"[N]o legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail, either by supply management or attempt to monopolize transportation," thundered Vice President Cheney to the international pro-democracy conference in Vilnius, Lithuania....
The Intelligence Reorganization Needs Reorganizing
The Bush administration's intelligence reorganization, based on the deified recommendations of the 9/11 Commission to expand the intelligence bureaucracy, is an abysmal failure. A second reorganization is needed that will streamline and consolidate the multi-headed...
Korean Farmers Clash With the Empire
Sixty South Korean activists will face criminal after they attacked police as part of a thousand-strong protest against a government plan to expand a U.S. military base in Pyongtaek, about an hour's drive south of Seoul. According to press reports, clashes came after...
Dolts or Liars
Either most members of the media elite have a reading comprehension problem – which would necessarily result in low scores for them on standard IQ tests – or they deliberately misrepresent to you what they have read. Now, that's not too serious when you can...
Foreign Policy, Monetary Policy, and Gas Prices
The burning issue in Washington today is high gas prices, and it won't go away anytime soon. Americans are not happy about paying $3 per gallon at the pump, and they want something done about it. But price controls won't work, and allegations of price gouging and...
My Meeting With Rumsfeld
"Hold 'em, Yale" is one of the best short stories of Guys and Dolls creator Damon Runyon, who depicted the New York City underworld in the 1920s. The story deals with an undercover operation to scalp ducats before the annual Yale-Harvard football game. It...
The Next World War
All the wheels and pulleys of a very familiar narrative are swinging into motion, creaking and grating against gears, as the usual suspects grind out their war propaganda. Every day, it seems, there is some newly discovered quotation from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran...
Straw Canned Over Iran?
Sunday's Independent carries a piece speculating on whether former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw lost his job, in part, because the Bush regime disliked his lack of crusading fervor. Francis Elliott writes: "Jack Straw's fate was sealed in a phone call...
Want to Intervene in Darfur? Go Ahead
To George Clooney and the other Americans who demonstrated and demanded that the U.S. intervene in the Darfur region of Sudan, I have a simple and clear message: Buy yourself a gun and plenty of ammunition, and go intervene yourself. In the 1930s, a tougher breed of...
Backtalk, May 8, 2006
Comrade Cheney vs. President PutinBeing a modest student of geopolitics and the history of the great game, I have never doubted that the primary reason, the final target of America's involvement in the Middle East is the breakup of Russia. Sure, there are other...