Race and Empire

America is obsessed with matters of race, and always has been. Back in the day, this preoccupation was focused on who could and could not sit at a lunch counter, or at the front of the bus. Now that we are living in a “post-racial” world, and the President of these...

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Robert Bales: Mass Murderer
and PTSD Poster Boy

The story of Robert Bales, mass murderer, has pretty much disappeared from the headlines: news of the grisly killing spree, during which he slaughtered nine children and eight adults, has been displaced by the sudden “discovery” that 100,000-plus US soldiers are...

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US to Iran: Surrender Dorothy!

On a recent trip to Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid down the law: America must threaten the Iranians with war if Tehran insists on pursuing its nuclear energy program. We are supposed to take seriously Netanyahu’s threats to strike Iran...

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An Open Letter to Ron Paul

Dear Ron, A lot of my readers are big fans of yours: on those rare but pungent occasions when I have criticized you, I've gotten lots of "blowback" in the comments section and in emails sent directly to my inbox. Whenever I praised you, I've enjoyed a...

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Spying on the Spies

Stewart Nozette, a brilliant scientist whose work was instrumental in advancing the US space program, was convicted last year of attempting to spy on behalf of Israel, and this month was sentenced to 13 years in prison and a substantial fine. Under investigation for...

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The Truth About Bo Xilai

The mysterious Orient, hidden behind a façade of inscrutability, an enigma wrapped in a veil of secrecy: that’s how the internal politics of China are “reported” in the West – and that’s just the way the present Chinese leadership...

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Obama’s Foreign Policy Guru

On the eve of the President’s last State of the Union speech the White House let it be known that a recent essay by Robert Kagan in The New Republic, which excerpted his book, The World America Made, had been sent to his national security staff for their perusal. As...

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