Antiwar.com

Contradictions abounded at the Summit of the Americas, held in Quebec City over the weekend, not the least of which was the outrage of protesters at wire fences that separated them from the prime ministers and presidents meeting on the other side. “The fence,” expostulated a young man whose face was hidden by a green … Continue reading “Quebec Crackpots”

The utter meaninglessness of the “left”-“right” political spectrum was brought home to me the other day, as I read yet another anti-Chinese diatribe: “It was,” averred the editorialist, “a sweet triumph for the philologists of appeasement” when the Bush administration settled the Hainan incident with a few words of diplomacy. WorldNetDaily? Nope. The Weekly (Sub)Standard? … Continue reading “The Anti-China Left”

What are they thinking, some of these people in Congress and on television who want to make more of the American spy plane near China incident than is warranted? One is not surprised, perhaps, at advocates of “benevolent” American hegemony like Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan whining that the American side conceded too much and … Continue reading “Commerce and Peace”

The recent confrontation with China has shifted the focus of US policymakers to Eastasia, but most analysts have viewed this in terms of cold war ideology (the neoconservatives) or economics (Team Bush). As far as I know, only William Pfaff framed the issue in geopolitical and historical terms, making the point that this may be … Continue reading “Rising Sun”

In a previous column we have seen how Barak united an overwhelming majority of Israelis behind the dangerous conviction that "The Enemy Does Not Want Peace." By now, this has been affirmed empirically: According to the findings of a Peace Index survey conducted by Tel Aviv University’s Tami Steinmetz Centre for Peace Research, 72 percent … Continue reading “Israeli Left Sells Out Peace”

I heard about the first poster calling for demonstrations against America and death to the American devils minutes before I walked into my Tuesday afternoon English class. According to my friend, who saw the poster, members of the Southwest Agricultural University English Department put it up – in other words, students of mine. I looked … Continue reading “On the Street in China: A Report”

William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, has the best public relations operation around: in spite of the fact that his puny little magazine has significantly less readers than Antiwar.com, and regularly loses millions, he is the liberals’ favorite conservative, and thus gets touted by ABC News (where he once served as the “conservative” counterpoint … Continue reading “Kristol and Buchanan”

With the downing/landing/whatever of the U.S. spy plane on the Chinese island of Hainan, talk of sovereignty is once again rampant. Was the airplane actually over territory that the Chinese nation claims as a sovereign as part of its airspace? Can the United States claim that the interior of the plane is in law a … Continue reading “Considering Sovereignty”

ON MAKING REALITY CONFORM TO PRECONCEPTIONS The whole history of US-Chinese relations could be written as a history of the delusions held by US policy makers and business interests about China. What China actually was, or is, entered into matters very little, aside from occasional US attempts at meddling and influencing the course of events … Continue reading “China Syndrome”

Novelist Gore Vidal has been chosen by Tim McVeigh to be one of a very few who will be allowed to witness McVeigh’s upcoming execution – and the legion of the politically correct (neoconservative division) is up in arms. Andrew Sullivan, gay neoconservative poster boy and rising star of the moment – if I see … Continue reading “In Defense of Gore Vidal”