Category: Uncategorized

Going by the signals emanating from Almaty and Singapore, and from Washington, New Delhi and Islamabad, the level of official rhetoric of India-Pakistan hostility has come down by a few decibels during the past week. This must be heartily welcomed. But the lowering of the pitch of hostility is not consistent and pervasive, nor yet … Continue reading “Military Force is No Solution”

In an earlier column, I theorized that when the hijackers rammed those planes into the World Trade Center, they must’ve torn a hole in the space-time continuum, opening the door to another dimension – the Bizarro World – an alternate universe where everything is grotesquely inverted. But now it seems that the Great Inversion may … Continue reading “THE AGE OF MALARKEY”

In a way, the news that the Bush administration is developing a new strategic doctrine that involves preemptive strikes against terrorists and states alleged to have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons could be viewed as simply formalizing what has been U.S. intervention doctrine for years now. After all, the United States did not require an … Continue reading “The Empire Strikes First”

If Tories were rats being drowned in a bucket, it would be neither water nor bucket that would bother them, but whether a Clarkeite’s blanched belly bobbed to the surface first. The most recent example of this came after l’affaire Cummings, when the party’s newly appointed director of strategy choose to reveal the innermost thinking … Continue reading “What Are We Fighting For?”

A 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 reports the outrage of civil libertarians. The new guidelines giving the Justice Department the formal authority to monitor the online activities of … Continue reading “LIVING IN A SOVIET AMERICA”

A Note from the Author: This is a continuation of my Wednesday column on the formerly libertarian Cato Institute’s complete capitulation to the war hysteria, and is best read in that context. To summarize briefly: in endorsing Attorney General John Ashcroft’s decision to start "monitoring" political groups for evidence of subversive activities, I wrote, Cato … Continue reading “TURN TOWARD THE LEFT”

It was shocking, and I had to re-read the press release just to make sure: was the libertarian Cato Institute really saying that they had "no problem" with the FBI’s new "guidelines" that gave the cops a green light to spy on domestic groups? For the fifth time, my widened eyes scanned the page:"No Problem … Continue reading “GO LEFT, YOUNG MAN”

It was shocking, and I had to re-read the press release just to make sure: was the libertarian Cato Institute really saying that they had "no problem" with the FBI’s new "guidelines" that gave the cops a green light to spy on domestic groups? For the fifth time, my widened eyes scanned the page:"No Problem … Continue reading “GO LEFT, YOUNG MAN”

The CBS reporter Monday morning – I didn’t catch the name, coming in at the end of the report – was probably not conscious of implicitly endorsing a theory of international relations and political action, and one without a whole lot of evidence behind it. Discussing the fact that the presidents of India and Pakistan … Continue reading “Underlying Problems in South Asia”

“I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.”In the wake of 9/11, much has been written of the link between religion – specifically, Islam – and the rise of the terrorist threat: the religion of Mohammed, we are told, represents a dire threat to the West, comparable, in scope and potential lethality, to that of … Continue reading “IN THE SHADOW OF SHIVA”