The Republicans have always made it clear that they stand for the “value” of advancing the interests of the rich. Really, little has changed on that score since the days of the beloved William McKinley. Sure, we have the occasional GOP apostate like Rockefeller or Teddy Roosevelt (themselves rich NY Republicans who think that “noblesse oblige” exists)… but generally, consistency. The Dems by contrast… well, since FDR and LBJ, who the hell knows what they stand for? Fast forward: the Dems controlled Congress for decades. Dems COULD HAVE seen to it that (1) voting was set up in a tamper-proof,...

In this week’s visit to The People’s Daily, Beijing’s house organ gives us these two pieces, one simply entitled “U.S. aims its cudgel at Syria, Iran”., and the other concerning the fact that Russia presses on with development of Iran’s Besahr nuclear power station. The American cudgel article features wonderful idiomatic translations like “axial evil” and others, but what it’s mostly about is that the thing we don’t do: nuance. Policies toward Iran (Axis of Evil TM) and Syria (what I will call the “Annex of Evil”) are, you know complicated and s**t. The Chinese, though, are clearly hip to...

A quickie visit to Pravda this weekend notes the historical irony of the fact that our efforts to isolate Syria (in this case, with the help of our newfound friend, France, has led Syria to call on the one country that has remained its ally through thick and thin: Russia. Lest the irony be lost on everyone, Syria was a Soviet distant satellite/ally back when it first occupied Lebanon in the late 1980’s to calm down the crazed civil war between local Moslems (mostly Shiites), Christians, and Palestinians (mostly Sunnis). Syrian occupation has been problematic, but I think it’s fair...

It would appear that American forces manning a checkpoint near Baghdad had seen Speed too many times, as they adopted the strategy espoused by Keanu Reeves’ character of what to do in a hostage situation (i.e., “shoot the hostage, and take them out of the equation”) by doing precisely that, resulting in the death of an Italian intelligence agent and the wounding of a recently freed Italian hostage, Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist kidnapped in Iraq. It would appear that the American troops in that area are sufficiently wary of just about everything, that a car speeding at them and not...

Say what you will about the 43rd President of the United States, but when he says he means action, he means action. He meant to forge “a new Middle East”, and by God, changes are in the offing. We have more or less free and fair Palestinian elections (albeit because of the death of Arafat, but surprisingly orderly nonetheless). We have an assassination in Lebanon where the suspect list seems to be coming down to one particular government based in Damascus, which in turn resulted in the fall of the Syrian backed government and massive street protests whichjust may lead...

That would be the sorry saga of “dirty bomb” suspect Jose Padilla. In a stinging 23-page opinion, a federal judge in South Carolina (one, might I add, appointed by this President Bush) ordered the Government to charge Padilla within 45 days, or release him. Apparently, Judge Henry Floyd in Spartanburg, SC, whose opinion lambasted the Administration for defying the rule of law, separation of powers, etc., etc., didn’t get the memos from Al Gonzales and Nino Scalia; the fool thinks that habeas corpus is still an effective writ against the divine musings of our king. Not to worry. Padilla’s 2...

The 1980’s and the 1990’s were most optimistic times: people seriously believed that information advances, beginning with the fax machine and culminating in the internet would, of necessity, integrate all aspects of the world at the speed of light, and places that heretofore were stymied under the heavy hand of authoritarian regimes and worse would liberalize. And not merely economically. China, the world’s largest nation and the world’s most rapidly developing one, seemed to be the primary focus of this thinking. It was believed that the fax machine hastened the student protest movement that, alas, was crushed by good old...

For this week’s visit to Pravda, we’ll look at the sharp drop-off in the value of the U.S. dollar against other currencies caused by an announcement that the South Korean Central Bank was moving to shift some of its reserve holdings into Euros. While some (such as George Soros) have, ahem, speculated that speculation abroad, such as in oil-rich Russia, is designed to bring the dollar down, the reality is, as the Pravda piece notes, the world’s reserve currency is running a most irresponsible official budget deficit of over $400 billion (and counting it properly by including “off budget” war...

In something that Margaret Atwood has long portended, an American prosecutor, Kansas State Attorney General Phill Kline has subpoenaed records pertaining to late term abortions performed in his state. I suspected there wouldn’t be all that many abortion providers in Kansas, let alone late term abortions, and the number seems to be something like… two. This mirrors prior unsuccessful efforts by John Ashcroft to gather evidence to enforce an unconstitutional federal ban on late term abortions; Kline purports to be “investigating child rapes”. No point in speculating as to Kline’s motives; the Republican prosecutor has been most outspoken in his...

From Pakistan (because, hey, why should we find out what the hell our government is up to from our own freaking media?), we get this report from the Dawn newspaper on the fact that our proposed sale of Patriot Missiles (good old American anti-ballistic missile technology) to India is… being protested by Pakistan’s Foreign Office as… likely to start a regional arms race. In some sense, we can see Pakistan’s point: why go through all the trouble of getting your own nuclear weapons if that irritating regional power nearby that you want to use them on plans on defending against...