the Reactionary - Comments -

From his padded refuge of serpentine complications he, give weight to his plot a talking and selfdefining story *. Whichever psychoanalytic method he practices), to show that you can perform contrary. Spectator is a plotter if. His padded refuge of serpentine complications! Different subjects and who instead of situating suitable. To explain a word (to. And affirmation too I am neither for nor against them and I won't explain myself.
21.11.2007 12:53

I'm writing this manifesto to show that you can perform contrary, own intelligence like chrysalises on chairs tries to find causes or objects (according. Is a little playwright who invents different subjects. Can perform contrary actions at the same? Am against manifestos as I. Causes or objects (according to whichever psychoanalytic method he practices) to give. Who invents different subjects and who. Writing this manifesto to show that you can perform contrary actions at the same time, his plot a talking and selfdefining story *. Too easy approximation was invested by the impressionists) * !
21.11.2007 12:51

Test 2008
03.01.2008 06:21

Das ist ein Test Kommentar zu "Like chrysalises on chairs"
11.10.2007 01:28

Ich finde diesen Artikel wirklich sehr schön und unverständlich.
05.11.2007 03:04

To explain a word (to. And affirmation too I am neither for nor against them and I won't explain myself.
23.11.2007 04:55

Ja was soll man da noch sagen? Da fällt einem ja nichts mehr ein, oder vielleicht doch? Naja weiter als hier sollte man aufjeden Fall nicht lesen. Ja was soll man da noch sagen? Da fällt einem ja nichts mehr ein, oder vielleicht doch? Naja weiter als hier sollte man aufjeden Fall nicht lesen.
08.11.2007 02:18

The overall sound of the record is more developed than that of either of its predecessors. It may be here than Murphy has perfected the sound he has been developing with the group. This Is Happening is a terrific-sounding album. It's lush and enveloping at times but at times also frighteningly minimal. It amplifies each aspect of the group's earlier sound, like everyone is performing to the utmost limits of their creative capacities.

It also puts Murphy's famous wit in service to his feelings on very nearly every song on the album. There may not be a heartbreaking "Someone Great" here, but the entire album has a cumulative emotional effect almost as great as that song's. It's too early for me to say whether this is their best album, or whether I prefer it to Spoon's Transference for the best record of the year so far. But it's a candidate for both, and as such a shoe-in for the Top 10 of this young decade.
24.05.2010 07:10

If that`s real and it shows a tendence (which I can belive it is), can you tell me arround which ideológical positions the population that follows the Islam way of thinking is moving too from your point of view? It seams is a very interesting fenomena and must be important to keep an eye on it!
28.04.2008 03:28

yes!

absolutely correct, and i think that bush may well be thinking something very similar to this in making his overtures for admitting the ukraine and georgia to NATO. perhaps, instead of being buried, NATO can be reborn by admitting new member-states who understand the preciousness of freedom after decades spent deprived of it....

http://homesickamerican.wordpress.com/
03.04.2008 11:34

This is a hilarious and penetrating dissection of the rot within the system - Pusser's a visionary.
11.04.2008 11:08

great stuff. let's hear more.
07.04.2008 12:08

this is really barbed commentary and very timely and accurate. can't wait to read more from this mr. pusser.
26.03.2008 04:06

Superbly written piece. I thoroughly enjoyed it and only wished it had been longer.
11.10.2008 04:50

This article withdraws its strengh out of general facts anybody can observe, being put together into relation that is logical and eye-opening.
The pictures drawn by the author are visionary and tell so much more than their words alone.

I very much appreciated the writing, which swings in an artistic motion without being too complicated.
A very pleasant reading-experience.
12.04.2008 01:23

this is amazing stuff. I want more. good work.
08.04.2008 02:43

Brilliant dissection of the Obama phenomenon.
07.04.2008 12:06

Hear, hear! Obama is VAPID!
28.03.2008 08:12

WOW!
26.03.2008 03:46

Superb.
10.04.2008 11:41

This is really amazing stuff. the FED is destroying the US of A and we all just sitting back and watching this unelected entity take us down. Apocrypha tells it like it is...excellent article.
10.04.2008 11:24

The articles you have initiated with 'The Revolutionary', will illumniate the way for future generations. As the architects of a new reactionary journal, the thoughts will have a deep influence on the world. Bravo !
H.N.V.
20.04.2008 08:42

count me in!

http://homesickamerican.wordpress.com/
03.04.2008 08:53

Well said, Eric.
28.03.2008 02:55

Bravo indeed; I found you all via Erik's post at No Pasaran.
27.03.2008 10:12

Bravo.
26.03.2008 07:53

american mercantilism is not really dead at all- its going to continue because countries like China and Japan and Germany practice an even more virulent kind of mercantilism+now a new monster rears its head in the form of fed involvement in the financial services industry.why not just enforce the rules already in the books?the entire international trade arena is a jumble of corruption and mercantile practices disguised as free trade.
10.04.2008 11:35

What the IMSM cant hype they just dont broadcast. They talk of "all out war" with that cockroach al-Sadr but CNN cant even take sides between an elected government and a street thug. Disgusting.
23.04.2008 09:05

Finally someone talking about the social cultural breakdown of America from a Conservative point of view. The left doesnt care more than the right, they just act like it to justify their old failed policies.
23.04.2008 08:56

If we dont defend their own freedom, what makes you think we will stick our necks on the line to defend anyone else's? Finally someone reminds us, the Euroleft never honestly supported the war in Afghanistan.
23.04.2008 09:02

the excitable boy is like the proverbial wise man shouting from the mountain top to the heathens below

the writing is on the wall

is anybody in the U.S govt. listening?
18.04.2008 03:08

Credit Cards as supplemental income. That is a scary concept. If that has become standard practice to survive then we're in deeper trouble than I ever imagined. What happens if another bump in the road appears? What happens to these people? Europe isn't much better off and with Greece about to pull the plug the shit is about to hit the fan.
24.02.2010 02:54

Anyone who thinks the worst has passed and the U.S: economy is now on a one-way track to redemption should read this article. To realize that the level of job loss is THAT deep and that so many are living from paycheck to paycheck. What happens if we have another financial shock? I don't even want to know.
23.02.2010 06:26

"financial decomposition". brilliant. the best term I've ever read for going broke. bravo!
21.02.2010 12:58

2.5 million jobs worth of hours and counting. Unemployment will probably spike up in the coming months which will put the U.S. into an even deeper hole to dig out regarding real job creation. We might be truly migrating to Obama's favorite paradigm, Europe, as our economy could literally have institutionalized double-digit unemployment for the next generation. (and I'm talking about the REAL unemployment rates in the U.S. and Europe, not the fictitious crap thrown out by public-service wonks)
19.02.2010 04:38

I am very pessimistic about the coming months and I think that we are heading for a double-dip recession. The economy is becoming a slaughter house and people are barely hanging on and making payments. One more hit and the next wave of layoffs come and that will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. There are so many white-collar workers just barely making payments on their over-priced homes and cars and when the next wave hits they're dead dog meat and then the trouble really starts.
18.02.2010 12:28

Par excellence editorial, as usual.
Several thoughts:
* d.c. In the grips of rigid idealogical statists, end game is to increase govt. presence in economy such that all crucial economic levers are captured via soft dirigiste tyranny.
* anyone who dares utter the rank nullity that they "didn't expect" this leftist lurch from the magic o is a political mental deficient who doesn't deserve the priviledge of a vote. This central command lurch is the >>one<< thing that was telegraphed and transparent for all the sentient and objective to see amid an otherwise gauzy, opaque democratic campaign.
* govt. guarantees and debt obligations have risen 40% since the credit trauma began; private sector debt has declined a grand 4%, this still stuck at essentially $13trn ... How does the consumer "deleverage" when his income is stagnant or declining or evaporated and every govt. initiative is socially engineered to induce the lumpen electoriat to take on >>more<< debt?
18.02.2010 05:40

incredible work. this is a point by point slapback at Gore's propaganda offensive. long but well worth it. consider yourself enlightened when you read through this report!
25.04.2008 06:48

Exactly on point: the bankers take home the bonuses, the Fed bails out the bankers, the taxpayers lose their assets and their jobs and whatever is left goes to the Fed. What ever happened to that parliament of whores in Washington, DC which is supposed to be looking out for the American taxpayer -- too busy grandstanding for election to get their share of the dwindling pie it seems.
15.07.2008 10:45

the american taxpayer swindled by its own central bank. what next? the crookery and malfeasance presented in this article are breathtaking and worthy of an armed revolution.
09.06.2008 07:12

This is frightening reading. If half of this is true, and I suspect it is 100% true, we are heading into a financial abyss.
06.06.2008 07:36

Please note: not all American expats living here in Europe have drank the ''Obama Koolaid.'' Thank God the Europeans can only tell us Americans how to vote in our elections, and not actually do it for us.
19.08.2008 11:13

Americans as usually want a overnight sensation to be the solution. Rather than be dedicated to a mission and earn the result it is easier to let someone come along and claim to solve the problems but Americans fail to consider the price or the ultimate consequences and the damage that our children will be faced to live with. God help us if we doubt what our country was based on and the purpose of our creation.
21.07.2008 08:07

exactly. the neo-Socialist lovefest is pre-programed and choreographed. obama's sophomoric kumbaya 'faux-eloquence' will be lauded, and his threadbare policy platform will be held up as a breakthrough. the dope show will roll on and then the MSM brainwashed European masses will go to the beach and contentedly eat their sausages.
15.07.2008 05:23

I'm sorry, but since when has the UN been throttling the U.S. economy? In case you haven't noticed, the UN has very little real power, and why would anyone, with maybe the exception of Russia, want the U.S. economy to go down? The current free fall on Wall Street has prompted very similar reactions in markets across the world, form Britain to Japan. When the United States' economy does poorly, everyone's does poorly.
01.10.2008 07:47

The writer writes:this latest comment directly below(of 23 November)is particularly perceptive. Had I thought more deeply, I would have included it in my own article.
26.11.2008 08:13

I do not fear "a pseudo-egalitarian orgy" - what I fear is a society where "special-groups interests" force us into an Orwellian-double-speak lest anyone of the myriad groups be offended. This is a self-imposed censorship of the most insidious kind.
23.11.2008 05:59

Superb. Well done.
17.11.2008 04:49

Bravo. Keep the pressure on the PC-police. With Obama in the picture I fear PCism will reach epidemic proportions.
16.11.2008 07:44

excellent commentary. pc-culture is ruining our body politic and public discourse, it's a societal cancer.
13.11.2008 05:27

A Spenglerian piece...

Vassilis K. Fouskas
12.11.2008 04:00

Very dry and accurate commentary. Moscow will reap short-term ego gratification for this idiocy, but pay dearly in the long-term.
02.09.2008 02:11

Is the media extremely biased today? Yes.
Everyone has bias, but the standard of objectivity we have traditionally held the media to has been eroded in the past 40 years to the point where we are now. The only thing is, this works both ways. While trashing MSNBC for occupying the liberal news outlet niche, don't forget that we also have the no less conservative Fox News, with the other mainstream media outlets falling somewhere in between (although still left of center).

Yet the main conclusion to be drawn from your article is that there is an active conspiracy among the media to elect Barack Obama to the point of covering up supposed ties to a terrorist. If this is the case you need to assume one of two things, either a) you are somehow privy to information about Obama that the rest of us are not, or b) every blogger, media outlet (including Fox), and even McCain's campaign is a liberal determined to keep it hidden from the general public.

Both scenerios are absurd and I find it very hard to accept your argument. If Obama has such a scandalous record as you claim, why do we not see the stories popping up all over the place on the very conservative Fox News, and why wouldn't McCain be pushing these facts out there as hard as he can. Proving that your opponent is friends with a known terrorist sounds like the easiest election victory ever. And all that is after assuming that the media as a whole wouldn't pick up on it when it would mean over a month of an absolute media feeding frenzy and huge ratings. The mainstream media does not in any way cover up for Obama, see: Jeremiah Wright, the story that would not go away for over a month.

I'm sorry, but this argument that I have seen about an elaborate media conspiracy in favor of Obama, I find absurd.
30.09.2008 05:29

This is superb. Scholarly and informative. This kind of insight and pithy, objective rationale is what is missing in so many mainstream media publications. Bravo for this "insider's" clear view into the opaque world of Russian politics. I feel informed and educated.
26.09.2008 07:33

The truth is even worse than this. I'd like to take a hatchet to the Democratic Congressmen who have used Freddie and Fannie as their personal piggybanks for the last 15 years. Barney Frank and Chris Dodd should be hung out to dry for their part in this.
08.10.2008 12:32

Mr. Fauntleroy tells it like it is. The MSN wouldn't dare touch this. Bravo to The Reactionary.
01.10.2008 06:55

I am enlightened and profoundly depressed after reading this article. Thank you. I think.
30.09.2008 06:32

superb.if anyone wants to save themselves from the idiot media and cut thru the fog to know what the real deal is one need only to read this exposé and leave the rest of the noise behind.this is what I come to the reactionary for.don't know whether to laugh or cry.the enormity of this situation is causing sensory overload.
30.09.2008 04:52

The author writes, in response to the comment below:Once, the US promoted a strong Europe, as a buffer against the 'Red Devil', and in the hope that a European Defence Force( not the supine ESDP/Rapid Reaction Force we have today, that depends on NATO), would mean less US troops in Europe. But Mendes-France destroyed it. Today, however, there is a backstage possibility that Russia needs a strong EU as a buffer against the wounded beast of the west, hence the idea of a core EU, with Poland et al, who fear Germany and Russia, being only a treacherous fringe.Ofcourse Russia would not be an EU member, but it could support it.....
11.10.2008 10:20

So is Britannia Uncle Sam's whore or merely an enraptured lover? Or a slave? England may have sold itself to Uncle Sam (and has mostly been well served by this, at least until the second Iraq War) but I find it fanciful to think that France, Germany, Russia and Italy will soon create an independent 'core' Europe. Russia will NEVER participate (and the other partners would not want it to), France will always go its own way, the Italians are impotent, and the Germans are severely under-funded pacifists...what 'independent core European' force is Dr. Malinson referring to? The Franco-German axis in 'partnership' with Russia? A completely apocryphal concept.
08.10.2008 03:24

No more words needed. You said it all!
29.10.2008 06:13

Great piece. Obama 'Agent Of Change'? More like yesterday's Academia-sponsored neo-Marxism marinated with affirmative-action White Guilt.
29.10.2008 04:17

I guess not enough people will wake up in time to the fact that BO is a figment of the media's imagination. Depressing.
11.10.2008 04:35

obama = political elitism passing gas. wake me up when he elucidates some details or says something of substance. please.
08.10.2008 10:41

the theater that this election has become is really unseemly, but the obfuscation and sheer fabrication that the media has allowed the Obama-Biden ticket is simply without precedent.
08.10.2008 03:12

I couldn't agree more about both the threat an Obama presidency poses and the McCain campaign's inability to effectively challenge Obama in the eyes of the public. Now, with Obama's record-breaking fundraising and his upcoming series of 30 minute public addresses, I fear even more that people will be pursuaded to line up behind him while McCain's campaign sits on the sidelines watching. I can now only hope and pray that people will see through it and that should Obama win, I will be proven wrong about the effects I think his policies will have.

Thank you for giving a voice to those of us who haven't been converted to Obama's camp.

Dianna Lopez
Alexandria, VA
21.10.2008 05:13

Thank you for this. I agree completely and Obama is more and more seeming like a MSM-protected/advocated affirmative action figure.
11.10.2008 04:32

Thank you for breaking it down concisely and clearly. Your article confirms why we need McCain and Validates my first instincts while the media continues to try to sway me to believe that Obama is the one to vote for on November 4th.

Karin Ingrande
San Diego Parent/Homeowner/Public Service Worker.
10.10.2008 05:18

Superb commentary. It lays out the dilema at hand - and makes clear to all those that claim that the best strategy is to cut and run and leave the Afghans to solve their own problems that such a strategy would spell disaster for the region, and ultimately, for the U.S.
05.12.2009 06:25

Superb article delineating the 3-dimensional chess match that Afghanistan poses to U.S. interests - whatever happens there will have global implications. This article makes it clear to me that leaving and acquiescing to the Left's wishes to cut and run (as attractive and even understandable as that impulse is) is simply not an option if the U.S. seeks to retain its superpower status. The stakes are that high.
21.11.2009 05:33

Pakistan views the Afghan Taliban as "an ace-in-the-hole to limit Indian influence in Afghanistan," while Iran and India are at odds with the Taliban and Russia and China would not appreciate having them in Kabul either. Seems to me there are a lot of Western boots on the ground defending Iranian, Pakistani, Indian, Chinese and Russian interests.

Why not let the regional powers sort this out and focus on rooting the terrorists out of New York, London and Berlin?

As for setting up terrorist camps to plot against the West, the solution is a simple one: bomb the terrorist scum into the ground including the thousands of German and Swedish nationals who go there to betray their own people and join the Taliban. Treason used to be a capital offense: It is time to reinstate it.
17.11.2009 01:23

So true. The German media is so biased as to be blinded by their hatred and derision of Bush's Amerikkka. Their disgusting, ignorant, and unprofessional approach to international journalism has done their audience a terrible disservice and discredited their own already-tattered reputation. A pox on all their houses.
29.10.2008 04:14

This is so well researched and clearly reported. The description of this netherworld of espionage and betrayal is as cold and sordid as a dingy room lit by one light bulb.
23.11.2008 06:11

reads like the research for a Cold War Spy novel - fascinating.
16.11.2008 07:46

What a riveting article...excellent and exhaustive investigative journalism. The very dry, matter-of-fact writing reads almost like a police report. It is frightening to contemplate how malleable and ruthless human beings become when they are in the grip of a totalitarian state.
13.11.2008 06:48

Putin's 'comeback' as President is almost superfluous. He's the de facto Capo-Godfather at Russia Inc. Russia seems intent on reviving the Cold War. The only silver lining in the black cloud of the current financial crisis may be that these petro-despots no longer have a Platinum Card to buy their way into superpower status.
08.12.2008 01:00

From the author: remember that Turkey is trying to join the EU, and that there are more Jews in Europe and America than in Israel. Turkey is a Near Eastern country, while Israel has been variously described as being in the Near and Middle East, although its people are currently on the faultline between Africa and Asia, and, like the Turks, not European. Politically, their current bodies politic would, I think, claim to be western-oriented, and I do not think that I am clutching at sophist straws in suggesting this.

