Month: April 2005

When a supposedly fixed election in distant Kyrgyzstan did not meet the “democratic” standards of either the U.S. government or the European Union, it was time for yet another color-coded Western-financed “revolution.” When Eduard Shevardnadze ceased to be useful to the U.S., a “Rose Revolution” bloomed in Georgia. In Ukraine, where electoral politics is subject … Continue reading “Trouble South of the Border”

Junk food and junk laws, neither are good for you. Unfortunately for Americans, an ever increasing number of junk laws are paving our way to national disaster. What are junk laws? They are laws passed by the Congress and then ignored; to wit, unenforced immigration laws, unregulated borders, and dual citizens voting in U.S. and … Continue reading “Sandy Berger’s Scissors”

Laowai is a colloquial term for foreigner in China – lao means old and wai means outside. In Chinese, the word lao denotes respect (e.g., laoshi = teacher, laoban = boss) and is a polite way to address older relatives, big brothers, etc. For most Chinese, laowai is a noun like any other. For most … Continue reading “Laowai and Zibenren”

The report [.pdf] of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction begins as follows: "On the brink of war, and in front of the whole world, the United States government asserted that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program, had biological weapons and mobile biological weapon … Continue reading “Smoking Rockets”

So far, only a trickle of U.S. soldiers are heading north to Canada to avoid serving in the U.S. military campaign in Iraq. It is still relatively early in the conflict, which has not reached the level of the equally controversial U.S. military involvement in Vietnam three decades ago, says John Hagan, a professor of … Continue reading “For Reluctant GIs, Canada Remains the Great White Hope”

Last December, Mark Danner took a piercing look back at our Presidential election in Florida, “How Bush Really Won,” printed up in the New York Review of Books and posted on line at Tomdispatch. In the aftermath of another election, closely linked to our own and to the well being of our President, Danner returns … Continue reading “The Real Iraqi Election”

Since the founding of the CIA in 1947, it has been under attack, mainly from the right. Although left-center charges that the CIA has engineered coups against democratically-elected governments and trained death squads have received more public attention, a phalanx of right-center forces have been the CIA’s most implacable foes. For more than five decades, … Continue reading “Negroponte and the CIA’s Eclipse”

This is the way Dafna Linzer of the Washington Post began her analysis last week of the report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction; “Of all the claims U.S. intelligence made about Iraq’s arsenal in the fall and winter of 2002, it was a handful … Continue reading “Bronx Cheers for the Nuke Commission?”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congress is poised to give President George Bush $80 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Senate is expected to pass the measure Monday. In the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday afternoon, every Democrat joined the Republicans in supporting the extra money, but that doesn’t mean they were happy … Continue reading “Looks Like $80 Billion More for War, Despite Objections”

In Defense of John Paul II, PeacemakerThanks and kudos to Justin Raimondo for his recent Behind the Headlines column. Whether one is Catholic or not, agnostic, atheist or true believer, those who are all these things and antiwar, can appreciate the Holy Father’s leadership and moral clarity in destroying the faux moralism of the War … Continue reading “Backtalk, April 9, 2005”