Bizarre Balkans Bulletin There is a good reason most contemporary Balkans literature tends to be surreal. It is hard to write realistic fiction when reality is far more bizarre than anything literary wizards are capable of conjuring. In a place that logic and reason seem to have abandoned a while ago, ironies and absurdities abound, …
Continue reading “Reality Bites”
The dramatic climax of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s visit to the United States will no doubt be his address to a joint session of Congress, where he is sure to receive a hero’s welcome. That conclave of self-serving phonies knows a kindred soul when it sees one. But the real high point (or low point, …
Continue reading “Yushchenko’s Gambit”
Disclosure of a 75 percent increase in secret wiretaps and "sneak and peek" searches since 2000 is likely to provide ammunition for civil liberties groups determined to modify the USA PATRIOT Act when Congress begins two months of debate on the law Tuesday. The USA PATRIOT Act was hurriedly enacted shortly after the Sept. 11, …
Continue reading “Cooler Heads Review PATRIOT Act in Congress”
The (unrequited) love of my life did his basic training in an elite Israeli commando. Once, after he had been characteristically belligerent, his "merciful" commanders made him stand in the rain throughout the night, bed on back. At 19, he was a powerfully built six-foot-three. Although temperamentally not suited to obedience, no one doubted his …
Continue reading “About a Boy”
If Iraq has been the disaster zone of Bush foreign policy, Afghanistan is still generally thought of as its success story – to the extent that anyone in our part of the world thinks about that country at all any more. Before the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan experienced a relative flood of American attention. It …
Continue reading “Drugs, Bases, and Jails: The Afghan Spring”
http://www.independent.org/tii/antiwar/e050405.html
The inside-the-Beltway debate over the size of the military is about how to increase the number of troops by 100,000, not whether to do so. At a recent debate on the draft sponsored by the Center for American Progress (CAP), the views ranged from reinstating the draft to enhancing economic incentives for enlistment. Rather than …
Continue reading “‘Progressives’ for Slavery”
Listen to Scott’s interview with Chalmers Johnson stream download mp3 Chalmers Johnson, author of Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, and the guest on my March 26 radio show [stream] [download mp3], spent decades as what he now calls a …
Continue reading “The Teetering Empire”
BEIRUT – Lebanon‘s recent string of bomb attacks directed against Christian areas around Beirut has resulted in a war-weary population returning to old behavioral patterns. Set against the backdrop of an ongoing political crisis spurred by the assassination of former premier Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14, the late-night bombings have taken place at a regular …
Continue reading “That Wartime Feel Returns to Lebanon”
Many military veterans were shocked to see that the federal budget for 2006 makes several cuts in veterans benefits and services. Under the proposed budget, the Veterans Administration will increase once again the co-pay cost of prescription drugs, while adding a new annual fee for medical benefits. The budget also calls for the reduction of …
Continue reading “More Empty Rhetoric for Veterans” 
