“May you live in interesting times” – that old (supposedly Chinese) curse seems to define the world today. “Interesting” is meant in the snarkish sense: it is a euphemism for unpleasant, or even intolerable, although in the present context I think a more appropriate...
As the US stock market was dropping 1,000 points on Monday morning, US commentators were pinning the blame on China. The Chinese economy, they said, was slowing down: what had been the “engine” of worldwide economic expansion was running out of fuel. The clear...
With the failure to find “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, and the disastrous outcome of that war, one would think the War Party would be so discredited that they’d never make a comeback – that they’d never be able to recover from the horrific results of their...
I assume a good proportion of my readers aren’t old enough to remember the beer commercial referenced in the title of this column, this one for Miller beer: “If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the beer.” Speaking of another Miller, one with the first name Judith, we...
Donald Trump is making headlines by claiming that Mexican illegal “aliens” are raping and murdering their way across America – and that the Mexican government is deliberately directing their criminals our way. Mexico’s leaders are “very smart” and ours are...
When John Kerry came to Cuba to preside over the reopening of the US embassy, he called for democracy: “[T]he people of Cuba would be best served by genuine democracy, where people are free to choose their leaders, express their ideas, practice their faith; where the...
Chelsea Manning, the former US Army intelligence officer behind the one of biggest leaks of diplomatic and other sensitive (i.e. embarrassing) material in American history, is facing indefinite solitary confinement at the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, brig where she is...
If the "first tier" Republican presidential debate revealed anything, it is the huge empty space that is at the heart of the conservative mind, circa 2015. No wonder a vacuous nonentity like Donald Trump is leading in all the polls: his gargantuan ego has...
Ron Paul changed American politics in a way that no single individual can claim: it was Paul, a congressman from a rural district in Texas, who put libertarianism on the political map. It was the movement he inspired – a movement driven largely by young people – that...
The Iran deal is a turning point in US foreign policy, and its approval by Congress will represent a sea change in American politics: it will mark nothing less than a day of liberation which future generations might dub "VI Day" – victory over Israel day. The...