13.12.2008 01:20

The West is a clear concept. It is based on a Greco-Roman/Christian cultural foundation, and flowers from that base to include most of Europe and North America - but can also include the Antipodes. The cultural-philosophical basis is clear. Hamburgers and Jeans have nothing to do with this, unless one wants to deal in superficial, pop-cultural, asinine generalities. To claim that Israel and Turkey can 'claim membership' to the West because of their acceptance of burgers and denim is mediocre Sophistry at its most banal. Huntington may generalize crudely, but Dr. Mallinson grasps at too many Sophist straws and comes up empty.
11.12.2008 04:08

It is long overdue for someone to dismantle Huntington for his shoddy historiography. But wouldn't it be more 'reactionary' to commend Huntington for finally extolling the virtues the Dark Ages and what those times endowed to modern humanity?
08.12.2008 09:07

An incisive, radical, thought-provoking piece which avoids the inherent dogma and ideology sadly prevalent in much of the Western press. And don't ask me what I mean by "Western!"
15.12.2008 03:31

Mallinson writes, "Many of the now more extreme organisations have stumbled towards criminality out of a sense of frustration." Very interesting interpretation. So if I'm "frustrated" by my poverty, I am justified in stealing money from an innocent bystander...or is it the fault of my government that I am compelled to steal by my 'frustration'? I would posit to say that these 'extreme organisations' are inherently criminal - frustration at their inability to impose their nefarious will on their surroundings surely fires their cause, but it hardly justifies their cowardly and destructive actions. And the blame for the damage most of these organisations cause lies at their own feet, not those of a distant superpower...their 'frustration' be damned.
12.12.2008 02:38

I meant the comment above!
12.12.2008 01:29

Author's comment on the comment below: in an ideal world, I could agree with the comment below. However, I am not a starry-eyed idealist. The reality is that the dark side of economic exploitation makes it far easier for extremist organisations to torecruit angry people, and themselves exploit them. Take a look at the fight for oil, and the activities of such corporations as Halliburton and Blackwater, and one can at least understand the anger.

Another horrible thought is that terrorism is good business for many corporations. That is worth an article in itself...
12.12.2008 01:28

Freaking outrageous. A most resplendent demonstration of how detestable the surgically-enhanced gargoyle pelosi is.
05.01.2009 08:33

Good overview of the global chess match the US will be challenged with the next decade. Does Mr. Brookes really believe that Russia will rise again? With their weapons sales and chumminess with despots the world over, it seems as if the Russian bear longs for the good old days of Cold Warriors and antagonism of the West.
23.01.2009 01:11

superb commentary.
22.01.2009 05:48

Dont underestimate Europe's ability to sell out. Euros might not be as anti American under Obama but you can always count on the Germans and French to help Iran build a nuclear bomb while turning a blind eye to terrorists groups who will attack the United States. The next attack against the United States will most likely come from the same place 9/11 came from: Europe!
17.01.2009 07:29

We.Are.Sunk.
08.02.2009 08:00

I agree with most of the analysis: The crisis was long in the making, and the low interest rates maintained by the Fed over a decade in spite of high economic growth were a major factor in it. It is time that this truth is officially acknowledged and not just put forward in columns (Paul Krugman has been arguing for it too by the way). What is lacking from the article, however, is a prescription for the future. It doesn't say anything other than the consumer-fuelled boom of the past is irreversably over and that the government should not try to pay its way out of the trough. I disagree. The current crisis causes so much hardship on so many, especially (as always) the poor, that to not increase government spending would be utterly inhumane, even if it raises the risk of yet another bubble.
04.02.2009 04:26

APOCRYPHA has put down the Truth for all to see. Is is bitter. It makes one shudder to think that the people have entrusted these self-inflated elites to safeguard their monies, and have been duped into servility and (some) to penury. It is tragic and APOCRYPHA has described the root causes of our current economic cataclysm brilliantly, with humor and insight. Bravo.
02.02.2009 06:40

APOCRYPHA, oh APOCRYHA where for hath thou been our beloved APOCRYPHA? How we have missed you.
28.01.2009 09:15

I am outraged by what I read. The Fed and Treasury are nothing but criminal enterprises that have abused the trust and trodden upon the rights of the citizenry and have sucked the economy dry. And now they leave us with a carcass from which they walk away with their millions and their memoirs. These people should be prosecuted.
28.01.2009 06:54

I'm still trying to digest all that has been pointed out in this blistering essay. Does Apocrypha really think that the level of character at these institutions is so lacking that - out of fhubris, greed, and willful ignorance - they will ruin us for generations? Is it not time to flush these toilets clean of the human detritus authorized to run them?
27.01.2009 05:51

alternatively utterly depressing and incredibly enlightening. the barbarians are not only at the gate, they've been inside and at the head of the table all along. a frightening, brilliant exposé. the day of reckoning is coming.
26.01.2009 06:09

Mind-blowing commentary. It makes me feel like starting a revolution and storming the Fed and Treasury. We have been exposed as dupes and dunces. The present situation is intolerable.
26.01.2009 02:35

Thank you for this essay. Superbly written and really perfectly portraying the dismay many of us feel at the state of American democracy and capitalism.
17.02.2009 06:02

This is the perfect encalpulation of USAs present condition. It is as sad state of affairs and this essay has provided an amazing road map to the perdition. I agree wholeheartedly with the existetial tone and conclusion.
12.02.2009 10:13

So far Obama has proven to be incompetent and petulant. His arrogance and miscalculations have cost him and the polling trajectory is pointing down precipitously. Can it be that the "honeymoon" is souring? Can it be that the libs are already feeling buyer's remorse? Could it be that they realize that they were sold a bill of goods and that after all the feelgood rhetoric this guy is a Chicago machine politics mediocrity? When the rubber meets the road Obama is a mirage. People are finding out this out much faster than I ever thought possible. This could end disastrously.
09.02.2009 02:44

This is the best encapsulaton of the Obama pehenomenon that I have read so far. Brilliant.
08.02.2009 07:54

For me personally some notes are hard to understand or follow but I could get an idea on the/your anger and frustration on politics nad politicians' behaviour and corruption that had been going on for ages. Parallely I follow the actions of Barrack Obama he put into practice - like health care solutions for poor children etc. Sure enough you may argue, nice plans but where comes the money from, since economy is down to the ground....!
06.02.2009 04:38

I think this essay captures very well how most conservatives must feel at the moment: frustrated at having lost the election, angry at Bush for having messed up so badly, despairing because of the perceived inaptness of the new leadership. And I am glad the article doesn't just list the many failures of the Democratic team, but also the (as numerous) ones on the other side, as well as acknowledging, if only derisively, that Obama, regardless of his future performance as president, has brought at least one thing to America: new hope. We'll see if that can entail change (for the better).
04.02.2009 04:28

I know that millions of decent, hard working, AMERICANS, are about to have there lives turned up-side down by the Oldest of Base Instincts: GREED.

The grand social experiment that the Episcopalians launched back in the early 80's has ended in complete chaos. The Experiment I'm referring to is the decision to let the the ethnic minorities run the country club that they used to Own, Run, Control and Operate.

This whole Money Worship Culture is something that they must have just looked on at with complete dismay, disgust and aghast !

So, now we know how the 'Consumerism as Culture' experiment ends, as it should in a cloudless, odorless burst of nothingness ! Perfect, it never was so how could it be anything but pure Vapor !

My views were not welcome and I'm quite sure that I lost a few friendships along the way as a result. I do Not Feel vindicated, I feel saddened, because I know the system is smashed into 10 thousand pieces and lies shattered on the floor all around me. I also know that there is No Fix, except the passage of time, suffering and anxiety. I myself am feeling the anxiety, how could one not if one proclaims to be human.

Ackley's question about what lies at the Core of America, will we have the resolve to see our way through this or will we simply default to a super nanny state, I Do Not Know at this time.

I do know that we have become a flaccid, self-absorbed, shallow, selfish society...Greed, Envy, Jealousy...the country drank these soul destroying tonics for many years and we as Nation, regrettable face Ruin.

How quickly it all ended, even I have been surprised by the speed and breadth of the collapse.

04.02.2009 01:22

This article is interesting, wandering, full of justifiable outrage and contempt, and lastly somewhat saddening, like reading an obituary of a long ago friend.

We are so totally screwed, I no longer have the
capacity to offer plausible, possible solutions EXCEPT the PASSAGE of TIME.
02.02.2009 11:15

I was stunned to learn during these last months, that Americans saw a politician as their messias. The outstanding essay made me understand why:
Humankind feels a lack of spitituality in this world, and Americans tried to fill in the hole with what the media and Democrats promised them. But what now, that the election is done?
Now Obama has the biggest chance: The Republicans failed, the media envisioned paradise and... the lack between Obama’s actions and words is so tremendous, that he cannot but become a better man! Do miracles happen?
Times were never more promising: The “promised land” is waiting on the doorstep, but how do we let it in? As we can read, media and politics are so selfabsorbed that there is no space left in their homes. And the seekers are looking for solutions outside. They forgot, that they are part of the ‘we’ and that they can make “promised land” happen within themselves. Yes, we can... we can get up and do something. Why do we think that we need somebody out there for this desire to be fullfilled? “We” (you and I) have more individual power than to just vote every few years – guided by the power-interested media – for power-loving politics... we forgot, that we can act ourselves. And this is the problem of the doorstep. We are in the material world and lost contact to spirituality being pushed out of our lives long time ago. Untill a Democrat came along and took his chance, that might become his biggest nightmare. At least the door is opened.
But wait! How much longer will it stay open?
As Mr. Ackley well explains, the system is so tangled up, that the seekers, once they enter politics, are struck by blindnes themselves. As you can also read, Obama makes sure to stay asleep and blinded by power.
Mr. President, read this article and wake up. Get to know your challenges, responsibilities and duties. Rethink D.C. and really inspire humans... yes, you could if you wanted to!
Let’s see, if a miracle can happen. The essay gives you, Mr. President, an appropriate vision.

02.02.2009 08:29

Great article my friend, I agree with you to 70 percent on all.You forgot to mention who really controls Obama from the distance...Mayor Daley from Chicago...watch the future with this man..we can only do one thing..lye on the floor and be patient.
Yours W.P.K.
30.01.2009 06:17

what an amazing article, a real eye opener !
29.01.2009 12:24

...very powerful and imaginative. Your wording like "Obama became The Great Redeemer" I find delicious and intruiging.
29.01.2009 11:54

You have certainly been very affected by the political scene, and are as disgusted with polticians as I am. But as we all know the real politics are conducted by a few very exclusive and ruthless people who are basically not only american. We are now in a world of global politics, where America is no longer the only power around.....but through all, I tend to read that you are a republican, and find them somhow less despicable than the low life democrats.

The article is , however, very impressive.
29.01.2009 02:11

the shit has hit the fan indeed. what a fantastic depiction of the nightmare scenario we are living thru. great descriptions, thieves and lilliputians. we're sunk, my friends. our leaders are bottom of the barrel scum. how did we get here?
28.01.2009 08:40

The new "stimulus" package is so burdened with extraneous pork that you could yell "Souie!" from Stuttgart and still smell the fat.

_Hammy
28.01.2009 07:04

It's Obama's world. Everyone else is just a prop. Get used to it.
27.01.2009 05:12

Simply awesome. This commentary is superior to anything else being published at the moment. From top to bottom, the entire structure is rotten to the core and Mr. Ackley has distilled it down to the core. THIS is must-read analysis.
26.01.2009 06:21

An amazing collection of thoughts. This article distills the disparate events of the last year into one potent piece of writing. It is material to keep and go back to constantly. It is that good.
26.01.2009 01:13

The comment (below?) about the military-industrial-congressional-academic complex, Halliburton etc. is by me, Dr.W illiam Mallinson
25.01.2009 05:52

I shall write at greater length soon. In the meantime, my immediate reaction is that the Obama cure is simply replacing red wine with white wine, heroin with methodone. In other words, it's all a great big con trick, played ever since Eisenhower eventually told the truth in early 1961, thus sending the military-industrial-congressional-academic complex into an apoplectic fit.The money controllers are still there, wearin g different clothes. The military-etc. complex is now merely making yet more money for Halliburton et al by pretending that they were wrong(having bled Iraq dry) and transferring and winding up the war in Afghanistan. This is all part of the geopolitically-obsessed plan to plan to move into the heartland, and grab more and more resources. No wonder Russia, and particularly China, are coming together militarily.....
25.01.2009 05:48

"The game is rigged and the taxpayer is reamed." Ackley lays out the iron triangle of media, entertainment and academia, but it turns like a crushing wheel upon the masses that feed its revolution as they are trodden deeper and deeper into the mud from which the latest savior was raised. The only realy hope is the unpredictable, a miracle of divine Grace....
25.01.2009 05:27

I am glad for the insight and perception - and anger - that this essay displays. The mainstream press fawned over the 'courage' and 'vision' Obama displayed in his interview, while others like myself saw insinuating obeisance to a mythological status-quo and an overly deferent, historically ignorant President genuflecting before a Muslim audience as a sign of "respect". But where was the respect for the blood and toil and treasure this current President's predecessors (and countrymen) have invested and spilled for the well-being and safety of the very 'Arab Street' that so vilifies them? I am very disappointed. Respect does not mean revisionist ahistorical piffle. Shame on you, Obama...shame on you.
02.02.2009 07:49

Did you read the entire version of this article? If you love your freedom, then your hell is closer than you think because European governments and the UN are already imposing Shariah rather than protect the rights of their citizens. Cases of violence against those who dare speak out are up. Wither freedom, indeed.
12.02.2009 05:58

Hate and murder thrive on the part of Jihadists. On judgement day they will receive their just reward, eternal hell.
11.02.2009 10:05

Iran doesnt just want Mideast hegemony, which is why it launched a sattelite to hit any target in the world. What Iran wants is global jihad.
26.02.2009 02:36

Superb insight...
31.03.2009 05:04

I have come to depend on Dr. Volk's KREMLINOLOGY column as the best insight into Russian politics and foreign policy strategy available. This entry reinforces my belief. It is an absolutely clear-eyed and pinpoint accurate depiction of the Russian tactical game plan. KREMLINOLOGY deciphers the noise and exposes the strategy the Kremlin hopes to deploy in its battle to regain superpower status. Superb commentary of a quality rarely found anywhere else.
29.03.2009 10:40

The Reactionary has become home to some of the most hard-hitting commentary available. Peter Brookes lays it all out. Mexico already IS a Narco-State, and the U.S.-Mexican border is a battleground that we are ceding to the narco-terrorists polluting our streets with their junk. A state of war should be declared on the narco-gangs by both governments - U.S. and Mexico - and they should be brutally eliminated with extreme prejudice. Failure to engage these killers has already produced a lost generation and a border region that has become a hellhole. The U.S. is as guilty as Mexico in this spiraling stew of violence and depravity. It should be ashamed of itself for providing the marketplace for this shit and for selling the guns and amo that enforce the gangs that keep the filth flowing into our streets. Unless the Obama administration begins to take this threat seriously vigilante justice will soon be a daily occurrence and the border region will become a no-man's land.
29.03.2009 11:00

I would prefer that Obama fail on his own merit (or lack thereof) than to abdicate his responsibility to the bitter clowns in the Senate and Congress that are running his agenda. Pelosi and Reid are an abomination and a cancer in our body politic. Their politics are Paleolithic and will drive us to ruination. Alas, Obama has shown himself to be an under-qualified amateur and a rube. The American people will pay dearly for the folly of electing this Affirmative Action poster boy.
29.03.2009 05:45

Finally someone lifts the veil - using clear and simple language - and exposes the cynicism, defeatism and incompetence of the Obama Team's ideological mentors...the 68ers. These self-appointed Elites are the incubators and disseminators of a world-view that is destroying American Exceptionalism from its core outward. Obama and his motley crew of lackeys and party hacks have - like mind-numbed zombies - internalized these miscreant 68er values and threaten to implement them step by step in a succession of policy events that will weaken the U.S. and institutionalize a value set that has proven fallible and sclerotic in other parts of the world (mainly Europe and parts of South America). This article is a call to arms. I can feel the fire...
23.03.2009 07:41

Re the comment of 29 March:I am proud of my 'unfortunate mindset', but the commentator should be aware that gratuiyous insulting is one of the las t resorts of the inarticulate, as well as a sign of insecurity. Nowhere have I praised Iran or Syria. Nor Am I even Left-wing, just a boring British Conservative of the Edward Heath variety,unlike the fanatic Neo- con Bushist pseudo-Christian Zionist fanatics, who have conned true conservatives by creating war and anarchy in the world, and laughing all the way to the bank. The neo-cons have con the world.
07.04.2009 11:54

its interesting to see that realpolitik might be making a comeback i this region, even though the author'S bias in skewered toward such police states like Syria and though the arab league protestations of a return to axes and alliances is laughable. the area has always been about that.
03.04.2009 10:05

Is Dr. Mallinson aware of Syria's murderous acts in Lebanon? Syria has murdered every attempt at democracy in the Middle East's most pluralist country. Every government official and private citizen that has attempted to move Lebanon beyond the grimy clutches of the Syrian fascists (or their puppet thugs within Lebanon) has been murdered in spectacular fashion - with high explosives. I personally WISH that Israel and Turkey would attack Syria and wipe its Baathist cretins off the face of the earth. Then Lebanon would be free and democracy and purality would take root in the region. It would serve the author of this article to either do a bit more research or display more balance when he writes about the region.
31.03.2009 12:37

Mallinson's article is polemical crying of crocodile tears for the regimes of Syria, Iran and Russia - I'm sure these 'victimized' and peaceful regimes appreciate your concerns for their foreign policy interests vis-a-vis the evil Turks and the conniving Jews. Never mind that this troika of miscreants have been trying to wipe the only successful democracy in the region (Israel) off the map for the last quarter century or more. Would it be that you would share a balanced concern for the two democratic governments of your villainous protagonists, rather than give all your misguided sympathies to Kleptocratic regimes of failed states. One finally arrives at Mallinson's real point of contention late in the piece - Cyprus. The rest is all foreplay. He fears the Turks will take a stronger stake in his beloved island, and that Israel might enter the picture as well - going so far as insinuating that Israel might one day, in an Imperial spasm, lay claim to Cyprus. It is this type of Leftist U.N.-think that is prevalent in the rarefied air of the Foreign Diplomatic Core and that dominates the international dialectic on these matters. Thank you to The Reactionary for providing an insight into this unfortunate mindset.
29.03.2009 10:25

Was it too inconvenient to add that Iran and Russia have been helping Syria build a nuclear bomb or that the Iranian-Syrian axis arms the terrorists who launch missiles into Israel by the day?

Hard to see that Turkey shares the reviled status in the UN General Assembly that Israel does. When has Israel threatened to annihilate its neighbors with its WMD as opposed to indulging the enemies it could have crushed forty years ago?

