing of the Radicals in Serbia’s failed presidential election has just subsided in the West, when news came of Croatia’s electoral results. Three years after imploding upon the death of its leader, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) regained power with a slim but respectable parliamentary majority. Reports from Croatia, while nowhere … Continue reading “Return to the Right?”

Some people, including our president, seem to think that once free elections are held in Iraq, democracy will exist and everything will be just fine and dandy from there on out. This rather widespread belief stems from a misunderstanding or ignorance of our own country and its history. It isn’t the elections that have given … Continue reading “Imposed Government Will Create Its Own Opposition”

As I said in an earlier column, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are already lost. Nothing the United States can do can yield an American victory in either place. In all probability, both wars were lost before the first bomb was dropped or the first shot fired. They were lost because, in an era … Continue reading “The Politics Of War”