Category: Uncategorized

One of the pleasures of keeping fat files – sometimes outweighed, sometimes not by the general air of messiness on the desk – is the opportunity to compare what officials said they expected at various times in the past to what has actually occurred. In the case of NATO officialdom’s hopes/expectations/predictions about how things were … Continue reading “NATO’S SHEER INCOMPETENCE: A LARGER MEANING?”

Whatever else they disagree on when it comes to the controversy surrounding Elian Gonzalez, pundits left and right all nod their heads sagely whenever someone says that this is a great “tragedy” and offers up the bromide that “no one is a winner” in this case. This is incomprehensible to most Cuban-Americans, and no doubt … Continue reading “Elian Gonzalez and the Hand of God”

THE STATE OF PLAY A few weeks ago, I dealt with the overblown reaction to the electoral success of Austrian’s "far right." Since then, the watchdogs of Euro morality have taken up other subjects, but "sanctions" remain in place. Some Portuguese fellow who reigns over the EU’s central committee reportedly said lately that there were … Continue reading “Nationalism I: Austria, Nations, States, and Human Scale Revisited”

The BBC headline said it all: “Serb Hackers on the rampage” – or did it? This was the story the media went with in response to last week’s spate of hacking attacks on a number of high profile sites, including Addidas and Viagra, where the content was stripped and replaced with a Serbian double-headed eagle … Continue reading “An Electronic Pearl Harbor?”

With the end of the Cold War, and the implosion of Communism, the political landscape in the US is undergoing a seismic shift. The Left, which had once been antiwar and pro-individual rights (at least in theory) has been infected with a mania for militarism (albeit in the name of “humanitarianism”) and a penchant for … Continue reading “Who Won the Cold War?–The Answer May Surprise You”

It could well be that as somebody who makes his living manipulating words I have an undue and unjustified faith in the importance and ultimate efficacy of calling phenomena by their proper names to advance understanding and enlightenment. Even granting that such is probably an unwarranted hope, however, I can’t help but be encouraged that … Continue reading “TALKIN’ EMPIRE BLUES”

It feels oddly like being at a wake in a funeral home. Our four delegation members whisper together as we wait to tour the Al Mansour Children’s wing at the Saddam City Medical Centre. The Director is away, so someone has been sent to find a senior doctor to brief us. As I flip open … Continue reading “What About the Incubators?”

At the height of the Kosovo war hysteria, when we were being subjected to a daily barrage of bawling refugees telling vivid horror stories of alleged Serbian “atrocities,” the estimates of dead Kosovars went as high as 100,000. If “genocide” was committed in Kosovo, then where are all the bodies? This is a question that … Continue reading “Our War Crimes, and Theirs”

We know that they lied. There was no “holocaust” in Kosovo that justified NATO’s “humanitarian” intervention” – just a civil war in which there were 2,108 casualties on both sides before NATO’s bombs began falling. And just as there were no Nazi-like legions of Serbian mass murderers engaged in an orgiastic slaughter of the innocents, … Continue reading “Judgement Day for the Western Media: Kosovo and the Big Lie”

Louis Bromfield was a sort of Northern agrarian, a Jeffersonian democrat of the Old Northwest. He was soft on FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps and some aspects of the Tennessee Valley Authority, but was otherwise critical of New Deal methods, as can be seen in his essays on farming in Pleasant Valley (1943[reprint 1971]). Bromfield was … Continue reading “Louis Bromfield (1896-1956): Farmer, Novelist, and Cold War Critic”