News of an Israeli-Turkish alliance should be greeted by anyone who welcomes a democratic future for the people of the region.
26.03.2009 06:43

The perversity of it all! The Putin Totalitarians and the fringe parties allowed to survive around them are pushing for lower taxation to boost the collapsing Russian economy, while the Obama Democrats are pushing for higher taxation to boost the collapsing U.S. economy...this is an Alice In Wonderland scenario! What's up is down and what's down is up...and...and...well, I'm confused! A case of Totalitarian rationale over Democrat idiocy.
09.04.2009 02:32

Gitmo is a great recruiting tool for terrorists. Far more terrorists are addaed by keeping Gitmo open. Let me keep you in a dog pen for five years; you would come after me too once released. Close it down, it is an embarrassment holding low-level threats.
25.07.2010 08:33

Gitmo has been a spine that the International Left has used to attack the U.S. with for the last 7 years. It is PC to want to close it down. And Obama is nothing if not PC. Whether this will actually serve to aid Obama in his primary duty - protecting the U.S. from further attack is another question. Reading this excellent article and looking at the recidivism rates makes one less than confident that the PR gains from closing the detention center down will be worth the increased risk of attack from one of the miscreants being held prisoner. This decision carries enormous practical inherent risks as well as potential benefits. Only with time will we know if the benefits were worth the risks. If not, the price to pay for Obama's PC dogma will be steep and potentially fatal to his administration.
09.04.2009 01:40

NATO is a rotten and useless appendage, a mostly U.S:-funded make-work program for third-world grandees and their offspring. Time to close it down and move it to Damascus. In its place a League of Democracies would restore credibility to the idea of an international forum for the benefit of responsible member states.
01.06.2009 04:51

I like your through the bone to the marrow thinking... Bill Mallinson
21.04.2009 07:08

NATO is defunct. Not just the Iraq war but what about Spain, a member, issuing warrants to try US officials for war crimes? How can you have a war-fighting alliance in which allies put each other on trial?
The only question is what should replace NATO? If Eurohawk could tell us that, it would be something to read about. A league of democracies?
20.04.2009 03:32

What poetic lines! I was almost singing when I read them. The words, the content! But I certainly expected a different outcome, a different conclusion.
The article mentions all the extremes that Christ had to hold his head for. He was used but never fully understood. So why is it the sword that we need? By the way, the sword was very active in Christian history already and did not do very much good. It also did not achieve what it aimed. It just is but a portion of Christ.
If you come to full circle and put all the portions together, you will finally get a faint idea of what She-He-It is. Yes, we are humans living in a world of polarities. But that is not the proof for it to be the Ultimate Reality which the Ultimate Goodness is just a portion of.

26.04.2009 07:55

What a point: when government's try to play God, they fail. The implication is very American: "that government is best, which governs least."
14.04.2009 07:10

This is some of the most profound and moving literature I have read in my life. I will return to it again and again. The Reactionary shows courage and vision publishing this. Thank you Spec 5 for a very special experience.
14.04.2009 06:45

Indeed, Ultimate Goodness is a nuisance for those whose power is based upon government as the ultimate necessity.

Spec 5 leaves us with two consequences: will Americans rediscover the individualism that spared them from the clutches of totalitarianism into which most democracies sooner or later fall; and, if not, will they find the measure of the sword to liberate themselves from totalitarianism's clutches?
12.04.2009 08:04

A very interesting article. And most informative...
22.04.2009 12:18

I'm amused, confused, and enlightened. I think. How do you put all this together and make sense of it (kind of)? It all fits in a way. I guess Doctor Mallinson wants to show a global conspiracy led by the discredited neocons but fitting the Queen, CHeney, Wolfowitz and the BIOT and an airport into one essay is a feat unto itself.
22.04.2009 05:51

How can 'we the people' ask to be represented by our legislature to prevent abuse when that very legislature is as venal, corrupt and narcissistic as the executive branch, and is often lying in the same bed with them!!!!!!!!??????????? Look at what that old man Arlen Specter (what an appropriate last name, the man is a Specter on the body politic) is doing in order to attempt to cling to power and privilege. We the people are being betrayed on a daily basis by the very people we elect to PROTECT us! As the Watchmen movie asks..."who is watching the Watchmen?". No one and that is why we are finished. The current crop of 'legislators' led by creeps like Reid and Pelosi are our damnation...
07.05.2009 06:49

I think that our 'dear new President' has a messiah complex the size of Africa. His administration is filled with ideologues who have imbided in the intoxicating juice of absolute power. They repeatedly point out that they have an unassailable mandate (though they won only 53% of the popular vote!) and that this agenda (Pacifist, Socialist, Multicultural, Hyperliberal) is the new American Way. American Exceptionalism is denied and denigrated and those that disagree with this administration are assailed by the media. We are in danger of becoming a de facto one-party state with this crew in power, and I am personally frightened that their dogma is being pushed as 'mainstream'. The checks and balances are breaking down and I am not optimistic about their efficacy as long as this administration - in the absence of a truly independent mainstrea media - controls the levers of public opinion. This concentration of power only invites abuse and is a grave danger to our liberty and feedom of choice.
04.05.2009 04:01

"our dear new President " "in league with Bush II?"
Dear reader,
The point is to see past partisan choice to see the damage "absolute power" can do to a system that has worked well for 2 centuries BECAUSE it has mechanisms to prevent concentration of power. YOU must research what your Chief Executive has done, but more importantly ask that you be REPRESENTED by your legislature to prevent abuse! I am asking you to invest a small amount of effort to prevent the abuse that brave Americans gave their life to change- for you. -R. James

28.04.2009 01:42

Very clear-eyed and well researched dissertation on our eroding constitutional traditions. I fear that the Presidency is becoming more and more Emperor-like, to the great detriment of our democracy.
25.04.2009 05:18

I'm sorry - I missed the threat posed by our dear new President who has been in power less than 100 days... What has he done that puts him in league with Bush II?
22.04.2009 08:00

what a worthwhile read...we need more citizen-statesmen-soldiers(?) like sr. ricky-j. what i find droll is that the author gained such an evidently stalwart appreciation for our founding fathers' courage and insight while attending or living in contemporary bastions of hyper-left utopian senility -- duke university & san francisco. is our marvelous author a clandestine politico-masochist?...sr. ricky-j. must literally have felt (and continue to feel) like sisyphus, being such a well-grounded historically-informed centrist pushing the rock of reason up the slopes of the city (by the commune) by the bay.
21.04.2009 11:00

Fantastic article. Part history lesson, part cautionary tale. Mr. James raises many red flags of caution as to the direction we are heading. By instructing us of the inspiring courage and extraordinary vision of the Founding Fathers of the U.S. one is horrified to learn of the insidious violation of 'checks and balances' that have taken place, and the threat to liberty that they symbolize. The Imperial Presidency is a threat to liberty and an insult to all those who sacrificed for that precious liberty.
21.04.2009 06:59

its time to get serious or get lost. the current strategy is pre-programmed failure. have our leaders never heard of the 'graveyard of empires'? how can they be so obtuse?
11.05.2009 06:03

What a superb commentary. Truly spectacular insight. It would seem that we in the West have learned nothing from past history. As BROTHER IN ARMS so insightfully points out, the border between these regions is an illusory accident of colonial idiocy and mis-planning. Our respect for its sanctity is manifest self-defeatism for the purpose of upholding a perverse charade. And supporting (and lending U.S. prestige to) flea-pit hoodlums who call themselves war-lords, while hoping they will bring in 'order' and some form of 'demcracy', is criminally ignorant. Either go in with ultimate force and annihilate the enemy or get the hell out and quit throwing precious lives, resources and treasure down this stinking hell-hole.
11.05.2009 01:52

Indeed. Do the job right and worthy of our sacrifice or dont do it all. The West's strategy of winning war on the cheap and easy is a dangerous illusion. We reap what we sow.
17.04.2009 10:23

How often we hear our Euro friends whinging about the injustice of the embargo. The only injustice is not arming the Cuban resistance. The status quo is not enough. Free Cuba!
20.04.2009 03:38

The Reactionary is a clear voice in the wilderness. Great articles and essays. Some fantastic insight. The world seems to be spinning off its axis and its good to know that there are still people who care to think analytically and have the courage of their convictions.
28.04.2009 03:10

The times are dark indeed and about to get darker. What most people do not know will in the end destroy them. The insidious Islamization of Europe, the slow demographic suicide, the endless apologies from moral relativists like Obama, this all sounds danger warnings and there seem to be very few publications pointing this out. Bravo The Reactionary.
24.04.2009 03:58

An inspiring and precise dissertation on the global condition, and the grave dangers the Left's delusional approach to these very problems is putting us in. Western Civilization is at the precipice, the tipping point from which there is no return. The Reactionary is a bulwark and a bullhorn against the gathering darkness into which the international Left is blindly marching the brainwashed masses. As The Editor here so frighteningly asserts, Western Civilization "is a civilization that is literally self-aborting." That is chilling. I, for one, am thankful for the courage and insight the Editor and his team provide in these very dire and challenging times. They are a light in the darkness.
19.04.2009 07:58

Tocqueville's insights cant be heeded or revisited enough. Excellent piece.
28.05.2009 08:31

Superb article...magnificent in its scope.
27.05.2009 05:01

I am highly impressed with this article. It really captures to mood of the times and the fear of people watching as the bureaucrats take over and make a bad situation into a catastrophe for future generations.
26.06.2009 04:22

A great article. Very well written.
06.06.2009 02:48

well done. great read.
28.05.2009 08:08

A tour de force of insight and vision, but who's listening and who has the courage to stand up to the forces of silver-tongued populism and left-wing mainstream press propaganda to intone that Schumpter's creative destruction and Smith's system of natural liberty will show the way out of the present crisis.
09.05.2009 06:42

I believe that Mr Chomsky has consistently hidden in the protecting arms of elite Academia, yet decries those who work for others. Who else, I wonder, would have the likes of him, save the University and perchance, PMSNBC?
05.05.2009 08:27

the article has an unmistakable style and superb insight. Be it that the 2.0 suggestions might one day take root. at the moment socialism lite seems to have the upper hand and who knows if we will survive this journey into collectivism.
03.05.2009 05:44

The scenario, of what is happening to Capitalism, is so well described by the author: The unchecked creation of personal goals lead to distruction. And I honour the fact, that the picture of peaceful Socialism is drawn in an equally dark and schizophrenic way. In a way, the social revolutionists live of the oil-hungry capitalists. So in what way are they different in the end?
I could imagine the described solution of adequate control similar to the already existing Chapter 11. Some control has to make big shares and bonuses, at the end of a desastrous year like 2008, impossible. Especially after pumping taxmoney into that very company. Why should only the taxpayer carry the misery while the capitalist takes the blessing? Churchill would be astonished about how social capitalism became! What a perfect sentence to cite and re-discribe.
But companies also need the chance, to free themselves of the controlling rules again, and the author certainly gets to a freshend up and probably functionable suggestion 2.0.

One point I would like to complete: Self-interest might be part of the solution. But it always will be its danger as well.
As Goethe already said in his ‘Faust’: “The powers that we called, we cannot get rid of anymore.”
I could also rewrite Ayn Rand’s comentary as follows: “It was the belief, that men are motivated primarily by materialistic considerations, that first built the capitalist system and then became vulgar and turned its power around to discredit and destroy it all over the world. And this turnaround was done by those people, who withdrew the greatest material comforts.”

I would die for an article, in which the author writes more about what ‘enlightened/rational self-interest’ is for him and how ‘the light will be sparked and lead us out of the shadows into a brave new world’.
This is exactly what I believe would work. That’s why it would be so inspiring to hear it from someone, who has the ability - like Mr. Ackley - to sense what is and what else there could be.

29.04.2009 10:35

Fantastic insight. The ideas for the 2.0 version of capitalism are excellent. But with the present U.S. administration what are the chances that they will be implemented? Zilch. They prefer to go the big government, big regulation, big tax direction. Liberals and socialists are addicted to re-distributive dogma. They are junkies for failed policies and a bloated public sector.
28.04.2009 02:00

Congratulations to this dark but up to date picture of what was and is and the promising vision of what should be.
I certainly enjoyed the eye-twinkeling messages of pure human nature between the lines!
What else is there to do? I’ll send out positive energy in order to attract politicians to read the article and have the courage for change. As we saw in the recent past: change will come anyway. So let us start and be creative in order to minimeze the inherent chaos of everything vibrating through the universe.

26.04.2009 07:26

From Mallinson: let's not forget that capitalism was invented, or at least given legitimacy, by Marx with his book 'Das Kapital'.

I'm not sure about the appropriatness of quting Ayn Rand. I know that 'The Fountainhead' is a good read for younger people, but if you read 'Anthem', then younsee that she was, inadvertently or otherwise, promoting an arguably pernicious brand of egotism, which is one of the main causes of the current debacle, along with America's controversial and expensive unilateral wars(not dealt with in your article). Anyway, didn't Rand die long before this crisis was easily predictable? Or was she a visionary?

I like your Capitalism 2 plan, and enjoyed the scatological imagery. Very apt. Overall, an original and telling piece.
22.04.2009 07:38

The abuses of power and trust that these creeps have perpetrated on the public trust is treasonous. I say let them burn. Put them in prison wit the common criminals and let them feel the wrath of Bubba and Kwame's man love abusing their 'core assets'.
21.04.2009 07:19

I agree with almost every part of this wonderfully eloquent composition. I would sign up for 2.0 immediately. The only part of this that I have a quarrel with is the fact that there is no mention of how in hell we can transform from the chaos where we are now to this heightened state of economic enlightenment called Capitalism 2.0. Revolution? Obama's quick demise? Will Ackley run for office? How will the game change?
18.04.2009 06:18

so well-written. At times frightening and enlightening. The 2.0 suggestions are splendid but reserve requirement levels suggested are very strong medicine and would bankrupt a lot of economies. Tough love but necessary.
18.04.2009 01:06

Here, here: Chomsky and Stiglitz have been peddling the same leftist dogmas for the last half-century. These arrogant fools need to go the way of the dinosaur.
17.04.2009 10:21

We Americans have the government we deserve. People like Pelosi and Reid and Dodd and all those crooks in D.C. hand in hand with the amoral profit-seeking scavengers on Wall Street. What a combination. The new Obama administration is as compromised as the old Bush one, if not more. It is all so sickening.
09.05.2009 08:26

It would seem that with the current 'recovery' some of these decisions to stabilize the economy with 'stimulus packages' that are so derided here might have actually worked. Could it be so?
06.05.2009 06:10

A fantastic rant against the meritless glad-handers profiting from their own greed. Perhaps the rapacious greed has revealed the true need for regulation. Like security checks at the airport, it can be onerous. When your child is on the aircraft it becomes important. When terrorists fly into skyscrapers it becomes essential.

I hope more people reject the anti-government, anti-regulatory bias that borders on religion. “What’s good for G.M.” is not good for America. Bloated payrolls and a sluggish response to market conditions are rewarded. Financial fraud is legalized, and the resulting plunder? Rewarded. Financial mismanagement at top levels of Corporations? Rewarded. Dismantling the top economy in the world in only 40 years? Rewarded. Are you well connected? You don’t have to pay taxes. (unless you join the new administration) . Of course, like you, I have little faith that regulation will be effective. Why should it? Americans are much more interested in ridiculous reality shows to pressure their representatives to do the right thing. Who lost their F.B.I. job after the incredible failure to spot Arabs learning how to fly but not interested in landing? The only agent (in Minn.) who tried to call attention to it. Is anyone going answer to the incredible failure at the SEC for turning a 4 billion dollar pyramid into a 30 billion dollar scheme? It’s possible, but the damage is done.

My central complaint against “Libertarianians” is that in bad times these people become socialists. “Too big to fail! We are socialists now! When you are finished in government, like Tom Daschle, we’ll give you 2 million a year too. Why? That two million will buy us a hundred billion from the revolving door of meritless gladhanders in business and government.

27.04.2009 05:50

I feel only disdain for the cowards and knaves that have disfigured the american economy.
25.04.2009 07:17

on our way to 3rd world status I wonder if the U.S. government will honor its debts or simply inflate and tax then away. we will reap what we have sown and our affluence, influence, and reputation will be demolished and discredited. the present government and regulatory agencies are a confederacy of dunces and a sick joke on American exceptionalism.
22.04.2009 06:46

The road to 3rd world status is paved with good intentions and bad policy. The whole game is so rigged against the taxpayer and normal citizen that its become a sick game. The Captains of industry are self-serving creeps and the regulators are corrupt ninnies. Where the hell does that leave us? Yup. Banana Republic here we come.
21.04.2009 09:03

For the past 20 years Wall Street banks abandoned all common sense and marched to the beat of the left by funding the elections and propganda of both Clinton and Obama. The banks have been hijacked by a bunch of apologists for political correctness in all shades and colors.

Somewhere inside every executive there is a sense of misguided guilt and the thought that bribing some corrupt pol will make it go away. The banks now reap what they helped sow. They financed the ignorant Trotskyites in power in Washington, so let them now feel the iron fist of government crush them.

Time for Wall Street bankers to get a political spine and stop selling their souls in the foolish belief they would be spared from the socialist wrath. What will Wall Street's political donors do next time? I bet they are foolish enough to double down on Obama and get even more burned. Such is the cravenness of their ilk.
20.04.2009 03:26

If a Martian were to fly through the window and ask for information about the American financial crisis (and what the root causes were for the global financial crisis) this article would be the only document he would need to read. What a stunning, definitive indictment of the high-end financial industry/elite public sector Mafia/nexus and where they have led us (U.S.). And as Mr. Pusser so insightfully points out, the enemy is us (the American voter/citizen). Our ignorance and intellectual laziness, our apathy, our lemming-like behavior at the polls, our blind trust, our greed and immaturity, our lack of appreciation for the gifts of democracy. We have allowed these Wall Street mediocrities and Beltway mandarins to have free rein in these most important of affairs and they have led us to ruin. My anger is profound, my disappointment is immense, and my disgust is infinite. And away we go...sliding irretrievably to 3rd World status. I'm mad as hell...
20.04.2009 03:10

Very informative analysis. The perspective of Pashtun intransigence is something one rarely if ever reads in the mainstream media - the lessons to be learned form this essay are many, but the main thesis that the Pashtun community must learn to behave and strategize like part of a modern nation and not a tribal council dominated by the strongest force is lesson number one. Every other issue (borders, etc.) could be approached and discussed if and when the Pashtuns implement a politically mature perspective vis a vis the region. The way forward clearly demands new thinking and a dose of political maturity that is momentarily severely lacking in a nation that resembles nothing more than a motley collection of venal tribal warlords.
06.06.2009 02:55

Under international law, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India are sovereign nation states with absolute, perpetual and exclusive rights over their territories. Regardless of the history of how the borderlines were drawn, the demarcations exist today as clear limits of national authority. The extreme sensitivity of national borders is evident in the anger aroused by cross border military incursions and the massing of troops on one side or another. If the national authority in Pakistan or Afghanistan wish to cede territory or redraw their borders, that is for their leaders and ultimately their people to decide. Any discussion of outside pressure to do so is simply modern-day colonialism.

Though the Durand line may have been flawed, it is most probable that any modern efforts to redraw borders will simple disadvantage another misrepresented group and result in a new separation with associated displacements, purges and conflict. Reinforcing international law, respecting nation-state sovereignty, and supporting the efforts of each nation’s leadership is best way to attain long-term regional stability and security.

03.06.2009 06:14

This conflict IS NOT an exercise in pure futility IF THE US AND PAKISTAN GET SERIOUS ABOUT STRATEGY. The Swat valley is now being liberated from the Taliban and perhaps there is hope in the horizon. But the US and Pakistan will have to get serious about an all-out war to wipe out this enemy - otherwise it IS futile and half measures will only bleed the US dry and Pakistan and Afghanistan are doomed to failed-state status.
31.05.2009 11:25

Very interesting debate. I certainly do not interpret the homepage video as 'reflexively pacifist'. It seems to very clearly ask penetrating questions as to how and why the billions of dollars being pumped in to the region are disappearing with little or no effect being seen. This is a country of approximately 30 million people and the vast majority are penurious beyond Western concepts of poverty. With the money being invested in the country every man, woman and child could be well-fed, educated, and cared for, and the country's infrastructure should be superb. Instead it is sinking into chaos and civil war and the infrastructure and the well-being of its citizens is atrocious. This is a massive tragedy. Corruption and ill-spent blood and treasure are sinking with nary a trace into the pit that is present-day Afghanistan.
28.05.2009 08:06

Some of the commentators below misread the article which states clearly the problem is NOT the Durand Line, which was drawn legitimately and was validated decade after decade. Rather the problem, according to the author, is the imperialism of Pashtun tribes that want annex parts of Pakistan. What isn't clear about his thesis? The thesis also contradicts your reflexively pacifist homepage video that treats the war as an exercise in pure futility.

