Now comes (yet another!) book by one of the hordes of nation-security technocrats who dominate West Asian policymaking in Democratic administrations here in Washington. In this case, it is Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East, a recent book by Steven Simon, a guy who has worked as first … Continue reading An intriguing but frustrating window into Obama’s West Asia policy
On January 25, the Rand Corporation issued a short-ish study of the conflict in Ukraine, titled “Avoiding a Long War: U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict.” The Rand Corporation was initially founded as a think-tank that would provide “Research & Development” (R-and-D) advice to the U.S. military and it still remains strongly, … Continue reading Rand’s latest Ukraine assessment assessed
What is it about those entitled White guys who defy the norms of decent grooming to present themselves as “lovable rogues” and thereby somehow also defy the norms of truth-telling and probity to achieve outstanding success in their careers… all of it based on industrial-scale fraud and lies. And by doing this, they bring whole … Continue reading Mop-haired fraudster lies way to success. Wide harm ensues.
Throughout the present century, the corporate media here in the United States, and much of international discourse, has been in a furor over “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” Why, in 2003, the (G.W.) Bush administration even led an international coalition to go into the once-proud country of Iraq and, basically, destroy the whole country’s infrastructure and … Continue reading What’s so special about nuclear weapons? (Or, when did “WMDs” become a thing?)
I want to note two recent articles that deal with key geopolitical aspects of the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. The first is “Europe Can Never Be Secure While Russia Has Nuclear Weapons”, which former Norwegian PM Kjell Magne Bondevik published earlier this month in Newsweek, and the second is “Ukraine peace talks in the cards?” … Continue reading Two important articles on Ukraine
Hi everyone. I realize it’s been several months since I posted anything here. Since early November I’ve been battling problems with my right eye that have made it a little hard for me to write. I have, however, been able to do a few things of general social utility. My main two achievements have been … Continue reading I’m baaack!
Americans have become increasingly aware of the addictive effects that Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram have on young people. But we should all be even more concerned about Tik Tok, the English-language version of the signature app owned by China’s ByteDance company. TikTok consists solely of catchy, fast-moving short videos– 60 seconds is considered a … Continue reading How Tik Tok hooks (very) young people
Some quick takeaways from this past week’s election news here in the USA. 1. Though Biden won, it’s still true that more than 70 million Americans cast a vote for Donald Trump. That, after four years of seeing him in action: racism, misogyny, crass cutting of health care and other vital social programs; “White” entitled-ism, … Continue reading Takeaways from an election
Twenty months ago, Bill the spouse and I moved back to live in Washington DC fulltime after living in “bucolic” Charlottesville, VA for 21 years. Three months ago, the Covid-19 crisis found us here; and since then I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how starkly the three braided strands of this crisis expose … Continue reading Notes from the heart of this collapsing empire
Americans are well-known for their ingenuity and many of them (including Pres. Donald J. Trump) love to crow about being “Number One!” Now, the whole world is seeing the United States achieving a nearly unprecedented record: The country that was this planet’s unchallenged hegemon for the past 28 years is undergoing a collapse of its … Continue reading Another American first: A self-collapsing empire!
