I was in Seoul during the July 27 commemorations of the 60thanniversary of the armistice agreement that brought an end to the fighting in the Korean War, one of the most brutal conflicts of the…
Tag: policy
In various articles and in my latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West, I have pointed out that the European sovereign debt crisis is being used to terminate…
Last week the US Senate took a break from debating the phony cuts known as “sequestration,” for Senator Rand Paul to hold a 13-hour filibuster to force the Obama administration to state whether…
Watching American politics is a bit like watching American-style gladiator wrestling on television. Part of you wants to flick on to the next TV channel for something more satisfying, edifying and real, but still you watch the stupefying spectacle with all its bluster and hype. You know it’s contrived, pseudo, hammed-up and downright fake, but ironically because of all these dubious qualities, there is something compelling about the procedures. Can these people be for real?
Take the new US secretary of state John Kerry. He made his first overseas trip this week to various capitals in Europe and the Middle East. Compared with his bullish and vulgar predecessor, Hillary Clinton, the urbane Mr Kerry seems like a breath of fresh air.
The recent expeditions of the French in Africa clearly smack less of neoimperialism than they do neocolonialism, and have prompted many to wonder whether the events are the start of a new cycle of world politics in which an outgoing unipolarity is perhaps being replaced by a forthcoming multipolarity not hailed by everyone, or something different, something new or maybe a repeat of history, but in new packaging? Maybe something that would allow, for example, the United States «to leave without actually leaving», to continue implementing their global plans in a more complex system of interstate relations? If so, then the imperial projects and vassal relations of by-gone eras that had seemingly vanished forever will turn out to be much in demand…
Marela, an undocumented immigrant in her 40s, stood outside the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, N.J., on a chilly afternoon last week. She was there with a group of protesters who appear at the facility’s…
When Malaysia faced the Asian economic crisis back in 1997, the then Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamed called on his old friend Tun Daim Zainuddinto head the National Economic Action Council (NEAC) set up under the Economic Planning Unit…
Is North Korea’s recent nuclear test, its third, to be welcomed, lamented or condemned? It depends on your perspective. If you believe that a people should be able to organize their affairs free from foreign domination and interference; that the United States and its client government in Seoul have denied Koreans in the south that right and seek to deny Koreans in the north the same right; and that the best chance that Koreans in the north have for preserving their sovereignty is to build nuclear weapons to deter a US military conquest, then the test is to be welcomed. If you’re a liberal, you might believe that the United States should offer the DPRK (the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name) security guarantees in return for Pyongyang completely, permanently and verifiably eliminating its nuclear weapons program. If so, your position invites three questions.
Barack Obama would never be so crass as to use a State of the Union (SOTU) address to announce an “axis of evil”. No. Double O Bama, equipped with his exclusive license to kill (list),…
Africa’s classic depiction in the mainstream media, as a giant basketcase full of endless war, famine and helpless children creates an illusion of a continent utterly dependent on Western handouts. In fact, the precise opposite is true – it is the West that is reliant on African handouts. These handouts come in many and varied forms. They include illicit flows of resources, the profits of which invariably find their way into the West’s banking sector via strings of tax havens (as thoroughly documented in Nicholas Shaxson’s Poisoned Wells). Another is the mechanism of debt-extortion whereby banks lend money to military rulers (often helped to power by Western governments, such as the Congo’s former President Mobutu), who then keep the money for themselves (often in a private account with the lending bank), leaving the country paying exorbitant interest on an exponentially growing debt.