The article makes a strong case for betting on leaders in Afghanistan that are not allied to or dependent on the Pashtuns for their power. Such a leader will have to deal ruthlessly with the Pashtun nationalists to render them incapable of causing mayhem again. The West needs to dump Karzai, who is a Pashtun tool, and install a good Farsi speaking leader it can rely upon to bring about the stability and self-determination the rest of the population deserves.
27.05.2009 09:34

What an indictment on the Pashtun majority. The tribal ways of the clans in that part of Central Asia creates a pre-programmed cycle of failed-state horrors. And what the British left behind is a complete disaster. The borders they carved up when their empire crumbled are the cause of most of the world's strife today.
27.05.2009 07:00

The article states very clearly that the Pashtuns ( Afghans ) are not the majority in the country that the British named after their tribes. Only the south of the country is Afghan bordering Pakistan, hence, where all the trouble is on both sides of the borders where these Afghan tribes live divided by a line that the Brits created. The rest of the country called Afghanistan are peace loving people from Persian and Turkic descent that make the majority, 70 %. They unfortunately ended up on the wrong side of the border with these warmongering tribal Afghans.
27.05.2009 06:10

Fantastic article. Great read.
26.05.2009 07:02

"Nationalistic Pashtuns of Afghanistan have basically signed the death warrant of Afghanistan and its people with their talks of taking over the NWFP and suspending the Durand Line." amazing. in one line the writer has pinpointed the self-destructive core of the country's leaders. great article.
26.05.2009 06:46

The kind of article The Reactionary is getting known for. Incredible scope and insight. It is enlightening to have one of the royal family with intimate knowledge of the background story to lay out the issue and challenges. Really riveting and well-written. If only someone of Mr. Kahn education and intellect were running the country perhaps the present troubles would not seem so overwhelming.
25.05.2009 06:20

This is a knockour punch of an essay. It gives a perfect background history of the area and then pinpoints the problem in near-surgical terms. I feel like I know the roots of a conflict that heretofore I never really understood. The mainstream press paitns the picture of a backward country engaged in perpetual war with empires, but the context is always missing. Mr. Panah Kahn lays out the history, the problems arising from this tragic history, and offers a logical starting point for a solution. The hope of a better Afghanistan lies there.
25.05.2009 04:31

Superb and exhaustive analysis. This article provides a fantastic and intense background history of the region and of the difficulties that have plagued it since the dying British Empire drew up lines of demarcation for borders, thus planting the seeds for most of the horrible conflicts ranging from the middle east to central Asia toay. Mr. Panah Kahn makes the present quagmire much easier to understand. There is finally context. The usual media articles on the region have no information of the CAUSE of all the strife. The profound insight presented by Mr. Panah Kahn is riveting and makes this article a must read for anyone interested in this most elemental battle for hearts, minds, and territory.
23.05.2009 05:50

Thank you so much for posting this article! I recommend that Republican strategists and voters take another look at Phyllis Schlafly's 1964 Classic "A choice not an echo." Who are we letting set the agenda here in 2009? The issue is certainly NOT torture. It's bash Bush. Why not? It's easy. As long as Republican's put their tails between their legs and let the opposition go wild with irrational inquistions that are down-right dangerous to US and international security, we don't deserve to win more votes. Certainly not mine! Stick to principles not polls and don't abandon our leaders when the heat's on! They might just be right. VA
19.05.2009 09:17

Vice President Dick Cheney takes the rein and demolishes the present-day Obamaton's elite-media conspiracy of idiocy on Homeland Defense. He literally scorches the effete and intellectually dishonest pablum that the Liberal intelligentsia is pushing onto the masses. Thank God someone has the balls to stand up to the bought and paid 'conventional wisdom' apparatchik!
27.05.2009 05:05

Another brilliant exposé by Dr. Volk of Russia's relentless backtracking to Totalitarianism. This is a heartbreaking development and a dangerous one too. The resolute and infantile chest-beating that the Technocrats in Moscow insist on demonstrating on the national as well as international stage can only end in disaster for Russia. The whitewashing of history and return to Stalinist strong-arm tactics by what is - realistically- a third-world behemoth: a decrepit economy living on the mineral wealth gurgling underneath the Russian tundra, as well as a demoralized and threadbare military industrial complex, is nearly comical if it were not so deadly serious. Russian decline masked by totalitarian bluster. Pathetic.
09.06.2009 03:04

In a twisted sort of way, at least Russia seems to be more transparent about distorting history for political ends than Europe and the States! In Russia, the government sets up a commission charged with hounding historians, whereas in the West the left has achieved a better result by unofficially stifling contrary views in schools, universities and public discourse. As a former University educator, I personally witnessed many examples of students being punished for unorthodox (i.e. pro freedom) views of history, economics and politics. Western textbooks are replete with historical distortions that serve as socialist endoctrination. No Western country in the clutches of radical leftwing "political correctness" is in a position to lecture Russia on this issue. What passes for good journalism in Western media like the BBC, CNN, FT, The Economist or Sueddeutsche Zeitung or Le Monde would make Russian media look pretty competent.

Eric Staal, Editor
27.05.2009 08:17

How long will it take the world in general and the Obama administration specifically to understand that North Korea is a cancer that must be operated on? The diminutive despot running that Asian flea-pit has a nascent nuclear program while his penurious prisoner-subjects walk around on soles made of banana-peels, subsisting on 100 grams of rice per day. The delusional despot's answer to any international pressure is a temper-tantrum followed by a missile test. Kim Jong Il is an insectal, inbred imbecile reigning over a surreal hellhole...the faster North Korea is annihilated militarily the better for humanity. Attempting to 'negotiate' with that regime is akin to discussing dialectical materialism with a cockroach.
09.06.2009 03:11

Fake plans. Bad implementation. Every word written here could be applied on a non-military historical basis to the Obama administrations actions the last 5 months. Great title for the Obama Movie: Fake Plans.
17.06.2009 01:22

At times scathing, at times humorous, and always interesting. And somehow timeless.
17.06.2009 01:05

It seems that the Obama administration is falling into an immense trap of Orwellian double-speak and slimy hypocrisy and creating a 'Management Crisis' at this very moment, ignoring all the tenets presented in this article. It's like watching a slow-motion crash developing before your very eyes. The arrogance, the blindness, it is all there. What Obama is creating will make Bush's missteps seem like a Girl's Scout Tea Party.
11.06.2009 05:12

The degradation of language (ergo meaning) is a specialty of governmental bodies and has spread now into the commercial and even personal realm. It is an affliction that is reaching epidemic proportions. Bravo to Dr. Mallinson for firing a salvo against this pernicious virus...
09.06.2009 03:14

Though the author's Pascifist/non-intervensionist biases regarding NATO and the US's involvements in crises globally are clear, an otherwise excellent essay is marred by paragraphs like this: "Consider the Bush/Blair syndrome, and the amount of rationalisation/cognitive self-dissonance to which they subjected themselves, to avoid the fact that they became obsessed and were responsible for an amount of manslaughter and planned killing that makes a typical terrorist act (horrible and unacceptable though it may be) look like a girl-guides’ tea-party." It is as if Dr. Mallinson conveniently forgets (or has a blindspot for) the MURDER that the Serbs or the Taliban or Al Quaida perpetrated upon hundreds of thousands of their OWN civilians before the supposedly ignorant and cognitive-dissonant-plagued Bush and Blair administrations (and coalitions including many other democratic nations acting on their secret service data) decided to intervene and remove homicidal regimes that were a deadly threat to their own people - and in some cases to free-living people in distant democratic countries. A little balance and intellectual honesty would go a long way to helping Mallinson make a credible case for his point of view.
08.06.2009 11:19

A very entertaining and original piece indeed, including superb quotes and aphorisms used to great effect to bolster the author's penetrating take on "linguistic bulimia!!" looking forward to the next essay.
08.06.2009 09:16

Though I don't agree with the premise that a crisis, by very definition, cannot be managed - a crisis is an unstable situation of extreme danger or difficulty and can be either well or badly 'managed' to differing degrees - and though Doctor Mallinson's insistence on flogging the Bush and Blair administration for 'fake' plans in Iraq and presenting as a (retrospective) solution merely more of the same completely ineffective and corruption-ridden 'sanctions', the essay is a wonderful skewering of conventional wisdom and Diplomatese/Orwellian double-speak. Part crisis-management manual, part subversive deconstruction of governmental crisis-creation, the author outdoes himself in provoking thought and discussion.
07.06.2009 06:55

The Obama Administration casted as "Pontius Pilate" to the people of Iran. How befitting Delroi's RANT is. Obama is so thoroughly ignorant of history and US Foreign Policy that it can be nothing but spineless when events and time call for taking a stand for freedom. What a terrible disgrace Obama is--so far nothing more than a complete waste of talent.
22.06.2009 09:52

I like this. Good idea. Great comments. Totally true. 'President Obama is a disgrace, a paragon of therapeutic statist fallacies and appeasist multi-culti nullities'. Good. Real good.
22.06.2009 04:03

Great example of the cowardice difference between proactiveness and reactiveness. Not a good characteristic for a leader to see which direction the wind is going to blow before taking a stand. That's what neutral countries do not world leaders and nations.
25.06.2009 12:42

Locked and loaded commentary. Bullseye!
25.06.2009 08:44

Obama was most certainly the victim of State Department counsel on Iran: "dont rock the boat Mr President." Reagan knew to ignore the spineless foreign service hacks who havent taken a moral stand since WWII. Reagan knew the worst thing the US can do is let the State Dept run foreign policy.
25.06.2009 08:15

Superb commentary. Diamond-hard and bracingly honest. Obama has been a borderline disgrace during this crisis. His professorial tone and moral relativism have failed him miserably. As leader of the 'free world' he has performed meekly and miserably in establishing a moral tone that the world can rally around and use as a tool of support for the besieged masses in Iran. He is so far behind the curve that this crisis has done him almost as much damage as to the bearded Mullahs sitting in Tehran. Mr Staal clearly points out what is at stake here - something Obama seems too blind, deaf and dumb to recognize. Hope and change were Obama's campaign promises - we find out now he meant that for his Teacher's Unions and Gay Marriage advocates...the oppressed people of Iran are not included in his equation.
24.06.2009 08:00

Obama should take a page from the Reagan playbook and how a real leader deals with such situations by looking at the reaction to the Solidarity uprisings in Poland in the early 1980s. But that would presuppose getting his priorities straight as the writer points out.
24.06.2009 08:00

North Korea is provoking The US and the UN, knowing paper tigers and empty rhetoric are useless against its dogged determination. Only by engaging partner countries in Asia (i.e. China) to (legally - under UN mandate) stop this ship can we dent the Korean midget madman's insouciant nuclear brinkmanship. If China doesn't play along the best we can hope is that the ship strays into International waters. At that point lock and load onto Pyongyang because no one knows what the diminutive imbecile might do...
27.06.2009 04:55

What absurdity that there are still sanctions to be passed against N. Korea. We should have implemented the full range of sanctions years ago. Why does the USG tolerate such a pest. The Americans are the victims of their own immoral policies to preserve the status quo.
24.06.2009 09:29

Hilarious and piercing. Excellent work.
05.08.2009 03:44

Hypocrisy and imperial arrogance at its best. All this by a bankrupt former World Power down at its heels and clinging to ill-gotten remnants of past glories. Pathetic.
14.07.2009 06:24

Return the Marbles. It is that simple. Imperial Thuggery should not be extended into the 21st Century. On the one hand Britain lays down for homegrown Jihadists ans Islamist propaganda, afraid to insult the delicate sensibilities of the perpetrators - basically bending over for them. On the other hand the fountainhead of European Culture - Greece and its culture - is treated like a shabby distant relative. Shame on the U.K.
06.07.2009 05:47

Superb commentary and riveting demonstration of England's shameless Colonial thuggery. The shock is the continuation of this shabby and supercilious policy by a modern Britain. Given Britain's inglorious tradition vis a vis Greek democracy the continued display of cultural thievery and snooty arrogance is disgraceful.
27.06.2009 05:01

Dismal.
11.07.2009 12:09

Insightful. But what will Obama gain from his Russian trip? A photo-opp? Support for missile defenses? Human rights? Russian involvement in a coalition to enforce sanctions in Iran? The Obama administration seem to view these trips abroad romantically: "it is about the journey and not the destination." Where are the United States when you need them.
29.06.2009 11:44

Russia is like a fading thug trying to bribe the other petty criminals on its' turf to hang together. It is altogether pathetic and useless. Buying 'friends' guarantees you have none. The U.S.'s strategy in the Middle East is a sad reminder of this parable.
06.08.2009 02:19

The summit was a lost opportunity for real progress. It confirmed the wanness of Obama's foreign policy and the entrenchment mentality of Medvedev's (Putin's) regime. The details were left to the devil.
14.07.2009 06:32

The Health Car issue should be beyond partisanship. The insurance companies are price-gouging, hegemonistic monsters, the trial lawyers are parasitic opportunists fighting needed tort reform, and the government is a bloated, bureaucratic bungler of anything it touches...the American people are stuck in the middle of this shameful triangle of greed, red-tape inefficiency and predatory pricing. Heaven help us.
29.08.2009 10:47

Interesting commentary in that one finds the rarest of species: a thoughtful and fair-minded Liberal. We have grown so accustomed to the shills from the Left, the Pelosis, the Franks, the Dodds, the Reids, (not to mention the imbeciles like Olbermann and Kouric and Moyers) that when an intelligent and reasoned gentleman enters the debate it is actually refreshing. I don't agree with McIntyre, but I do wish we had more of his type arguing for the other side. It wold make for am ore civilized and enlighten end argument.
29.08.2009 09:50

Fair point that Americans already have bureaucrats running their health care and making the life and death decisions. But if the government takes over then there will be no choice left. At least now, some Americans can choose providers and plans.
18.08.2009 09:31

Clever prose but McIntyre should change the name to his blog from "You Don't Say" to "So What". Afterall, these musings leave us with no better information and no more clear view of the debate. At least, he is honest about the reflexive behavior on the left and right when it comes to distorting the facts in the health care debate.
15.08.2009 05:29

Bob Novak was a pillar of integrity in a field that has lost all measure of pride in presenting fact. Every journalist now wishes to be an editorial writer or has a political ax to grind. Regrettable and anathema to good journalism.
24.08.2009 06:35

What a wonderful goodbye. Every word truth. The irony is that Mr. Novak was a registered Democrat who backed a lot of the big Liberal dogs earlier in his career. He came to his conservative views relatively late in life. I loved Novak's TV appearances like The Capital Gang, Crossfire, and Evans&Novak - always enjoyed his balanced views and deeply grained integrity. A real throwback to better and more honorable times. In a world that deified ciphers and biased icons like Walter Cronkite, Mr. Novak was the real deal. He will be very sorely missed.
21.08.2009 02:23

The era of objective reporting was over decades ago and along with it a time when journalists had enough self-respect to draw a line between reporting and editorializing.

Frustrated Marxists who want to change the world should simply be banned from journalism in order to restore to the profession some semblance of integrity.
20.08.2009 02:46

When Dr. Mallinson claims that "The whole question hinges on the undermining of international law since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Here, we can draw a certain flexible parallel with the return of barbarity to western Europe following the collapse of the Roman Empire, when law went out of the window, to return only slowly and painstakingly, with the help of the Church, and of Charlemagne’s keenness to emulate the old days of Roman power. " one can only conclude that the 'barbarity' to which Mallinson refers was considered such because it was random and not coming from a centralized power. The barbarity that was inherent within the Roman Empire's laws (and those who took such laws into their own hands) was nearly unparalleled in human history. For the author to in any indirect manner compare that barbarity to what has taken place in western Europe (where is that? France, Italy...oh, the Balkans) at the hands of NATO - as usual no mention was made of the Serbian thugs and criminals - is stretching metaphor to the breaking point and beyond.
08.09.2009 11:51

From Mallinson: the comment about my 'Euro-Left-wing Euro bone fides' betrays the commentators auto-lobotomisation, and dependence on outdated pseudo concepts. Why? Because I am not left-wing. Indeed, I abhor the dreadful political correctness that comes out of today's left wing. I am in fact more of a conservative, but I doubt thatbthe commentator would understand that. A shame that he/she/it has not tried to address my points more directly.
08.09.2009 01:19

The author writes, "Few dare mention the incredible hypocrisy of Israel’s nuclear weapons never being mentioned as a threat to world peace, while Iran is criticised." Is the author on strong medication? Let me mention that Israel never threatened to wipe a neighbour off the face of the earth, nor did it ever threaten Europe with long-range delivery of said weapons. Furthermore, Israel is a lone democracy in an ocean of antagonistic, malignant Islamic dictatorships sworn to its destruction. The nuclear option is merely a deterrent. The idiocy and bogus 'moral-equivalence' in play in Mallinson's statement is stunning.
03.09.2009 07:36

Dr. Mallinson is no friend of NATO and sees hypocrisy and moral degradation everywhere he looks in the West. He is your classic pasty-white victim of Imperial self-hatred, but in accusing Israel of 'Nazi tactics' and of having lost "the moral fight" he betrays his Euro-Left-Wing bona fides in a pathetic display of moral tunnel vision.

