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Shortly after Sept. 11, the war against al-Qaeda morphed into the war against the Taliban regime. As the US bombed Afghanistan, it enlisted the Northern Alliance (NA), led by the notoriously unsavory warlord Rashid Dostum, to do the dirty work on the ground. In "a US-orchestrated military operation" (6), the NA captured the Taliban stronghold … Continue reading “Slow Death on the Jail Convoys of Misery”

If, twelve years ago, someone had written a book about the Balkans wars that contained even a tenth of what has actually happened since, they’d have been laughed right out of every publishing house in the world. Truth, as Mark Twain remarked, really is stranger than fiction. That, alas, does not prevent so many events … Continue reading “Pulp Reality”

Shortly after Sept. 11, the war against al-Qaeda morphed into the war against the Taliban regime. As the US bombed Afghanistan, it enlisted the Northern Alliance (NA), led by the notoriously unsavory warlord Rashid Dostum, to do the dirty work on the ground. In "a US-orchestrated military operation" (6), the NA captured the Taliban stronghold … Continue reading “Slow Death on the Jail Convoys of Misery”

The controversy over the fourth of July gunman at LAX, Hashem Mohamed Hadayet, known as "Ali," is typical of any issue involving Israel. Since it advances Israel’s interests to maintain that Hadayet was part of a larger terrorist operation, a footsoldier in a worldwide Islamofascist network, then it must be true. Which is why Israeli … Continue reading “A MATTER OF FACT”

The night is rounding down and my friend downs the rest of his beer, takes a slow look around the emptying club and announces: “I’m gonna get me a xiaojie!” (little sister/one-night lover) He whispers and chuckles the finer points of xiaojie hunting to me as we exit the club along with similarly conspiring well-dressed … Continue reading “Protection”

As the Afghan campaign devolves into what University of California political science professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson told me is something of a “phony war” in which the U.S. blunders without a plan and gets drawn in deeper, the imminent war against Iraq is starting to draw some mild second thoughts. This is all to the … Continue reading “Iraqi Warmonger Complications”

Last week found me standing on a Sussex beach, lost in my own thoughts, staring out towards the channel and (presumably) France beyond. I had come, on a whim, onto the small village of Rottingdean, sometime home to Max Boot’s hero, so as to be beside the sea after a trip to Lewes. Like all … Continue reading “My Day at the Seaside”

You would think that a spy scandal such as was reported by FBI wiretap translator Sibel Edmonds would rate mile-high headlines. So far, however, the coverage of this story has been limited to the Washington Post and … here. Edmonds claims that one of her fellow translators met with a government official of a foreign … Continue reading “9/11 – REVISED EDITION”

I do not mean, by the odd title I have chosen, to suggest there are no war powers, plural, to be found in this fair land of freedom. Far from it. “There’s a lot of it about,” as the Brits were saying a decade ago, even if no one quite knew what that phrase meant. … Continue reading “Show Us the ‘War Power’!”

The retiring and the designated Israeli Chiefs-of-Staff sound like twins: both Shaul Mofaz and Moshe Yaalon insist that the next war is inevitable. – Yet another war? Yes: the re-occupation of the West Bank has not satiated the junta’s desires at all. In fact, the on-going war on the Palestinians, with its clear genocidal features, … Continue reading “The New World Order and the Stone Age”