18 QuickLinks
Sunday, August 9, 2009
women at risk Bob Herbert
'Life', Mr Herbert says, 'in the United States is mind-bogglingly violent'. Is it irony, or simply a terrible consequence of this fact, that this state replete with domestic violence doesn't hesitate (at least not when the opponent is judged to be sufficiently weak) to use its unsurpassed resources for military violence against other states, in the name of 'humanitarian intervention' ?...
Friday, April 10, 2009
Israel cries wolf
I must admit that for a commentator on US foreign policy in Southwest Asia publishing in a so-called «mainstream medium» like the New York Times, Mr Cohen is writing some most impressive OpEds these days. The fact that he is - and that the Times is publishing his work, leads me to believe that the risks posed by what he describes as «Netanyahu's intense-eyed attempt to suck America into a perpetuati
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Jailed for a MySpace parody, the student who exposed America's cash for kids scandal
What does this say about the state of justice in the United States ? Can such practices explain, at least in part, why the rate of incarceration in that country is so high ? Do they also help to explain why election campaigns there for judicial posts have become so incredibly costly ?...
Henri
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Keeping the Faith, Ignoring the History
Alas, it seems very unlikely that anybody with political power in the United States is going to listen to Ms Jacoby's wise words. Rather than a hinder on the primrose path to pluto-theocracy in the United States, the Obama administration seems to be turning into a well-paved straight stretch....
Saturday, February 28, 2009
The Geopolitical Great Game: Turkey and Russia Moving Closer
In that «Great Game» which has been played during the last 3000 years for control over the Eurasian land mass, a de-facto alliance between Russia and Turkey would be a most interesting development - and not one, as F William Engdahl here points out, entirely to the liking of those managing affairs in Washington (or, for that matter, Western Europe and the EU)....
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Great Dragon Awakens: China Challenges American Hegemony
Can the Chinese government avoid being drawn into a war with a United States determined to preserve its global hegemony during the period - bound to last a generation or two - in which China's weaknesses, political, economic, and, not least, military, will render such a course a tempting alternative to certain circles in Washington, who find themselves threatened by the prospect of a Chinese rise, albeit by peaceful means ?
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Afghanistan, Another Untold Story
Note the paragraph, 6th from the bottom, which explains why neither the Clinton nor the Bush administration branded pre-US-invasion Afghanistan as a «sponsor of terrorism». «Pecuniam non olet», as Vespasianus observed....
Henri
Friday, September 5, 2008
The Anti-Empire Report (5 September 2008)
Everytime I read one of these monthly reports, I feel a chill - what are we going to do when people like William Blum and Stephen Lendman - or for that matter - Avram Noam Chomsky - with that unique combination of intellectual rigour and a passion for social justice are no longer with us ? Let us treasure them while we can !...
Henri
Monday, September 1, 2008
From Kosovo to Georgia
The problem in the UK, like that in the Empire's centre in the US and also in most of Europe as a whole, is that even those who are prepared to heed George Galloway's implacable logic and search for a means of dealing with a new multipolar world have no place to turn - all the major parties seem determined to take their countries down the road to destruction. Are we incapable of learning from experience ?...
Henri
Monday, September 1, 2008
Russia remains a Black Sea power
A perceptive, dispassionate analysis of reality from Ambassador Bhadrakumar's pen. We witness here the process of a return to a multipolar world in which the writ of one country's leadership no longer constitutes a fiat to be obeyed by all. Despite the evidence of this last decade, let us hope that wisdom and prudence will prevail, even in Washington, allowing it to take place with as little bloodshed as possible....
Henri
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Ted Rall
And «we don't wanna» because it might just lead to ordinary US citizens taking politics, particularly at the national level, seriously, and as Aisōpus put it, «vestigia terrent». Why people might actually begin to demand a Republic !...
Henri
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Jimmy Carter Conspicuously Absent From Podium
(2 comments)
Perhaps Messrs Lieberman and Guttman's article will prove enlightening to those who do not believe that a certain small tail is wagging a rather large dog....
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Georgia is the graveyard of America's unipolar world
If Seamus Milne is correct - and his argumentation is certainly cogent - a very big nail in the coffin of the unipolar world will come when and if the SCO countries, including China, reach a decision to recognise the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Welcome to a multipolar world, which we can at least hope will be governed more wisely than the unipolar world of the last 15 years !...
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
US Bases, Japan and the Reality of Okinawa as a Military Colony
Those interested in learning the sort of fate the US administration had in mind for a conquered Iraq might do well to read Yoshida Kensei's detailed analysis of who, 63 years after the end of WW II, is running things on the Ryūkyū archipelago, nominally a part of Japan, said in turn to be one of the United States' staunchest «allies»....
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Joe Biden and the Myth of Foreign Policy Experience
(5 comments)
With four years as US National Security Advisor and nearly as many as US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice can be said to have «foreign poliyc experience». But is this the type of «experience» voters in the US want guiding their country's foreign policy during another four years ? Why then Joseph Robinette Biden, who seems to espouse the same disastrous policies ?...
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Georgia and Kosovo: A Single Intertwined Crisis
A conservative, but usually reliable (particularly with regard to Russian affairs) commercial intelligence service's tracing of the conflict in Georgia to the US/NATO's war on Serbia. Recommended reading...
Thursday, August 14, 2008
The Caucasus -Washington Risks nuclear war by miscalculation
F William Engdahl's analysis of the background to the brief war in the Caucasus - which, given the Bush/Cheney decision to use the US military to transport «humanitarian aid» to Georgia, may yet escalate out of hand - and the possible consequences for us all if the US drives the conflict further is perhaps the best I've yet seen. The risks humanity runs here are on a par with - indeed, may even exceed those of a war with Iran.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Bob Herbert on US presidential candidates
Mr Herbert is spot on in pointing out that the three remaining mainstream candidates are running, not on what they want to do, but on what (their strategists and managers tell us) they are. Unfortunately, he chooses here to ignore the war(s) in which the US is presently engaged. How can one get the people of the US back to work, with a (US) trillion dollar Pentagon monkey on the country's back ?...
Henri