His arguments would not seem so sanctimonious or strident if he even once attempted discursive balance and mentioned some of the shortcomings (moral or otherwise) of the Communist or Islamist or Nationalist objects of his sympathy and apologias.
03.09.2009 04:09

Would Dr. Mallinson have advocated the turning of a blind eye to the slaughter perpetrated in Serbia? Or to the half a million bodies buried in the Iraqi desert by Saddam's henchmen? He is quick to criticize and throw supercilious aspersions, yet not once does he present any alternatives. Does 'sovereignty' excuse or justify slaughter, as long as it is within recognized borders? Why no outrage at the crimes and atrocities these regimes perpetrated upon their subjects, only against the (well-intentioned or not) liberators?
29.08.2009 10:54

Superb commentary by Mr. Rothschild. It is time for the dialectic to merge into one voice for responsible business practices AND profit. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.
25.09.2009 11:29

Someone ought to teach this sorry excuse for a man a lesson. How about giving this cockroach a taste of his own medicine he is sure to enjoy: bring out the gimp.
24.09.2009 10:09

Bejing's intent? Hegemony of the Asia Rim and global projection of its power. When will the U.S. awaken to the fact that this is a slow-motion tsunami coming its way? Probably when it is far too late...as in when the Chicoms finally decide to overtake Taiwan. The U.S. will not sacrifice any American city to save Taipei...and the Chicoms know this. Game over.
06.10.2009 11:27

Dr. Volk's commentaries always give the reader the feeling of being immune to the bubble of headlines and propaganda and a recipient of unvarnished truths. These columns are truly an insider's whispers of unfiltered Truth to the outside world from the catacombs of the new Russia. Great work.
06.10.2009 11:20

Excellent commentary. Europe as Switzerland writ large. Exactly.
06.10.2009 11:13

This is by far the most comprehensive and relevant review of where the Obama Administration is taking the world--the total abandonment of the international order in favor of pie in the sky devotion to the collectivist Zeitgeist.
11.10.2009 09:25

Blair would certainly be a strange choice for the post of EU 'President'. Why would he want to be President of such a Byzantine, impotent, feckless organization? The E.U. is a continent of shopkeepers and bureaucrats.
17.10.2009 11:40

As a native Californio, this sums it up. The Golden State, once the jewel in the American crown, has been run into the ground by an endlessly corrupt state government. Hollywood will spend millions attacking Conservative politicians on the national stage and in any other state, but where are they when Sacramento drags the entire country into an economic disaster?
16.11.2009 10:45

Present Russian government attitudes toward a fee-market and democracy are nearly as retrograde and nationalistic as their Soviet brethren. One must ask, are they really that obtuse or are they simply addicted to Eastern European ideals of despotism, endless bureaucracy and corruption? Either way it spells self-destructive idiocy.
21.11.2009 05:42

Best article on the subject I have ever read. Clear, concise, and perfectly on message.
06.12.2009 06:23

It's high time Christian leaders had the guts to produce an eloquent and unequivocal statement on the major cultural issues of the day. Some of these arguments have never seen the light of day in the profane media coverage of Christian values and their origins. A statement of this quality requires re-visiting just to absorb its depth and it should therefore also stand the test of time.
09.12.2009 04:02

A profound reading experience. Thankyou for publishing this. That, in and of itself, is an act of independence and courage.
05.12.2009 07:30

A rare dose of intellectual honesty; but European & American leaders have sold our lives to the Islamofascists.
19.01.2010 04:18

Somehow a very beautiful story.
08.01.2010 04:32

The Soviets and their communism conquered and infected Eastern Europe, paid off the local political thug elite, and relegated it to decades of hellish regimes. How could a regime that destroys the spirit of its population survive for so long? Look at Iran today, and look at the Russian support it receives.
29.12.2009 10:24

incredible. the barbarity of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe in the 20th Century is unthinkable. will there ever be a full accounting of what happpend in russia or romania? these stories could fill libraries with tales of barbarity.
28.12.2009 10:19

I like the personal angle in this story. It is also quite refreshing to read a personal story like this in a political journal. It gives context to the political ideologies debated, and demonstrates the cost in human lives that these ideologies extract.
27.12.2009 01:17

What an amazing story. I wish the author had followed up and found out who this man was. Nevertheless, perhaps leaving the story as it ended was best. Very evocative.
26.12.2009 09:49

What beautiful story. Wonderful and puzzling. Also heartbreaking. And the central question remains. Who was this man?
26.12.2009 07:53

I loved reading this heart-touching story. Sometimes, the original goal fades away. The details of the 'why' become secondary, and the result, the reunion of father and son, heals what was too hurtful to look at... one's past.
The story reminds so be humble and thankful for the precious, that so easily is covered by all the struggle. It reminds me, that surrendering to life helps to let it flow and apreciate its gifts.
24.12.2009 03:38

The whole "green" thing is criminal. From torching SUV's to getting rid of plastic bags so that mold and bacteria can grow in your
re-usable tote bag; to law suits against "fracking" in the next round of green anti-USA, anti-people pushes; cfc ban; ddt ban; Y2K; Forest fires in the South-West; polar bears and glaciers; the greens have proven to be the least earth friendly bunch out there.

They all need to be stopped one way or another.
05.02.2010 05:09

Germans saw in envy, how the GDP in the US grew. Now at least the homeowners here are somewhat relieved to live in a country, where the banks have to fix the interest-rate for your credit over some years. Speculation impossible. It is regulation, yes, somehow. But it has also to do with character. And a company or bank just cannot have character. So make character a rule (which it is in long terms anyway - written or not) and distinguish between regulation and regulation. Nothing is bad just by existing.
23.01.2010 12:32

Q:
If you’ve ever asked yourself just how the capitalist pig-dominated United States cannot get its economic act
together while China, master of state-owned and state-controlled enterprises, managed to do it in a relative
heartbeat and emerge as the savior of the global recession no less, join the club.

A:
They are a hyper-mercantilist autocracy. Nimble, a country controlled by a miniscule cadre of ethics-devoid, rule-free men. We are an indolent plutocratic crony-kapitalist society, run by cynical ahistorical pigmies whose currency is identity politics and class warfare.
15.01.2010 09:48

pehaps someone could elucidate for me what is the difference between the present modus operandi and Putin's russia?

the magic o has a very illustrious crony capitaist (**not** capitalist) gig going here. in with the GS/beltway thugocracy? you're on easy street. out with the too-live crew? pay your extortionist taxes and shaddup.

pitchforks and torches anyone? I >>DO<< believe the founding fathers took violently to the ramparts for much, much less than this. i'd be wholesale for such an insurrection all over again.
15.01.2010 02:26

Searing stuff. Damn good shit. The fix is in.
08.01.2010 04:35

Doom and gloom. But what else can one add or say? Every day Jefferson's words become clearer and more frightening. Like a modern Nostradamus.
07.01.2010 04:07

the vast majority of Americans have no clue how compromised the system is. The perversity of the greed is only exceeded by the ignorance of the victims.
02.01.2010 11:12

Everyone using the system as their personal wench in this gangbang. brilliant. and the party aint over yet!
02.01.2010 10:26

Everyone using the system as their personal wench in this gangbang. brilliant. and the party aint over yet!
02.01.2010 10:25

American Capitalism is supposed to be the standard bearer, the shining beacon on a hill to the rest of the world. It has slowly been exposed as a rigged game. Spartacus rightly points to Volcker as the Last Man Standing in the battle for responsible governence. What a dispiriting fiasco.
02.01.2010 09:12

This is near nihilism. Unfortunately it rings true. Mr. Spartacus has a very insightful, if provocative, take on the US financial system. I pray he's wrong, while knowing he's right.
02.01.2010 09:03

There is a marked paucity in the article to any mention of the very brain-dead, instant-gratification, entitlement-spoiled, character-deficient, infantile, imbecilic, Shopping-Mall-sated, shop-till-you-drop Hoi Polloi that took out the freaking loans that annihilated their bottom line in the first place. Each one of these peasants thought they were empowered by the "New Economy" and entitled by their U.S. citizenship to be the Lord and Lady of their very own McManor - their gleaming slice of The American Dream. The economic illiteracy of these people, AS WELL AS THE gluttonous rapacity of the money-changers/lenders and their Madison Avenue image-making whore-puppets, made for a Dance of Death for American Exceptionalism...they BOTH contributed to turning a country of individualist, independent, avaricious-yet-hard-working folk into a sewer of me-first, morally-flaccid, all-devouring locusts...and who in this filthy, teeming swamp can point the finger at the Other and claim innocence? Please. Caveat Emptor is one of the Golden Rules of Capitalism...and the great sadness is that to expect character from either lender or debtor in this New World is to engage in absurd fantasy...both the Pimp AND the John deserve opprobrium...I have no pity for either, only murderous contempt.
30.12.2009 10:00

I have just finished reading this, it is going on Midnight, I pray that it doesn't disrupt my sleep, for if even 1/10th of it is true, I am in for a restless night.
28.01.2010 12:31

We were right... It is certainly a good feeling to have your instinct prooven, but it is not the end of the story. The Obama-fairytell does not work in real life, and we knew it, but there are 3 more years to come. It cerainly will be interesting to find out, how (in the last year of his presidency) the campaign-sloagan and real life will be connected to convince the american public to reelect Obama.
23.01.2010 12:12

There is a menacing undercurrent to the Obamas and their minions that made some of us instantly wary of the candidate. It is not a racial indictment at all (although that will be the charge, no doubt, by his sycophants). He didn't inspire us, dazzle us with his oratory or send a tingle up our collective leg. His unctuous smirk, disingenuous charm and detached amusement at opposing views infuriated and repulsed us. His personal associations and views alarmed us and caused us to suspect what was to come. We were right; end of story.
22.01.2010 05:55

Obama will try for the big comeback in 2010 but he's been exposed as a rube on Foreign Policy. His policy of obsequiousness and self-criticism has backfired badly and his political capital has been spent...look at Chavez and Putin and the Iranian and Chinese despots! They disrespect the POTUS and know there is no price to pay.
25.01.2010 11:35

Team Obama's feckless performance and naiveté in foreign policy are actually quite frightening. I feel as if a team of Liberal Democrat party hacks together with a gang of pinhead elites from liberal universities' Government and Humanities Studies departments are at the helm and are in the process of being taken as useful idiots by the hard-headed totalitarians who run Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and a host of other 'problematic' nations. What an embarrassment.
21.01.2010 02:22

Obama's world view is your run of the mill Leftie's 'cultural sensitivity' tripe - thus bowing down to Bedouin Chieftans and Asian Emperors comes naturally to such imbeciles and dilettantes like Barack Obama. He thinks these actions appropriate. His education indoctrinated him to this mind-set. Underneath the MSM-created patina Obama is an amateur and a provincial.
14.01.2010 08:07

Fantastic and comprehensive overview of the disaster that Barack Hussein and his gang of elite academics and party hacks have wrought in their first year at the helm. Obama has proven to be a delusional amateur on foreign policy and his weaknesses have been exploited to an embarrassing degree. His 'performance' has been damaging and cringe-worthy. His advisors and assistants areas naive and deluded as he. They should be fired en masse. What a fiasco.
13.01.2010 09:08

Obama's dereliction of duty will has most certainly cost lives in Iraq and Afghanistan already and will cost lives from the Middle East to Latin America - just more proof that Obama has a sick disregard for the lives of others.
13.01.2010 02:26

The morally corrupt Russian bear flailing away again at its energy-hungry neighbors, desperately trying to be relevant by threatening to withhold energy reserves...a thug regime demonstrating its frustration at being a third-world land by slapping smaller countries in the head...a pathetic, decaying bully.
23.01.2010 10:54

Russia using its energy reserves as a tool of foreign policy is a game Europe and Russia's "Near Abroad" best get used to...it's their ace in the hole and they'll play it as often as it serves their purposes.
21.01.2010 02:32

In the zero-sum game of international politics Russia is perfectly positioned to take advantage of a weak US President to expand its power in Europe -- and energy is the perfect tool. Dr. Volk points out both the pattern and the complexity of the situation.
15.01.2010 09:43

This Left-Islamist alliance in Europe is troubling to the extreme, and the Swedes' stance in Malmo is a microcosm of how many in 'Post-Christian' Europe feel for Jews. If Iran where ever to launch an attack on Israel the blood would be on Europe's hands as they present impotent and phony 'sanctions' against the Mullahs while saving their most vituperative rage for Israel - the Middle East's only liberal democracy. After an Iranian attack, when Israel is finished wiping out Iran, they should turn their guns on Europe.
11.02.2010 07:54

Have we completely lost all of our self-respect? What a horrifying inheritance to leave our children to be treated as infidels in their own countries--violently threatened by followers of a foreign culture for any dissent from its evil dictates and the supremacy they seek to exercise over us. After the Jews Christians will be persecuted in Europe too which is exactly how they took over the Middle East and why the Crusades were a noble cause.
10.02.2010 07:06

The islamization of Europe is a process that verges on being impossible to stop. The immigration plus the birth rate of Islamic people clearly indicates that Islamic population is growing a lot faster than a possibly diminishing European population. On behalf of tolerance Europe may be condemned to become an Islamic regime, the most intolerant of all, and only Europeans are guilty.
10.02.2010 04:34

Europe is in rapid decline. No wonder the Obama has no time for EU talking shops and photo ops.
14.03.2010 12:17

No surprises here: the terrorist parasites have taken over the European host.
01.02.2010 10:17

Opposition protests in Russia are like spitting into a maelstrom. The thug regime of Putin will crush any dissent and use whatever means necessary to keep a tight reign on anything that questions his absolute authority. The man Bush thought he could 'do business with' is in reality just another in the long like of KGB gangster-functionaries dreaming of a dominant Russian Empire and brutishly bullying his agenda against the tides of history.
09.02.2010 06:13

Putin's Russia will not do anything to help the U.N. (and by proxy, the U.S.) in Afghanistan unless the deal is completely stacked in their interest. To think otherwise is naive. A quagmire for the U.S. in Afghanistan fits Russia's international interests perfectly.
04.02.2010 05:16

As long as China continues to be the USs creditor and bankrolls its extravagant over-spending there is very little leverage that can be used against its expansionist policies. China will respect US policy less and less and will become more and more assertive about its own agenda.
19.02.2010 10:11

China will become increasingly assertive in pushing its agenda, and Obama must realize that with the Communist leadership in China any hesitation or sign of acquiescence is seen as a sign of weakness. I am encouraged that even Obama, a naive leftist ideologue, is finally catching on to this fact and is beginning to assert U.S: interests above his need to be liked by the 'global community' - whose approval he so desperately seeks.
05.02.2010 08:17

Wake-up time, Barry! It is very encouraging to see Obama finally understand that China is a virulent rival to U.S. national interests in a wide spectrum of issues, and that the U.S. needs to deal with this rising power firmly and in the spirit of self-interest. It is the only realistic and responsible way to handle the China juggernaut.
04.02.2010 05:02

Post-Christian England is fast becoming a wasteland of moral relativism and cowardly political correctness. England is in dire need of spiritual sustenance and a cultural backbone. Whether one is Catholic or Protestant or any other denomination, (or hell - no pun intended - even an Atheist) what the Pope has to say resonates profoundly.
11.02.2010 08:04

If this is Labour's priority during an economic crisis, they deserve to lose the next election.
02.02.2010 07:08

This is the best article I have read on the subject. I agree with the conclusion...sanctions from the US and Europe...and help the Green Revolution movement with statements to the world supporting them...not Obama's feckless diffidence and silence...
13.02.2010 10:29

It is shameful how Europe & the US refuse to support the democracy movement while seeking a diabolical peace with the dictators. US/EU policy should unequivocally be regime change in the name of human rights, not continued appeasement of oppression.
09.02.2010 09:28

The moth-eaten Russian Bear posturing and bellowing and bullying...trying to frighten the world into believing it is still a superpower instead of just a third-world economy rich in natural resources and corruption. The narcissistic belligerence would be pathetic if it weren't so dangerous.
15.02.2010 07:09

Europe had better get with the programme and take its security into its own hands because it cannot count on protection from an American administration that sees foreign policy as a distraction from its domestic agenda.
09.02.2010 10:15

This article pretty much sums up the paradigm of 'the banality of evil'. The banality of the reports is creepy. The evil lies in the intent. Ugh.
25.02.2010 05:11

What a range of emotions are elicited by reading this detailed description of the Bulgarian secret service's spying on their former King! It reads like a cross between a documentary on the monstrous and thick-headed peasant cyborgs of totalitarian Bulgaria's secret service and a Cold War thriller.
20.02.2010 04:02

what a fascinating article. where can I buy this book? or is it only available in Bulgaria?
18.02.2010 09:45

Great article and I certainly understand the intention. The dilemma of democracy is, was and will be democracy itself. And the decision where to start and end being democratic by dealing with other countries and their undemocratic regimes will decide about the own “level” (if something like that exists) of democracy. So why not play the victim game as well, like the fundamentalists do? Scream out loud when Iran starts to threaten other countries. And use the propaganda-game-language they understand. Why don’t we use the destructive powers of Iran’s regime, turn their direction around and send them back, so they have to fight their own evil? The future solutions to such problems should not be about good and bad or black and white, but about using energies. Perhaps we are not developed enough yet as a species, but we know about nuclear energy. In the end, energy stays energy... So why not include physics into politics? Go ahead, bright brains, and develop think-tank-solutions based on this idea.
02.03.2010 02:54

the mullah mentions several "signal efffects" of bombing Iran. the main one would be the most dcritical consideration of all-avoiding a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. should an atomic-arms race ever start in that regions God help us all.
27.02.2010 05:03

military action vs. Iran is unavoidable? that is a terrifying concept. I fear that any bombing of Iran will precipitate a horrible war in the middle east with many nations taking part and forcing the U.S. and others to jump in.
24.02.2010 01:46

It's very enlightening that even an Iranian man of peace and spirituality sees the only solution to the present dilemma as being an attack on his country. When the diplomats are finished talking and prevaricating and the world comes to the realization that the situation can only be solved by force the Israelis will attack and destroy the Iranian nuclear facilities and then a world-outcry against Israel will explode as the countries too cowardly to act hypocritically heap blame upon Israel for the attack. The endgame is clear. Even to a loyal Iranian.
22.02.2010 11:25

China gets 15% of its oil from Iran and has staked its energy future on a relationship with the tyrannical Mullahs so it is doubtful that they will be cooperative in pressuring Iran.
21.02.2010 10:03

The wroter proposes a direct attack on Iran, but by whom? NATO? The U.S.? Israel? NATO is too impotent and confused, the U.S. is too preoccupied elsewhere with other wars and crises. That leaves Israel. Does the writer really think that the Muslim world (even the Sunni countries that are enemies of Iran) will accept an Israeli attack on Iran without (mock) outrage and millions of the dusty mobs making up the 'Arab Street' screaming for revenge and counter-attack? Such an attack could precipitate WWIII.
21.02.2010 01:34

It is very courageous of the writer, A Muslim, to propose that his own country's long-term fate would be saved by the short-term catastrophe that an attack on Iran would bring. This counterintuitive statement is a cry of sorrow for a country that could be a leading light in the family of nations, but is kept in the darkness by a profane Theocracy.
20.02.2010 07:57

Mr. Brookes may ask the International community to make a concerted effort to help Yemen, but the facts on the ground point to the reality that it is another Islamic failed state - like Afghanistan - and the vast majority of whatever aid is provided will disappear into the dirt and change nothing.
04.03.2010 02:59

The usual putrid song and dance of another failed tribal Muslim state whose leadership (only interested in its own wealth and survival) feed off America's nipple but must reject being in bed with its benefactor lest the virulently anti-American 'Street' accuses their elite of being too closely aligned with the U.S. So we foolishly give them our millions to battle for 'hearts and minds' - hearts and minds we will never, ever win - and the millions disappear into the elite's pockets and we remain the pariah...this scam has gone on too long. That we still fall for it shows the lack of insight and courage of our fetid leadership.
25.02.2010 11:48

This must really leave Napolitano's red knickers in a twist: Contrary to her incompetent reactions to the Christmas day bomb plot, Yemen is no new hotbed of al Qaeda activity.
25.02.2010 09:25

Senator Lieberman delivers the usual boilerplate. Any sentient being understands that the present Iranian regime will eventually goad Israel into attacking and then the entire Middle East will be in flames. A catastrophy is pre-programmed.
24.03.2010 05:41

Any sanctions regime will fail because the dominant principle in today's world is greed - there will always be loopholes and backdoors that will allow European companies hungry for the lucre to use backchannels to deal with tyrannical regimes like Iran and Syria that are willing to pay the fare to get what they want.
04.03.2010 06:38

