Category: Uncategorized

General Zhu of the Chinese Air Force is from Canton, but today he is sitting in tiny little Xinjin city, just south of Chengdu, hosting a small banquet of friends and family. Two majors are concentrating hard on providing the General with choice morsels and keeping his cup of baijiu full. The General waves them … Continue reading “Powers Behind the Thrones”

I knew there was something awfully suspicious about the announcement, a few weeks ago, that most U.S. troops were going to be withdrawn from Saudi Arabia. After all, since when does the Empire hail a major retreat? And now my suspicions have been confirmed…. The close, almost symbiotic U.S.-Saudi relationship dates back to the World … Continue reading “Blowback in Riyadh”

Is Gordon Brown a Eurosceptic? Well of course he\’s not, but every time that question is asked of him, or the label is tentatively applied to him, what\’s really meant is: the Chancellor\’s not as keen as the Prime Minister to replace Sterling with the Euro. Whether this distinction exists because the Chancellor, having sat … Continue reading “How Iain Won\’t Save Britain”

Recent revelations that a New York Times reporter invented quotes, fabricated facts and flat-out lied in dozens – if not hundreds – of his stories hardly come as a surprise to a jaded Balkans observer. Lying journalists, fallacious newspapers and severely biased TV coverage are all old news in Belgrade, Sarajevo and Zagreb, even if … Continue reading “Lies Reporters Tell”

Remember how the sanctions were the equivalent of "genocide" committed by the Evil American Imperialists against the Oppressed Peoples of Iraq? Well, that was then, according to Rahul Mahajan, writing on AlterNet, and reprinted in Counterpunch and Commie Dreams, but this is now, and I quote: "After five years spent working to end the sanctions … Continue reading “The Anti-Americans”

Well, we’re certainly teaching the Iraqi people about democracy – and as it is actually practiced, which is not necessarily the way those whose exposure has been limited to civics textbooks might expect it to be practiced. It features intrigue, behind-the-scenes maneuvering and positioning among forces who want to win out at some point, careerism … Continue reading “Hard Lessons in Democracy”

Justin is ill today, but his column will be back on Wednesday. Here is a classic column from last year. June 10, 2002A C-Net news item, with the ominous title of "FBI digs deeper into the Web," details how the feds will be tracing the digital trails people leave as they surf the internet, and … Continue reading “Classic Raimondo: Living in Soviet America”

Westernization is proceeding smoothly in Iraq, if imitation of Israel is your yardstick, anyway. Iraqis have demonstrated that they too can evict Palestinians, and with admirable swiftness. You see, many of those who fled to Iraq after 1948 were placed, ironically, in the confiscated homes of dissidents. Now, as if to remind the Palestinians that … Continue reading “We’re All Israelis Now – Except for the Palestinians”

In 1967, as the War in Vietnam dragged on and on, Carl Oglesby, then President of Students for a Democratic Society, commented on how the Right Wing saw that war. Most of the Right, he noted, “accepts the political description” of the war and, therefore, “wants it the war to be more fiercely waged.”(1) In … Continue reading “Asymmetric Politics”

The mystery of 9/11 only gets murkier as time goes on. How did a rag-tag group of 19 (plus one) conspirators manage to hijack three airliners and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon – without so much as a small blip showing on law enforcement’s radar screen? We may never know … Continue reading “Smoking Gun”