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...

Our buddies in Beijing at The People’s Daily are somewhat sanguine about Georgie W. Bush’s European “charm offensive” (pass the Freedom French fries, Jacques), concluding that few rifts between U.S. and European positions will be closed by it. Focusing on Middle Eastern issues (notably American attempts to undermine European negotiations with Iran, which seem quite creative, including offers to bribe Iran into giving up its nucular ambitions with WTO membership, and of course, Iraq) the piece conveniently overlooks China’s leading interest in the discussion: Bush’s adamance that the EU arms embargo against China remain in place. At this point, one...

On this, the 273rd natural birthday of our First President in time (though seventh in our hearts), let’s put our hands together for Dr. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, leading candidate of the leading coalition of parties (winners of 51% of the vote) to become Iraq’s next prime minister. Given that our old buddy (from the 2003 State of the Union address… how soon we forget) Ahmed Chalabi, decided to withdraw from the running for the position, this leaves Dr. al-Jaafari, the darling of Islamists (from their coalition partner, the Dala party), in the driver’s seat for the Iraqi premiership. This is, of...

That would be apparent controversy surrounding remarks by Harvard University President (and former Secretary of the Treasury) Lawrence Summers, to his university’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, controversial in light of Summers’ recent attributions of “intrinsic differences” as to why there appear to be fewer successful women faculty members in the maths and sciences at the Kremlin on the Charles. It should be obvious to anyone that (1) a Secretary of the Treasury under Bill Clinton and (2) a man who could be elected President of Harvard University, is without doubt… a liberal. And not just in the sense of...

I’ve restrained myself from commenting on the “Jeff Gannon” story, or even the hilarity (and the fully expected hilarity) of the President’s naming Central American Right Wing Death Squad Coordinator and Iraq Governor General John Negroponte to the newly created “National Intelligence Director” (thank YOU 9-11 Families– will you EVER stop giving to this country? PLEASE will you stop, already, GOD DAMN YOU?) and other popular stories of blogdom these days. (Once in a while, we get into sequences I consider too depressing to even comment on. And we’re in such a spate.) But in the midst of finding myself...

This week’s visit to Pravda lays out the rather defiant stand taken by Russian President Vladimir Putin of his intention to press on with nucular cooperation vis a vis Axis of Evil TM member and current first bogeyman Iran. Putin contends that he is certain that Iran intends its nuclear programs for peaceful, energy generation purposes (because, you know, someday that oil will run out), and absolutely not for particularly perfidious purposes. Hence, Russia will go on with such programs as permitting Iran to ship it spent fuel rods back to it, and make its deliveries of fissionable material to...

You know, much as I pride myself on my Bush-bashing, when (for whatever reason), the President does something I consider sensible (and most unusually, a sensible tax increase to pay for programs that would be grossly irresponsible otherwise), I intend to commend him. Hence, I will do so for his brief mention at an airport in New Hampshire that he would not rule out increasing the $90,000 income cap on social security contributions to pay for his proposed social security program changes (“private accounts”). Now, having simply said he will keep raising the percentage rate off the table, but not...