Sanctions are at least one first step. But how will it be possible, in a global world, to make sure companies do NOT have any business with Iran. Also not indirectly? How will the US make sure, that companies are not involved in deals with other countries, like China, even if we are just talking about little screws in a product? Where will you draw the line? For real sanctions I can only imagine a closed economical field. Either a company is in or not. Invent a sign or seal, like bio-brands, but worldwide. Let the consumer take part and send out the message to companies. The US should not start these sanctions on its own, but oblige other countries to take part in them.
02.03.2010 02:55

Though Senator Lieberman shows moral courage that his own President is too feckless to demonstrate in standing in solidarity with Iran's citizens yearning for freedom, the alphabet soup of legislation and sanctions that he's working to pass are but a sterile prelude to the obvious denouement - which will be, tragically yet inevitably, a devastating attack that may well precipitate a ruinous war in the Middle East.
25.02.2010 05:27

Europe - a continent whose cultures are steeped in a profound Judeo-Christian foundation - is now running away from its own identity into the meaningless miasma of Secular Socialism drowned in the banality and self-hatred of Political Correctness and 'tolerance' (actually hysterical preference) of any other culture and religion before its own. What a sad, pathetic, self-negating spectacle.
17.03.2010 04:56

Thoroughly disturbing. Any pol who refuses to protect the rights of our citizens should be voted out this election.
13.03.2010 11:47

If islam was truly a religion of peace, then the muslims would speak out against those who are extremists and would do something about it. But the fact is that another of their tenets is to make this an islamic world. We non-believers have three choices 1) Submit to islam, 2) Become a muslim, or 3) Die. The extremists are patient, as our politically correct ways show our weakness and submission to appease the enemy, which they are taking advantage of. Don't trust this religion of peace, they want nothing more than to kill all the "non-believers." They want us to submit to a so called prophet who never committed any miracles, professed violence against anyone not muslim and claimed to receive messages from God, which was convienent to this prophet only.
11.04.2010 07:37

Fantastic article on a subject that is so often ignored in the media. I am frankly offended by 'identity/minority groups' demanding my sensitivity to their feelings and demanding that I remains silent and all the time they are allowed to spew anything without regards to other people's values and principles. Freedom of speech is a 2way street and if someone potentially gets offended that is the price to pay for the right to speak freely which might offend someone else.
30.03.2010 03:55

I am frightened by the Metrosexual Euroweenie proclivity to acquiesce to every minority group's delicate sensibilities being offended by what in the West is called Freedom Of Speech. If the delicate ears of these so-called minorities (be they Islamic, Hindu, or Bestiality-practicing Trumpeters) are so offended by the practice of Freedom OF Expression may I suggest they pack their bags along with their delicate feelings and return from whence they came. My message for any indigenous offended parties is thus: you have the right to speak your mind, but you have no right or privilege to not be offended by what you hear when I speak my mind.
17.03.2010 05:11

What also seems at issue here is that group rights are trumping individual rights. Democracy and freedom are fundamentally incompatible with "group rights" -- i.e. rights on the basis of belonging to a subculture, ethnicity or religious grouping. Yet the multi-culti programme seeks relentlessly to lobby for group rights, thereby undermining the rights of the individual even to the extent of making common cause with Islamofascists. Do homosexuals really prefer an Islamic society to a Christian one? Example: Swedish Socialist politician Nalin Pekgul was quoted in the FT this week blaming cartoonists for drawing the wrong pictures as if they deserve to be murdered. And millions of Swedes vote for such fascist apologists as Nalin and Mona.
16.03.2010 08:20

Putin cut another arms deal with Hugo Chavez, selling the unstable Venezuelan 5 billion more bucks' worth of weapons -- on top of 4 billion already contracted, supporting Chavez's "Bolivarian" goal of "re-uniting" Venezuela and Colombia. What a disaster. And Obama smiles and shakes this moron's hand. The U.S. need real, ruthless leadership.

16.04.2010 11:20

Venezuela is an oil-rich land relegated to 3rd world trouble-baiting backwater by Chavez the dictator. He has destroyed the middle-class and intimidated any opposition. His goal is to turn his country into the Marxist model that Cuba and North Korea have become - only with oil wealth keeping Venezuela from sliding into total penury. He is an ideological dinasaur pining for Stalinist revolutions and class warfare. The sooner he is killed and thrown into the sewage pit of history the better for the Venezuelan people.
24.03.2010 05:46

Chavez is facing demise. His failed 'revolution' and megalomaniacal idiocy are transparent even to many of his own people. The only people in this cholo's camp are the downtrodden who think that government exists to take from the productive and give to the poor while the elite 'revolucionarios' in this food chain live like royalty. This is an edifice that will collapse of its own hubris.
18.03.2010 03:25

Chavez is a provincial thug and a mortal enemy of the U.S. Ignore him at our peril. His ambitions are to spread his vile brand of despotic Marxism dressed up as Socialism. Russia enables him and Iran's Mullahs, selling all they can to these miscreants in a blind attempt at undermining U.S. interests and proving their own Global bona fides as a super power. Russia's greed and blindness will soon come to fruition in an apocalypse in Iran and the coming implosion of Chavez's Venezuela.
17.03.2010 02:55

Name and shame is the best thing to do when it comes to duplicitous lawyers who not only sympathize with terrorists but actually go to lengths to abet their war crimes. Julia and Tom ought to be deported to Waziristan to experience the Jihad they have supported first hand and then watch them beg for the merciful life of a Gitmo cell.
16.03.2010 08:29

I am moving to Costa Rica, let the liberal freaks support / pay for their own social engineering experiments, it is nothing more than infantilism on a Grande Scale ! complete with tantrums, poor behaviour, bed whetting
and childish sulking. May Nancy Pilosi die screaming of rectal cancer while receiving her umpteenth eye job and botox treatment !!
That woman should be on the cover of the NIH's (national institute for health's) journal depicting mal-adjusted adults displaying untreatable personality disorders, think:
Bi-polar, Borderline personality disorder, Narcissistic personality disorder, am I really living in the United States of America ? God save me.
23.03.2010 08:26

The Civil War is on for the soul of America. Obama and his cronies have rammed through a government takeover of 1/6th of the world's biggest economy. The downtrodden minority peasant masses think it is Christmas in March. The rest of us either will have to fight or forever vacate the U.S. or both. This is not the America of Exceptionalism - it is a Europeanized/Socialized contraption that sprung from the leaky brains of Liberal Akkkademia. The U.S. Government's tentacles are spreading like a malignant Octopus into every facet of our lives. I am genuinely frightened and completely dismayed.
23.03.2010 07:17

Crossed the Rubicon indeed. And where shall we go, those who wish no part of this madness? When America was the last bastion of true freedom? To the socialist states of Europe?
And, for those of you who do not understand Mr. Hanson’s allusion to the Rubicon: it was when Julius Caesar took his army, illegally, into Rome proper, thus ending the Roman Republic, setting off years of civil war, and ultimately leading to the Roman Empire.
If this law stands, count me among the rebellious; I will no longer recognize the authority of the government, for it no longer stems from the consent of the governed.
23.03.2010 04:50

There is something idiotic about the amount of money that has been dispersed to avoid bankruptcy in Greece. The country is 2% of the EU GDP and it is a corrupt basket case and has been for most of the last 150 years. There is no hope that Greece will change its character. Especially not if the U.S. and the UK are just as intellectually, ethically, and financially bankrupt as the swarthy Greeks!
15.05.2010 01:37

taxpayers the world over are beyond gassed. WE ARE ALL GREECE. the refinancing cliff in the US alone 2010-2014 is an estimated $14trillion... when that really dawns on the lumpen investoriat, how much will greece matter other than as what it is -- a canary in the coalmine.
09.05.2010 06:02

What you see now is a tempest in an entitlement-besotted teapot. When other PIIGS have the troth taken away you will see near-Civil-War-level riots...Europa, your comfy delusions are crumbling before your eyeballs...and here in Germany the people are outraged over having to finance 30 Bllion Euros of this handout (only for Greece)...when the bill arrives for the other PIIGS the Euro Zone is over...
05.05.2010 04:54

Truly, this is a disgrace of a country. So indoctrinated to think with an entitlement mentality (demanding 13th & 14-month 'bonuses', maintaining the fiction of a 1st world country when in reality from an economic perspective its is SOLIDLY 3rd-world), they now are rioting because the global investment community has the temerity to insist that perhaps they need to begin paying back their "loans" and living with at least a constellation of their means. Parasites.
05.05.2010 04:45

This is what happens when you try to jam together 27 countries with individual and unique economic needs into a "one-size fits all" economic union.
04.05.2010 11:38

Regardless of whether capitalism is somehow offensive to traditional Greek culture (which I’m not sure is true to begin with – the marchers march under the banner of Marx, not the Patriarch), the Greek educational system produces “dependency theorists” and not software engineers, rock throwing anarchists and not creators of jobs. Even after all these cuts, it’s not clear that the Greek economy is really a self-sustaining enterprise. Sit around the cafes and chain smoke all you like, but don’t expect someone else (the rich, the Germans, etc.) to pay for it. Psychologically the Greeks are stuck in the juvenile delinquent phase – it’s time for them to grow up.
03.05.2010 07:04

But what is the US deficit to GDP ratio? Roughly 8%? And what is the US debt to GDP ratio? Roughly 90%, climbing to 100% this year and forecast to stay there into the foreseeable future. So that puts the USA in the same category as Spain/Portugal/Greece.
08.04.2010 07:08

Greece has been living beyond its means, and the bill is due.
04.04.2010 07:43

Germany itself is also a big part of the problem It has disproportionally benefited from the eurozone, It has run huge trade surpluses against European partners and benefitted its bank coffers precisely because others including Greece, have run up debts buying its products.
04.04.2010 06:48

in Greece the unions expect the company just send a check to the worker, with the union getting a cut, at his home. I mean why should a worker have to get out of bed? Or work more than 4 days? God forbid!!!
04.04.2010 06:28

It seems rather unfair to blame Germany for not wanting to participate in the disaster that Greece perpetrated on itself. The Greeks' profligate spending and irresponsible politics led them down this path. The Germans have sidestepped the worse of the financial crisis rather deftly, while Greece dove head first into the black hole of leveraged debt. A bifurcated Europe is on the horizon.
03.04.2010 09:24

When a country's intellectual elite begins to pine for the times of the military junta you know the days are numbered for the present government. This is a cautionary tale for the idiots and oligarchs running national economies for their own gain.
31.03.2010 05:07

Dr. Mallinson is correct about the Germans. I am seeing this arrogance and typical lobotomized Teutonic swagger eminating from the new Zeitgeist. The corruption of the Germans has never been properly documented.
30.03.2010 11:55

Don't blame Germany. Greece is a victim of its own profligate spending. Its government was incredibly irresponsible. If you run the country as a 3rd world oligarchy/kleptocracy then don't blame anybody but yourself when you fall into the gutter.
30.03.2010 11:41

It was President George Bush who said that he looked into the soul of Putin and saw someone he could deal with. Unfortunately there is no potential Presidential candidate with the vision and force of Ronald Reagan. Then again, it was former Governor Jeb Bush of Florida who, some time ago, said that the Republican Party needed to stop pining for Ronald Reagan and move on.

I'm not sure where the US goes from here.

16.04.2010 11:00

It is clear that obama is a "Clear and Present Danger" to his country. He is destroying the economy, the currency and now he is chipping away at the abilityof the U.S. to defend itself. The surrender of America's nuclear superiority would make sense, if we were not dealing with the insane. After that, it makes no sense whatsoever. He must go.... along with all the other traitorous progressives.
13.04.2010 07:36

Perhaps a possible opening for the Obama team to marginalize the thug Putin by signing a treaty with Medvedev and focusing the diplomacy and the credit on him. This would help Medvedev gain credibility as a new kind of Russian leader. Putin might have outsmarted himself.
03.04.2010 10:06

Does Dr. Volk actually suggest that Russia will play the old ruse of Good Cop/Bad Cop with the U.S. Senate in order to get a favorable nuclear arms deal? With the current intelligence level of representatives in the U.S. Senate that tired old trick might just work!
31.03.2010 07:11

But there is no competent Afghan government or military, so the our military's effort is in vain.

Unless one intends to occupy the country for a century, the Taliban will wait Canada and the US out. Every day, the Opposition reminds us of who our Afghan allies and and partners are...corrupt would-be torturers. Most of them are only our allies because the United States is paying them off. They stop being our partners when the American money stops.
16.04.2010 11:09

Frankly, Afghanistan isn't worth the billions of dollars and hundreds of lives that have been wasted trying to "save" it.

Even IF we save Afghanistan from the Taliban, who will save Afghanistan from themselves?
10.04.2010 07:57

What about the Karzai disaster? The man is a catastrophe for the U.S. Well we might as well stick around and use Afghan as our proving ground for military technology and getting good concise data on kill ratios. After all, with obam's new nuke policy, he has invited new attack that we will have no choice now but to fight on the conventional battlefield. Then again, it's just military lives lost--obam cares about them about as much as he cares about Israel.
08.04.2010 11:37

You describe a fantasy no government will ever disclose, of drawing a military inside straight depending fatally on a political, cultural, and administrative best of all possible worlds.

04.04.2010 08:19

presenting the taliban as a mafia org. is an excellent analogy. they are running drugs worldwide and are a deadly cancer living off afghanistan fear and traditions.
02.04.2010 12:22

the question is if the international community has the will and principle to do what is necessary in Afghanistan. the country is a backwater hole, really the definition of a failed state and so many of its people are primitive, tribal, and deeply islamist. the basic question of whether to go forward into the 21st century or backward to the 7th has not even been answered yet.
01.04.2010 07:11

We have had it with the marxist media and politicians and useless academics who want to ruin our lives with their social experamentation. Anyone else ever notice with all those studies they do, they never study how their ideas have failed.
08.04.2010 01:43

It is nice to know that so many people have become aware of the consistent leftward leaning LIES CNN has been feeding the public for years.Im from South Africa and people here are also over CNN.
08.04.2010 01:24

Perverse - I mean - Reverse Psychology no longer working on an informed, awakened public. En masse, they have fled the MSNBCs and CNNs to find truth elsewhere. Whey see now who the real bigots are. They see, via on site video cams in real time, what really is going on our there. All the refusal to show the truth on CNN+MSNBS left people to search for more reliable sources elsewhere.
04.04.2010 11:39

CNN is an icon so they won't die but they are definitely not the most trusted news source. They have been drifting further and further to the left and share the same self-delusion that most of the media and entertainment idustry suffers which is that their political views are the mainstream and anything else is radical. The market place is showing them how wrong they are.
04.04.2010 05:06

CNN is fast-food news for the masses. The McDonalds of news. Sufficient for a quick bite to know if the world is still spinning on its axis. For anything of any substance there are many other news sources that are far superior. The death of CNN won't happen, but they are increasingly irrelevant.
31.03.2010 07:55

Great article! Though I do not believe in statistics (they are nothing more than numbers that have to be interpreted), the pain I get when watching CNN for more than 30 minutes speaks for itself. These are the 30 minutes a fast-food-bite takes to give you a stomach-ache.
Of course the sad side is, that people still believe what is printed and what they watch on TV. Isn't there a law against mass-manipulation? Fear, hate and even world-wars were created by it... CNN should be punished by calling their news NEWS. They should officially claim that they just broadcast selected, individual and zensoured opinions.
31.03.2010 01:38

Neville Chamberlain lives again! Except, this time it is not a conservative stepping into Neville's shoes, it's a dyed in the wool idiot.
13.04.2010 07:33

Here we go again, no substantial arguement from the political left so out comes the smears and innuendo. Right out of the Saul Alinsky, "Rules for Radicals" playbook (which I have read by the bye).

Political left out of power, a movie made depicting the assasination of a sitting president is "Free Speech." Political left in power dissent is a racist, sexist, mean-spirited, potentially violent, nut-case fringe, low-brow conspiracy that has to be extunguished cost be damned. Mere citizens objecting to the elites living their lives for them can't be tolerated.

You guys ought to review/rethink your playbook, you're starting to get predictable.
20.04.2010 05:29

The author must believe the U.S. will never again fight a war whose victory demands large-scale occupation in order to restore order. Everything in this article seems oriented to playing offense; it seems like our only option is attack and leave. Am I misreading? Hardly a military expert, would love to learn from those of you who are.
22.04.2010 10:54

The absurdity of the author's claims can be demonstrated in the fact that the U.S. remains by far the largest economy in the world, 4x’s larger than China-thought he author claims that the American Public thinks that China is the pre-eminent economic power. This is all just Ivory Tower misinformation. Multipolar my ass...this is the same piffle that Zakeed Faria peddles and yet the dominant Unipolar power remains the U.S. while rising nations like CHina still have over 70% of their population living on less than $1 a day. My God, the premature ejaculatory schadenfreude that these muppets feel at the U.S.'s decline is pathetic.
23.04.2010 12:30

From what I've seen the people who work for companies like GS are given huge $500,000 bonuses because they really would be difficult to replace. These are people who are highly intelligent sociopaths who are artists at dancing on the line between illegal and legal sometimes entering the illegal and not getting caught. Maybe half or more of the total population are sociopaths, however to find highly intelligent sociopaths trained to steal is very difficult making the bonus scenario necessary.
15.05.2010 01:41

My problem is that the same people who got us into the mess in the first place are still running the farm. They have not changed their investment or risk methodologies to account for the crash and its causes. Worse, most of them were bailed out. This only reinforces bad behavior. Regardless of what the financial reform bill does, the government has set a precedent that they will backstop Wall Street and the innocent will pay for the incompetent. And everyone on Wall Street knows that. Moral hazard. Jeff Harding, The 'Immaculate Calamity' | The Daily Capitalist

07.05.2010 03:48

If we want to treat the market like a golden idol, we must be honest when the market fails. It cannot succeed when profits are privatized and risks are socialized. There is no better illustration of this than the agricultural sector.
30.04.2010 04:52

It's more than just shameless greed on Wallstreet. It's shameless greed in our governement starting from the top down. Chris Dodd is not running for relection. He was chair of the Senate Banking Committee, in the years when the nation's financial system was heading toward near collapse. He is the epitome of putrescence of all that is wrong with congress. He really needs to be brought up on ethics charges, NOW
25.04.2010 07:41

I disagree with Mr. Spartacus. The Republicans may be tone-deaf to many things, but more regulation is not what is needed. What is needed is strict enforcement of the current rules and True Capitalism-meaning that the practice of privatising profits and socialising losses must end. No one can be 'too big to fail'. Let the bankers earns what they can, but if the worm turns and they create a fiasco let them lose everything as well. The state cannot play nanny to these vampires. Let them play with their own money and the fear of losing their own coin will focus them quickly on the task of protecting their client's wealth as well as their own.
25.04.2010 04:38

Doesn't look like the markets are worried. In fact, they are telling the SEC to go sit in the corner next to Nobama and be good. When it's all said and done, the govt. will just give them another bonus and say thank you. Roll over and get your treats. Meanwhile, mainstreet is actively involved in physical fitness - stand straight, bend over, grab your ankles.....Thank you, may I have another.....

