Category: Politics & World Affairs
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During my teen years, I used to be an ardent Ian Fleming fan until I graduated to John le Carre, whose tales of espionage are peerless. The cold war years were hugely beneficial to the spy novel genre, which comprised a large chunk of the publishing industry until the Berlin Wall fell and the communist…
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While the real and bloody war rages on in Iraq, the Bush administration is locked in its own make-believe war over semantics. Four thousand Iraqis are dying per month, according to the latest figures and we are splitting hairs over the proper term to define the conflict. However, in the era of 24/7 coverage of…
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Political assassinations are as old as history. That this practice is still alive in the late 20th and early 21st century is disheartening. John F. and Robert Kennedy, Indira and Rajeev Gandhi were some of the high profile cases. But numerous other deaths of lesser known political figures and operatives go mostly unnoticed except in…
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Forget Tom DeLay, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter. Forget the bellicosity and taunts emanating from the White House occupied by Bush, Cheney and Rove. Forget Fox News and the barb filled rhetoric of right wing religious zealots. According to George Bush Senior, the adversarial political climate in the country has been…
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(Jim Webb holding up the combat boots of his son who is serving in Iraq during a victory rally. He wore his son’s boots throughout his senatorial campaign: Image from Washington Post) I have taken a particularly keen interest in the campaign of Jim Webb during the past election season. I didn’t know much about…
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Only, this one is three years old. "Regimes without checks and balances are prone to grave miscalculations." __ Donald Rumsfeld, September 10, 2003
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What a week! Garrulous though I usually am, I am feeling a bit tongue tied. So, rather than blather aimlessly, I will link to an AP article which reports reactions to past week’s US mid-term elections from around the world. Not just Americans are feeling liberated by Bush’s thumpin’ at the ballot box. Much of…
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And it looks like the "macaca" too has been dislodged in Virginia. So I should be euphoric and laughing. At last the brake has been applied to the arrogant Bush administration’s reckless juggernaut. Rumsfeld resigned (was fired?). George Bush admitted sheepishly that the election results were a thumpin’. I have waited for six years to…
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Tomorrow is a crucial election day. My advice: "Vote early, vote Democrat and vote often" – the last, only if you are voting Democratic ! All kidding aside, please do remember to cast your ballot (if you haven’t done so already) for what you believe and against what you reject. Remember Bush-Cheney-Rove, Katrina, Jack Abramoff…
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What does the reactionary, authoritarian, torture loving, war mongering Bush-Cheney administration have to hide from us? Whatever it is, we will probably find out and we won’t be surprised. "The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative…
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Some of the loudest cheer leaders for the Iraqi invasion have turned their backs on Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld. These despicaple opportunists do not regret that they aided and abetted a criminal enterprise – just that the glorious neo-con dream of world domination has been crushed due to the "incompetence" of their former hero George Bush and his administration.…
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(Leaked classified military chart showing where Iraq stands on the Peace – Chaos spectrum) A Work of Art: On a day when violence continued unabated, a US general compared Iraq to a "work of art in progress" in order to play down the deteriorating situation. I am not sure if the general just has a…
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Less than a week before the midterm elections, with everything going in their favor, the Democrats might mess things up again. It will be an amazing feat . But the bumbling Dems, with their uncanny ability to keel over before capricious lies and smears (a special talent of Republicans), might find themselves caught flat footed…
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Africa’s World of Forced Labor, in a Six-Year-Old’s Eyes, by Sharon LaFraniere, for the New York Times. (Be sure to watch the narrated slide show.) Children, forced into slavery. Beaten, sometimes killed. It’s nominally illegal, but it’s illegal to drive over the speed limit here–everyone still does it. KETE KRACHI, Ghana — Just before 5…
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