Month: February 2003

Being the most destructive endeavor humanity has ever practiced, it is difficult to comprehend why wars seem like such a common phenomenon. That is, unless one realizes that the very root of the civic religion permeating the modern world is in human gullibility, and through it the vulnerability to the sort of mass hysteria war … Continue reading “Excuses and Justifications”

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell dropped a bombshell at a Congressional hearing on Iraq and revealed that he had a transcript of an "upcoming" audio message from Osama bin Laden that betrays the links between bin Laden and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. However, the White House may have put its foot in … Continue reading “Misleading the Public”

Colin Powell launched a preemptive strike early Tuesday morning against the latest evidence that the alleged Bin Laden-Al Qaeda link is a lot of malarkey. The first indication that anyone had of a new message from Osama bin Laden was Powell’s statement to a Senate budget panel: “Once again [Bin Laden] speaks to the people … Continue reading “One Battlefield, Two Wars”

One blank is filled in by \’France\’, and the other by \’the United States\’; the writer is British, Eurosceptic, from the Conservative Party\’s right wing, and is writing in The Daily Telegraph. The two sentences are separated by the sum total of 58 words, and Mr Andrew Roberts (author of the recently published Churchill and … Continue reading “Hardly Even Au Revoir”

Thanks to the editors of The American Conservative for putting my piece on the antiwar movement online – that means I don’t have to write a column today! Not that I’m going to be idle. Because, you see, I have to get together yet another fundraising letter (moan). My last one raised nearly $6,000 – … Continue reading “Antiwar Breakthrough!”

In the case of an American war on Iraq, Palestinians will not be watching for a "smart bomb" heading their way, but for the Israeli army forcing them out of their homes. This possibility is of greater danger that one might think. It is seldom that the international community has stood in the face of … Continue reading “War on Iraq Double Disaster for Palestinians”

I suppose there are people who imagine that the conservative movement was pretty much on the right track, before it succumbed to a boarding party of former Cold War liberals – some of whom had been Trotskyites before they were Cold War liberals. Certainly, some important changes stem from that hostile takeover, but in the … Continue reading “The Crazies Who Preceded the Loonies”

We are now being inundated with hosannas to Colin Powell’s UN speech as having “delivered the goods” and, supposedly, a knockout blow to the “give inspections a chance” crowd, but I don’t believe a word of it because, well, I can’t say it any better than my friend Jim Henley: “Because they lie. Routinely and … Continue reading “The Lying Game”

It is hard for many people to imagine the size and scope of China, especially with the big seaboard cities taking up all the limelight and only the occasionaly Xinjiang flare-up, Three Gorges study or Yunnan pictorial bringing the rest of the country into the world’s focus. It is also difficult to imagine a country … Continue reading “Villages in Transition”

This Tuesday, the parliament of the last Yugoslavia decided to lay the name and the idea to rest, abolishing the country in favor of a new, ill-defined entity called "Serbia and Montenegro." The new Constitutional Charter and the bill governing its implementation had already been passed by the Serbian parliament on the 28th, and by … Continue reading “Yugoslavia’s End”