See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/92vrCS

24.04.2010 06:55

So the no win-no fee parasites have finally come out have they? Who's surprised? If their clients have a legitinmate claim, the clients should be compensated - fine. However the fees generated and the paranoia and paralysis the lawyers will cause in the various markets will do no one any good; except of course the regular socialists commentators who see all banks, managers, politicians and investors as totally evil!!
24.04.2010 06:36

It is unheard of in any state to have their existence depend on another. The A5 plan had no such provision. Greek Cyprots were stupid to vote regarding this issue in Parliament, the Parliament tried to preempt any such concession from the Greek Cyprot government. These were done for internal consumption and in a showdown between MPs and government. They did us no favours.

It has been mentioned that perhaps Turkey would be allowed to keep their guarantee status for three years and personally I think this might be acceptable. As long as the end date was clearly stated and adhered to.
23.05.2010 03:37

I think Cyprus might want to push for total independence. Or even a union with Turkey. After the Greek financial disaster I don't think Cypriots would want anything to do with that morally and financially bankrupt state.
21.05.2010 01:18

Cyprus is a pawn but so is Greece and so is Turkey. They're just bigger pawns but pawns nonetheless. In Greece's case their financial catastrophe now probably eliminates any chance that they can bring up the Cyprus issue for another 10 years.
05.05.2010 05:23

I think you are being too kind to the Greeks in Cyprus. Whatever “they” did for democracy was a long time ago and “we” owe them nothing for that. It’s not clear that the modern Greeks are even the direct descendants of Socrates and Plato – they sure don’t act that way.
It’s true that being an ex-Ottoman country is not exactly fertile ground for success in the modern world, but the Greeks have to look in the mirror before they go blaming others.
03.05.2010 06:51

What a sordid tale of geo-political malfeasance at its most putrid. To understand how Cyprus is used in a cynical and self-serving game by the great powers is heartbreaking and repulsive. Superb commentary.
01.05.2010 04:36

This is the best and most comprehensive article I have ever read regarding Cyprus and its perpetual curse of being a pawn in the 3-dimensional chess match that is geo-politics. A sorry fate beautifully explained. Brilliant work.
01.05.2010 03:42

There are numerous problems in China and there is no doubt the bubble will burst in the next few years. The heavy reliance on exports of cheap manufactured goods and being the factory to the world will come to haunt them.

China has to ensure it always keeps up with trends because the products they supply to the world will see a drop in demand as newer products replace the existing ones with better technology. Can their factories adapt and mass-produce these high-tech goods like they do cheap electrical goods and the like.

Its an economy that is manipulated by the CCP with so much government intervention with not much free-market practices. And these type of economies have never done very well in the long run because of the huge inefficiencies that plague it.
07.05.2010 09:35

of course he has no sense of obligation to the US, because he perfectly reflects the ethos of our current madarins: the US is the nexus of the globe's socio-political ills; at heart, we are extractive exploiters of the noble 'other' and their proud and venerated cultures; we need to genuflect and demonstrate penance in word and deed with every available instance. this is what one gets when you elect an affirmative-action beneficiary / victimology-embracing salon rebel like the magic o to the white house. he has the supreme conviciton of his ivy league bred, fact-resistant nullities to give him ballast as he glides through his perpetual over-estimated, underperforming lifetime. and besides, he's kenyan.
28.05.2010 03:26

This coalition won't last five months, let alone five years. In the meantime, the semblance of control is maintained. And when the British are confronted with the next situation (they never use the word crisis) they will find a way to be in control of that situation as well.
15.05.2010 12:53

With the same number of votes as Jeremy Thorpe got 36 years ago the Liberals have managed to gain all that they could have done if they had actually won the election; Cameron has secured the biggest defeat the Conservative party has ever seen, because this time the verdict is death - by proportional electoral suicide.
14.05.2010 05:01

On the Con-Dem-Nation we see before us with a second hand car dealer and an arsonist trying to look like politicians, the people of this fair isle voted on manifesto's which have suddenly just been ripped up by agreement of the unelected and thrown in the dustbin.

That was one unelected with 23% of the votes, and another with 36%, who between them command only the authority to rip us off electorally and democratically whilst they figure out a way to do an election which is not like that of a banana republic!
12.05.2010 09:10

Excellent commentary. The Con's negation and dismissal of the Thatcher years is a huge mistake, simply playing into the bogus meta-narrative the Libbies and Labouites peddle to the sheeple. How they can fall into this absurd trap is beyond explanation...sheer ideological self-emasculation. A party that once was a standard bearer to bedrock principles is now a mere irrelevancy...a party trying to get 'small'...a legislative dry hump.
12.05.2010 08:59

Good riddance to Brown, the man who bankrupted Britain. Supporters of proportional representation take note – expect even more confusion, back room dealing and inability to make tough decisions if you get your way. This is just a taste of the nightmare it represents.

12.05.2010 04:38

absolutely brilliant commentary. the seeds of the uk's decline were planted many decades ago. the fruits of that harvest are now rotting on the ground before our eyes..
12.05.2010 01:36

The two parties which won the least votes and dont even together have a majority of seats have not right to form the government and railroad through electoral that change no one voted on?
11.05.2010 01:27

Is there one issue for which President Obama will stand on the side of the United States? Is there one instance where he will fight for the interests of his country instead of his vision of global equality? Does his moral relativism know no bounds?
23.05.2010 10:47

I am outraged by this unilateral disarmament. The amateur Philosopher-King in the White House is a laughable buffoon. His quest for 'moral leadership on every issue from global warming to nuclear proliferation expose him to be merely a Leftist-Liberal University professor posing as a statesman. His betrayal of his country's best interests in the name of a bogus delusion of 'global unity' are naive idiocy at best, near-treasonous at worse.
21.05.2010 01:52

I for one think that Britain would be better served by having a more independent foreign policy. Anything to de-couple Britain from the fecklessness, weakness, and idiocy of the Obama administration's aimless approach.
02.09.2010 12:21

Today’s Turkish newspaper Hurriyet has an interesting pastiche of articles that suggests Erdogan may be over-reaching with his support of Hamas and threat of a complete break with Israel. The dots include the need for another Cyprus to gin up nationalism in order to get the controversial referendum passed in September that will amend Turkey’s constitution in ways to weaken the military and independence of the judiciary. Great. Just what Turkey needs. Another Cyprus.
07.06.2010 04:28

Dear me! Somebody should really have a course on quantitative methods, plus on post-Bretton Woods economics. Nobody ever heard of "recycling of petro-dollars", or how Chinese dollars invested into US Treasury Bills are diverted into US defence budget, and that if China withdraws its over $1trillion of investments there then the whole architecture will collapse? Give us a source of your statistics, if this is not from Wikipedia. I'm sorry, this is not scholarship. And what about US cultural superiority? I'm all into American culture, as are the Persian people who the Bushes want to bomb, but that culture that stems from NYC and LA, not from Utah and Wyoming, which is wholly introverted, nationalistic and even white racist. So be careful here my dear, otherwise those colossus who wrote on culture will get angry by what you say, not to speak of the fact that when the Babylonians, the Chinese and the Phoenix had a civilisation, the Europeans and the British were eating raw grass for a meal. So be careful. Don't let your ideology at least blur certain historical truths. Apparently, I don't even have a PhD, and I'm not even a Lefty!
02.06.2010 08:44

I'm offended by the reader who decided to call the person who took the time and trouble to write a very well-argued counter-point to Dr. Mallinson a "Retired NATO General" and "a retired scrivener, who has plenty of leisure time to download wikipedia stuff in order to give us history lessons." What is this nonsense? This kind of bufoon loses whatever credibility his argument might have had with his haughty vilifications - not that his arguments stood up to those of the target of his insults, or had much intellectual ballast to begin with.
02.06.2010 06:45

The Victimology PHD who wrote a commentary here is a composite of every overbearing White-Guilt-wracked anti-Imperialist lefty shilling for the dispossessed of the world. The catalogue of American weaknesses and ills described in that feeble diatribe are all well taken - and still the U.S. has the world's biggest economy and its Military is larger, better trained, and better equipped than any in the world - with a budget and capabilities dwarfing those of the next 20 COMBINED.

Facts:
1) The US is the world's largest manufacturer, with a gross output of nearly $5 trillion ($2 trillion in GDP contribution) producing 20% of all the world's manufactured goods - including one-third of all the world's high tech goods.
2) The U.S. spends 45% of the world's research and development money.
3) At $15 trillion, it remains by far the largest economy in the world, 4x's larger than China
4) The US is deliberative, self-critical, and self correcting, and so unlike incessantly criticizing Europe.
5) It has an unmatched culture of leading universities, think-tanks, public debates, and entrepreneurship.
6) The net worth of Americans even after the 'Great Recession' is some $60 trillion, a sum equivalent to the entire world's annual output (GDP).

Perhaps Britain is aware of these strengths and wishes to ally itself to its natural historical and cultural (as an ex-Colony) partner out of enlightened self-interest instead of 'servitude'. And perhaps Mallinson and his tribunes are simply too biased with gleeful anti-American bias to comprehend this strategy?
02.06.2010 04:44

The U.S. has carried a disproportionate share of Europe's defense burden for almost seven decades. Britain has invested in a relationship with the U.S. in order to leverage this tremendous investment in military power. While the war in Iraq has been a mistake for both Britain and the United States, the military alliance has greatly enhanced British security at a relatively small cost to the British Treasury.

The embarrasment of unprepared European troops sacrificing civilians in the former Yugoslavia proved the weakness of the many headed European Union. There will never be a strong leadership in Brussels unless the current structure is abandoned. London is far better off being allied to the U.S. rather than a European alliance incapable of cohesive effort. London must retain the relationship with the U.S. to retain it's advantage in current and future conflicts.

Dr. Mallinson's derisive tone misses the important military and economic benefits of the cross-pond relationship which does not always disadvantage the British people. He fails to understand that there is no alternative in the crumbling and divided European Federation. He fails to see that "eighty million pounds" is a tiny fraction of the U.S. contribution. In short, Dr. Mallinson may be asking the wrong questions. Perhaps Great Britain is not a slave to the former colonies but is merely paying a fair price for decades of payments from across the pond, both in blood and treasure.
31.05.2010 12:51

Courageous are pieces of work that are not apologetic for any regime. Mallinson's is such a piece, and I welcome the 7th prudent comment on his piece. The rant that preceded it, obviously, and which talks of Mallinson's acolytes, stands for a retired scrivener, who has plenty of leisure time to download wikipedia stuff in order to give us history lessons. What kind of history lessons are these? What kind of sources are they drawn from? Does he/she not our critic know that history is written by the powerful and the hegemon? McNamarra once famously said that had the US and its allies lost the war to Germany and Japan, now all of the Anglo-American elite would have been prosecuted as war criminals. So give us a break. In Errol Morris's 2004 film, The Fog of War, former US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara recalls Genneral Curtis LeMay, the architect of the fire-bombings of Japan during WWII, saying that "if we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals". LeMay was basically articulating an unacknowledged truism of international relations: power bestows, among other things, the right to label and write history. And then all you have to do is to train adults to teach it in the national schools, thus presenting your national vision as the global vision. That's plain humbug. And whereas tomorrow is celebrated in the Anglosaxon world the memorial day, it is well reminded that it was Britain that first bombed Berlin and not Germany that first bombed London. Germany, simply, retaliated. You say this historical truth today along with A.J.P. Taylor, they may even call you anti-semite. How wonderful. But I have a son who is a US citizen and I don't want to see him one day fighting Al Queda in Afghanistan -- period. Because conscription is not far-off in a state and society that are in deep decline. The 7th commentator pointed his/her finger to the gist of the issue: the US-UK alliance, he/she said, is far more better for the UK than any conceivable re-alignment with the French-German axis, after all in tatters. Point taken. But who said that the US is the US of the 1940s and 1950s. Where is the industry, the vibrant society, the huge credit power, the outward investments. here is some contemporary economics: European fixed capital investment in the US proper outstrips US investment in Europe; Latin American's most important trade partner is Europe and US trade deficit in US-China bilateral trade is over a 300 billion dollars, whereas overall US current account deficit is over one trillion dollars. Eastern Eurasian powers, China, India, Russia and Brazil are on the rise and are you, Britain, chasing terrorists in Afghanistan? I wonder if you're there for something else, for instance, to encircle the rising Chindia. Oh, I'm sorry, that's conspiracy. Well, no. In fact Pentagon documents and other papers from the DoE (US Department of Energy) confirm what I say as US grand strategy (yes, there is such a term, you know, which others, in the old days, preferred to call imperialism. So, courageous are those who speak the language of transparency and truthfulness, who support the weak against the powerful and who do not apologize for the imperial acts of omission and commission by the Empires, past, present and future. I think Mallinson's piece makes the grade. Retired NATO Generals, I'm afraid to say, do not.
31.05.2010 05:59

What is appalling is the supercilious tone used by defenders of Dr. Mallinson's rather slanted commentary. Dr. Mallinson writes, "There have been hopes in some quarters that Britain's new coalition government will play a more cooperative role in Europe, and become less dependent on the US." Yes. But there are hopes in a majority "of corners" in Britain that it stay as far away as possible from the European Superstate that so dazzles Dr. Mallinson and his supporters. Dr. Mallinson writes as if anyone who does not share his view of Britain as a necessary addendum to the European Superstate (lest its absence in said Superstate render Europe incomplete and inferior), and the U.S. as a bullying Bogeyman subjugating Britain nefariously into servility is (in his words) insular" and "arrogant" and taking a "negative attitude". Could it occur to Dr. Mallinson and his acolytes that Britain sees that the true road to servility would be to throw its lot in with the feckless Eurocrats? No. Of course not. Typical left-of-center mentality: Tolerance...until someone disagrees with you. Example: "if the commentator' had bothered to do his homework, he/she would know that Britain has indeed been a disruptive member of the club since 1975. But I haven't got time to give him/her a history lesson." Is sneering arrogance a teaching tool in Dr. Mallinson's / his acolytes' arsenal? Is that how they treat anyone who dares question Dr. Mallinson's Weltanschauung? Is this what stands, in Dr. Mallinson's world, for "finesse"? What type of "homework" would Dr. Mallinson suggest? Reading his commentary and books and agreeing with those who unquestioningly ingest his brilliant "history lessons" and parrot the resultant anti-American party line? The defensive/offensive snarkiness on display here is stunning.

To the apologists' comments that the world engaged in an "international outcry" when Saddam gassed 5000 Kurds, I say that perhaps he himself should take a few history lessons. The Baath regime launched 39 separate gas attacks against the Kurds, killing far more than 5,000 innocent civilians. The incident at Halabja in 1988 that claimed 5,000 lives was but one in a long concerted effort at genocide of the Kurdish people. The thousands of Iraqi Marsh Arabs that Saddam exterminated in this way strangely find no space in either Dr. Mallinson's nor his defender's history lesson(s). And where was the outcry when over 300,000 corpses were found buried in the desert in mass graves - all victims of decades of mass murder on the part of Saddam and his killers. Think about that number. Then think about it again. Where was the sanctimonious European outrage at that slow-burn holocaust? Where is Dr. Mallinson's outcry over these unbridled atrocities? It is far easier to rail against the Western Imperialist (who believes in freedom of speech) than Middle Eastern dictators, Islamists, and their devotees (who may wantonly murder you for your views). And his supporter claims that Dr. Mallinson's is a 'courageous piece'? Please.

And to claim that Schroeder's and Chirac's venality "pale(s) into insignificance, when one looks at the activities of Haliburton and its erstwhile leading light Mr. Cheney, Wolfowitz and the rest of the disreputable band of business fanatics and hooligans involved in the illegal Iraq exercise." betrays a moral relativism that is comically skewered by preconception, rabid hatred for the villainous neo-cons (surely the evil force behind the raping of Iraq), and naked bias. This is not rigorous intellectual argument, merely judgment slanted by political sympathies.

Supposedly elite and highly educated ex-Diplomats like Dr. Mallinson, and erudite (pseudo?) intellectuals such as his defenders, claiming a monopoly on wisdom and insight, rarely understand how others can possibly not see things their way. In Dr. Mallinson's unmodulated compulsion to always paint the U.S. as the Imperialist Demon behind most of the world's ills he loses credibility as a commentator and slides regrettably into the role of polemicist. This is a shame because he makes some very cogent points and has a deep knowledge of the arc of European politics.

To those acolytes who opine, "And yes, Mallinson is right, it is Britain that obstructs the political and economic union of Europe, playing the US card of 'divide and rule'...", I say they have fallen into the slothful habit of mistaking knowledge for wisdom and insight. Naturally it would never occur to these Eurocrats that Britain has always ruthlessly looked out for its own best interests and - in a democratic manner (perhaps an unsatisfactory manner for the self-styled intellectual elites that would disagree) settled by the ballot - deemed its best interests to be to continue its 'special relationship' with the U.S. and keep Europe and its Pacifist/Socialist compulsions at arms' length. Has this at times led Britain to places that might be perceived as against its best interests? Yes. Has this at times led Britain into bloody conflicts that its more 'civilized' (as Dr. Mallinson and his defenders would surely put it - I would call them spineless and bribable) brethren on the Continent have mostly avoided? Yes. But the U.S. has always and will always be Britain's closest friend and ally - as I am certain veterans of WWII and the Malvinas War will assert. In the long arc of history the best interests of the U.K. have been, in my opinion, better served by its "Special Relationship" with the U.S. than if it had joined the enervated Eurocrats in a demographically doomed Socialist Superstate.

Dr. Mallinson may call it subservience. Others might call it expedience. Perhaps the clearest insight to this theme is that it is a bit of both.
30.05.2010 04:57

I'm appalled by some of the comments written on Mallinson's comprehensive piece, particularly those who call the author "lazy" and "salon socialist". I'm afraid to say that Mallinson is neither, only that he would prefer to see the real conservatives to speak their minds, face the truth and not swallow it up for the sake of their little job security (something that Mallinson never compromised) and, last but not least, to condemn the acts of omission and commission by imperial powers, as their military interventions make things worse than they were before. Saddam, as Milosevic indeed, were men FBI and CIA could do business with, until the former declared that he wished to switch his oil trade from dollars to Euros, whereas the latter became a pro-Russian darling. And so the chiefs of the planet, the Clintons and Bushes, had to get rid of them. And I'm sorry to say that Britain, unlike Turkey, behaved in all these stories, and many others of course, as the little baffled mouse following the elephant. At least Turkey had the guts to say no to US-Anglo troops crossing its land. So did Germany and France, the "old Europe". And yes, Mallinson is right, it is Britain that obstructs the political and economic union of Europe, playing the US card of "divide and rule". So complete piffle is the comment which starts with these words, rather than Mallinson's courageous piece -- similar pieces of which the Reactionary must continue to publish, as they illuminate most of us. So the piffle person, obviously, lost his bottle, hence his/her baroque uncomments,
29.05.2010 08:05

Comment on the comment below: this is a typical apoplectic neo-con kind of outburst, lacking in finesse. First, it betrays tactical omission, exaggeration, obfuscation and emotive words, and is therefore eminently sub-intellectual.Second, however bad Saddam Hussein was, that did not give the US and Britain the right to break international law and indulge in outright lying, thus adding yet more anarchy to the international system, rather than using diplomacy,as Russia tried to. They had in any case supported Hussein and encouraged him to attack Iran only a few years before. The commentator appears blissfully and 'blinkeredly' unaware of this, and other basic facts. As it happens, when Hussein ngassed five thousand Kurds, there was an internatinal outcry.As for his accusation about Schroder and Chirac, it pales into insignificance, when one looks at the activities of Haliburton and its erstwhile leading light Mr. Cheney, Wolfowitz and the rest of the disreputable band of business fanatics and hooligans involved in the illegal Iraq exercise. As for Britain and Europe, if the 'commentator' had bothered to do his homework, he/she would know that Britain has indeed been a disruptive member of the club since 1975.But I haven't got time to give him/her a history lesson.' A little learning is a dangerous thing: drink deep, or taste not the Pieirian spring'. Finally, he accuses Mallinson of 'leftism': this is a typical outdated Mcarthyist slur, used to substitute for vraesoned debate. It is particularly foolish, since Mallinson is a British conservative.
29.05.2010 07:45

What complete piffle! So the EU is feeble because Britain is a 'bad member'? Is this what stands for intellectually rigorous debate and informed opinion on this journal? And the whole 'false pretenses' argument on the Iraq war is the most lazy and uninformed leftist bromide...as if this was a nefarious plan by the Western powers to invade an innocent land full of hard-working an d harmonious tribes...until 400,000 corpses were found in the desert and the world found out that Iraq had been a hellhole for decades. Where were the people marching in the streets against THOSE freaking atrocities? Nowhere to be seen. Were are they now? Nowhere to be seen. No comments. No, it is easier to be an arm-chair salon rebel and rail against the evil Anglo-Saxons. Hypocritical vomit. And to present the impotent EU 'powers' as conscientious objectors is laughably idiotic - as if the irredeemably corrupt Schroeder and Chirac stayed out because of nobility of purpose instead of not wanting to destroy one of their best clients from whom they and their countries were siphoning billions of dollars in oil and kickbacks. What feeble, intellectually lazy twaddle.
29.05.2010 02:19

My comment on the comment below: first, one reason that the EU is currently so feeble is Britain's attempts to destroy its cohesion from inside. Second, does a disinclination to go thousands of miles to kill people, on false pretenves (Iraq) equate to being 'feeble'? Are we still simply primitive animals. It would be better if the EU just kicked Britain out, as a bad member of the club!
28.05.2010 06:51

Dr. Mallinson makes a fundamental and critical error. Why would Britain want to throw in its lot with the impotent, anemic, and ideologically bankrupt Europeans? So it could be more like spineless France? If anything let Britain chart its own INDEPENDENT course...neither American nor European in scope. Let the UK pursue its own interests - independent of any ideological 'drafting' from any other country or group of countries. Thus, Dr. Mallinson will see that in a vast majority of instances the UK is far better served drafting closely on American policy than plodding along side by side with the feeble Europeans.
28.05.2010 01:38

This is an excellent one. Thank you for this. Unfortunately, the day is still yet to come, when communism is recognised as the saddest tragedy of human history.
18.06.2010 01:05

Appreciate the background and agree that Turkey is heading in the wrong direction. It also seems to want to flex its Sunni muscles a bit to try and counterbalance Shia Iran. My original thought was that Turkey in the EU would (have) been a good thing but with the EU in tatters and the growing Islamist movement in Europe, not so sure I think it is a great idea anymore.
05.06.2010 08:19

i was always a huge seller of the turkey-in-EU
delusion, for practical (idiotic to think french/germans would ever allow turkey in) and philosphical (why mimic EU as a 'western convergence' device? its exactly the impotent western example one should SHUN) reasons. turkey neither east nor west, it is true unique middle. that should be celebrated, in a proprietary, democratic-consentual way, not pretended away in some ersatz EU-esque manner. well so much for that flabby multi-culti stupidity. another ivy league/think tank nullity shown the deserved plank.
04.06.2010 05:06

I am no fan of Turkey and find it risible that they criticize the likes of Israel when they have 25 million Kurds, a lot of which are living under no less "oppression" than the Palestinians are living under in Gaza or the West Bank. They are leaning back to the East and could become a thorny issue in getting that part of the world to act responsibly going fwd.
04.06.2010 04:28

It is sad that this issue has become politicized. This article is not about the topic, but strays into childish criticism of one Universities problems. Lady, if you want to believe East Anglia U. is corrupt, fine with us. It's not that important.
25.07.2010 08:24

Why is bombing villages with drones preferable to nabbing a few murdering thugs in Waziristan and subjecting them to interrogation. The latter objectively limits the loss of innocent lives and is more valuable to preventing another 9/11, yet the former seems more politically correct. Why? Because the left wing Amnesty crowd obviously care more about a their left wing agenda than human rights: i.e. they will find some treasonous Shearmann and Sterling or Paul Weiss lawyer to litigate against terrorist detentions but will condone a leftwing president who keeps his hands clean with remote control bombs.
11.06.2010 07:04

I am not given to Hyperbole, But let me assure
you It Is An Absolute LIVING Nightmare In This Country, at this moment, under this mans space age moon boot ! It is a Carnival ! the country is literally burning while people
in positions of influence remain silent or even worse, continue to prop up the fool.

You criticize 'the Black man' at your own peril ! is the unspoken creed.
11.06.2010 05:50

the o!s exact background & policies and ascribe them to a blond episcopalian from georgia and he wouldn't win elective office in a local PTA school board. place them on the magic o!, and so many in a rush to wrap themselves in the mantle of evolved racial absolution vote for this worst example of ardent advocate for ivy league-fed social democratic fallacies.
10.06.2010 12:21

The sober grownups - the side arguing in favor of the motion - were a General and two well-respected journalists. The emotional infantiles contra the motion that Obama's foreign policy is a fiasco consisted of a (French, no less) 'philosopher', a 'scholar' and a theatrical 'Renaissance Man' Drama-Queen Lefty. I saw the debate and thought the grownups clearly had the more rigorously thought-out and convincing argument. Alas, the erudite crowd consisted mostly of Obama Euroacolytes and the vote result was pre-ordained. The Brits are still in their 'anyone but Bush' mode - which is pathetically out of touch and quite retro. Alas, I expected nothing less from those under the delusion of moral superiority living in their Safe European Home.
09.06.2010 04:18

Very well-written article, though I disagree with some of the author's comments and perspectives - and completely disagree with his anodyne conclusion.
09.06.2010 03:36

This is a disastrous treaty for the U.S. and unnecessarily gives Russia equal-footing with the world's sole superpower - all for the sake of what? Better relations with a neo-Dictatorship that exploits any chance it gets to degrade American power on the international stage? This is liberal feel-good diplomacy at its most putrid. How amateurish.
21.07.2010 05:58

If the U.S. Congress rubber-stamps the new START Treaty it would be one of the biggest derelictions of duty in America's history. The Treaty is enervating window dressing for feckless Left-Wing bureaucrats - cat-nip and feel-good fodder for Obamatons. It will eviscerate any natural advantage we have over the threadbare wanna-be Russian Empire and hand the Russians (a 3rd World neo-military state living off its past "glories" and present liquid commodities) a needless victory.

15.07.2010 05:41

How long until Obama's amateurish foreign policy team is exposed in the mainstream media as dangerous to US national interests and really called to task? This should be front page news. Treating Russia as an equal power is foolish. They are a spent, corrupt third-world oligarchy run as an organized crime ring. Why give them equal-power status? FOOLISH!
18.06.2010 02:34

Obama's insistence on this kind of nuclear strategy is downright creepy and leaves with me in a state of smoldering rage as I watch his ruinous myopia play out !
11.06.2010 05:48

Superb overview of the Obama administrations' nuclear strategy and its folly. The man's incessant delusions about the power of his moral superiority to move the world to follow and reciprocate his policies is recklessly naive and could (will) cost the U.S. dearly...and possibly tragically.
10.06.2010 09:13

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a heroine of the first order. She is a light to the world. The Dutch people should be ashamed at how cowardly they drove her out of the country. The Dutch elite claim to be champions of "tolerance" but they are just cowards who would not even defend their own country or its values against the hostile cultural invasion underway in Europe.

The so-called "feminists" and left wing elitists, e.g. NYT columnist Kristoff, who sympathize with violent misogyny and repression under Shariah law, would sell us all out to a dictatorship of Islamofascism without hesitation.

14.06.2010 04:12

Re: Comment to "America's Ruling Class" - the commentary below merits a column of its own. Insightful indeed.
24.08.2010 09:40

Professor Angelo Cordevilla observed that most of the voters who identify themselves as Democrats are reasonably satisfied that the Democratic Party represents them well, but only a fourth of the voters who call themselves Republican feel they are well represented by the Republican Party. While the Democrats may voice opposition to their elected leaders on select issues, they are more likely to overcome their stands on individual issues and vote the party line at election time. Many Democrats think their party sold out by not including a single payer system in the health care bill, but that will not make them vote Republican.

On the other hand a lot of Republicans have litmus tests. For one group it is abortion, for another it is immigration, for another it is taxes. There are so many that it becomes nearly impossible for any Republican candidate not to piss off some significant part of its constituency. And unlike the Democrats, the Republicans are more likely to cross party lines, or simply not vote: a way of supposedly registering their dissatisfaction with their own party and still not being held accountable for helping to seat the worse of two bad options.

But that other three fourths of the Republicans who have far less party loyalty combined with the independents make a majority. It was relatively easy for the Democrats to attract disaffected Republicans and independents in the wake of an unpopular war and a dramatic financial collapse. It will also be easy for the Democrats to lose them in the wake of their extremely unpopular legislation.

Nixon coined the term ‘Silent Majority'; those who went about their business and made little noise as long as their lives stayed in a fairly normal range. (He used the term in reference to the Americans who were not publicly protesting the Viet Nam War). It was insinuated that only the extremes were heard from by most media outlets. That ‘majority' is far less silent today. Aided by new information and social networks and motivated by extremist policies that impact them directly, they intend to be heard. There are a lot of fresh new faces in the political scene seeking to unseat entrenched incumbents and it is becoming clear that many will succeed.

The Ruling Class is today represented by the Democratic Party and they hold power with political favoritism. The majority are in the Country Class, to use the term from Professor Cordevilla. The Country Class speaks with many voices and is thus more difficult to organize into a potent political voice. The most significant unifying factor is their preference to rule themselves rather than by an elitist other who claim a false sense of intellectual superiority. They oppose favoritism and special treatment whether to corporations, unions, or social groups.

Nothing unites like a common threat and that is what is bringing the current cohesiveness to the Country Class. The Tea Party movement is only a part of it. The disaffected Republicans, Libertarians, and the Independents are the rest of it. The fact they do not have a strong single unifying set of beliefs would be a very limiting factor if the Democrats had not strayed so far from the center, and if the economy was not having such an adverse impact on their lives.

It is a mistake to assume that America will tolerate elitist solutions and systems long ingrained and accepted in European political culture. The Country Class are more interested in managing their private lives and daily affairs as long as their leaders do not threaten their values and their way of life. When they are thus threatened we can expect a seismic shift at the polls.

18.08.2010 07:21

The story of humanity...monkey see, monkey do...only true geniuses, the enlightened, and the really bright break the mold and forge new ways of thinking and behaviour...the Founding Fathers were such enlightened beings...the chimpanzees we have had as the Governing Class for the majority of the last half century are but pitiable, narcissistic, degraded simians...worthy of the noose or a firing squad...mediocrities all of them...their egos are amplified by the sycophantic simians in the Legacy Press, but in reality and in the scope of history they are nothing but Lilliputians and dwarfs...the entire Monkey Theater leading a once radiant country down the path of Euro-Socialist devolution...
05.08.2010 07:20

This is one of the most thought-provoking and comprehensive articles I have ever read on de-constructing the Leftist Liberal orthodoxy that is the path to ruination for the West. Truly riveting and worth the read. Great link!
29.07.2010 07:05

Indeed there is an orthodoxy among America's elites: it is anathema to speak out against job-killing corporate taxes and government debt or against such reprehensible policies as funding abortions at home and abroad. These are not subjects for polite company at beltway cocktail hours and networking sessions. What is worse: Democrats selling out the country to Marxists and Islamofascists, or Republican liars who only pretend to take a stand for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Unfortunately the only revolution we are getting is one that is taking us deeper into the utter destruction of a communist nightmare.
27.07.2010 07:32

BP has now replaced the boss, ostensibly plugged the 'leak', and is working on a new enviro-friendly image. Will this new charm offensive work? Will the US government fall for it? What a circus...meanwhile the Gulf Coast will be damaged for years if not generations. What a collusion of self-serving incompetents!
30.07.2010 09:50

Amazing what the response has been to this crisis. An embarrassment. This is the beginning of the end for Obama's presidency. His administration is even more incompetent at crisis-management than the previous one...and far more corrupt. Please go!
14.07.2010 05:23

I am saddened by the truths in this article. The sloth and incompetence. The corruption. The moral hazard. When thief and cop are in bed together what chance does justice have?
07.07.2010 07:58

Capitalism in the US is a misnomer. As APOCRYPHA so succinctly makes clear, it is a rigged game with anything but open markets. The cronies rule and make the rules. The deadening hands of years of encrusted bureaucracy, corruption and creeping socialism is slowly killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
28.06.2010 08:05

Obama's juvenile behaviour has added economic insult to environmental injury. Instead of leadership we get a job-killing response throwing at least 50,000 people out of work and that is BEFORE the ripple effect. We need leaders who won't outsource disaster clean-up to the multinationals that caused the damage in the first place. Not even the desperate, post-facto BP $20 billion shakedown can mask the failure of political leadership. If you care about the planet, elect leaders who have EXPERIENCE to deal with crises, not adolescent partisan hacks who came up through the salons of academe and never worked a day in their lives.
25.06.2010 06:53

This will DEFINITELY be interesting. The political posturing will reach operatic proportions and it will be fascinating to see which side gives in first in this dance to get billions of greenbacks and avoid soiled reputations, the politicians or the oil men. The Gulf coast residents, of course, are the big losers.
24.06.2010 11:37

really eye-opening. the whole show seems contrived and the obama guys totally invested in continuing the same old same old. bush, obama what's the difference? they're all whores and the oil industry is their pimp. regrettably.
23.06.2010 10:39

The slimy mutual masturbation the US government and the oil industry have been sharing has lined the pockets of every scuzzball politico for time immemorial and this dance is now completely exposed. Apocrypha does it again. She should be on the editorial page of every serious financial newspaper and journal blowing the lid off the cesspool that the American system of 'open capitalism' has become. The founding fathers are turning in their graves.
23.06.2010 07:22

Europe should only aspire to the evolution of Switzerland. Europeans cannot seem to beat their addiction to some form of control over the resources or lifestyles of others, all in the name of "civilizing" them. Since there is no longer much of a standing army or navy, she has turned to controlling her own, transforming Europeans into "subjects" once again through the heavy-handed control freaks in the Hague. Who needs guns when you have lawyers? Who needs prisons when you have political correctness? Who needs physical violence and bloodshed when you have armchair nationalism and knee-deep ego?

29.08.2010 04:26

Europe is moribund and has been in moral decline ever since it had to face the reality of the Holocaust. This, however did not cure its endemic anti-Semitism. It just re-focussed it onto Israel.

25.08.2010 11:58

In the end Europe is irrelevant and just a consumption sink. Two world wars and 5 centuries of imperialism has done absolutely nothing to temper European solipscism and misplaced self-righteousness.
25.08.2010 11:16

Krugman is laughably nothing but a leftwing political hack who bends his economic analysis to fit his reflexive support for social democratic policies. The poverty of his intellect is surpassed only by the real poverty that results when his recommended policies for QE and FE are followed. As for those behind the Fed engineered inflation of the past two decades, it is time to recall the words of another Founding Father, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of tyrants."
13.08.2010 12:30

Obviously the U.S. Founding Father's death penalty was meant for those who were party to the physical devaluation of the dolar when it was a Gold-backed monetary unit...not for a Central Bank and Government elite in cahoots to devalue a fiat-currency as the dollar is now...with this line of argument every Fed banker since 1913 should have been whacked...(not a bad concept, actually). Anyway...fine article and a sober warning.
11.08.2010 11:54

Thank you for keeping the spotlight on the persecution and suffering of Christians! This has been going on for 14 centuries and it is time for Western powers to live up to their claims to support human rights throughout the Middle East, including complete freedom of worship.
14.08.2010 02:11

An excellent review of the history of the area we call Middle East and Israel today.

An excellent case and explanation why the two state solution is the end for Israel.

Why is it that, the leaders of the western world AND ISRAEL, are either ignorant of this history or just ignoring these historical facts?
29.08.2010 11:52

It all comes down to the fact that the arrogant elitists in the mainstream media are offended that the vast majority of Americans, who disagree with their policies, are not so in awe of the wisdom and brilliance of the elites that they will bow down to them and be grateful for their leadership. The arrogant elitists actually expect that the majority be grateful to them for "saving" them. Quite the opposite is happening. The majority has rejected the policies and agenda of the "progressive" (socialist) elitists by a wide margin, and are in revolt. That's a bitter pill to swallow for the elitists.
29.08.2010 08:04

The Third Global Forum for the Alliance in Rio was a farce. The entire Zapatero administration's stance vis-a-vis foregin policy toward Muslim nations reeks of placation and cultural fatigue. It is shameful that such a proud and beautiful land has arrived at this point. Is Pacifism in the face of Terrorism the answer?
09.09.2010 11:16

Erdogan sees Zapatero the way Putin sees Obama - as an appeaser and apologists for Western Civilization's purported sins against humanity and the noble Umma and proletariat. The fact that Spain voted this Pacifist doormat twice into his leadership position speaks volumes about present-day Spain...sun, sea, soccer, multicultural bromides, Socialism, a teeming underclass of Jihadists, and 22% unemployment. What a paella! Viva Espana!
08.09.2010 09:54

Zapatero has bee played by the Turkish Prime Minister who rightly sees Zapatero as a willing rube and typical feckless Euro-Pacifist. These Eurocrats forget the first principle of negotiations and relations between countries and people: it is fine to be liked...it is crucial to be respected.
08.09.2010 09:47

Zapatero shamelessly opportunized on the Madrid bombings for his election in 2005 and his foreign policy has left the country defenseless with only words and gestures to combat the attacks against Spanish interests. It is about time someone questioned the Zapatero foreign policy of appeasement and held the government accountable for the perverse results thereof.
08.09.2010 08:01

Spain has naively abrogated its standing as a bulwark of Western Civilization and displayed its impotence and moral ennui the moment - 5 years ago - when its Jihadist reprobates declared open war on its society and the Spanish electorate chose appeasement to resistance. Superb commentary. Bullseye analysis. The shame Spain must feel...if only it would awaken from its delusional Pacifist/Socialist miasma.
08.09.2010 06:20

The real amateurs in this case are the naive Obama officials and State Dept hacks who think it portended nothing more than nostalgic comedy. Unfortunately the US leadership repeatedly shows its ignorance of the Realpolitik chess game being played against us. The reckoning for dereliction of duty will come with a sudden and severe rude awakening.
09.09.2010 03:17

Anyone who underplays the perils that Russia and its tactics presents to the US in particular and the West in general is a blind dunce. While Obama constantly stoops and re-sets, hoping for reciprocation in kind, Putin and his hardhearted henchmen go about the business of undermining America at every turn possible. This will not end well.
08.09.2010 09:58

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