Check out Don’t Bomb Us — a blog by the staff of Al Jazeera. If only Yugoslavia’s RTS had thought of that …
Boris Johnson, British MP and editor of the conservative Spectator — which has the good taste to run a column by Taki Theodoracopulos — has pledged to publish the “bomb Al Jazeera” memo if anyone will send it to him. Why is it that their conservatives are so much more spirited than ours?
Speaking of spirited conservatives, and Taki Theodoracopulos: this piece by Taki in the Pittsburg Tribune Review lauds my recent piece in The American Conservative and refers to me as “the greatest Greek writer since Aristophanes.” But, hey, I’m Italian — and if I were Andrew Sullivan (or a certain very sssssensitive Cato-amite), I’d be hysterically denouncing Taki as a hate criminal. Luckily, I’m not, and he’s not …. Instead, I’m happy to accept a compliment in the good-natured spirit in which it is given, but, hey, Gore Vidal runs rings around me in the Aristophanes department, although my, uh, Greek-ness (Warning: Racy link) is Taki-esque in its unrestrained pagan exuberance.
Speaking of Andy, a couple of years ago, in a fit of nastiness, I made a very un-nice remark about him, one that was entirely uncalled for and quite cruel, to boot. At any rate, I got some flack about it, which only served to harden me in my cruel indifference, but last night I had a friggin’ dream — perhaps prompted by this post on Sullivan’s blog — about it, believe it or not, in which I personally expressed my remorse to Sullivan and — get this — asked his forgiveness (!) Good lord, I suppose that was my better self asserting himself — and who knew I had one? At any rate, I’d like to take the opportunity to publicly apologize to him. Now if only he’ll apologize to the people of Iraq for calling on George W. Bush to nuke them in response to the anthrax attacks, which they had nothing to do with, we’ll be even-Steven. (And, no, I’m not holding my breath ….)
Yes, Great Britain’s conservatives are a lot tonier, and more interesting than our own, but perhaps not for long: here’s the news, via the Guardian, that the neocons are colonizing England.
Speaking of British neocons, the commie-interventionist website, “Harry’s Place,” is shocked — shocked! — that Alex Cockburn’s Counterpunch would praise this writer, not to mention run articles by Paul Craig Roberts and Rep. Ron Paul. This eminently reasonable piece by John Walsh, according to Commissar Harry, means “Justice isn’t all that important anyway,” and Walsh doesn’t care about such bothersome topics as “trade unionism and poverty.” The masthead of “Harry’s Place,” sporting a vaguely Middle Eastern-looking woman in a Bolshevik-style uniform (red, of course), holding up a red flag in a pose reminescent of “The Red Detachment of Women,” gives us some indication of its dogmatic 1930s lefty tone. The tiresome hectoring that makes up much of Comrade Harry’s discourse is the Old Left as its old maiden-ish worst, although his website is vivid testimony to a point I’ve been making for years: that socialism and war go hand in hand.
John Judis on the Pew poll chronicling the resurgence of “isolationism”:
“The growth of isolationist sentiment can cast a pall over the formulation of foreign policy. During Clinton’s first term, he suffered not only from inexperience in foreign relations, but also from a public and a Republican Congress that disdained foreign involvement. Voter support for America minding its own business reached its prior peak in June 1995 just as French President Jacques Chirac was complaining that the post of world leader was ‘vacant.’ Bush’s foreign-policy stumbling during his first nine months in office was also partly attributable to public attitudes. The next administration could face a similar trial–and in a world that over the last ten years has grown more dangerous and more interdependent.”
America “minding its own business”? — the mere prospect is enough to send chills of horror down the spine! Surely Doomsday is just around the corner ….
Speaking of Kosovo, what better place for a secret CIA prison where torture and other unspeakable acts are freely indulged in? And here Republicans used to think we’d never get anything useful out of our invasion of Yugoslavia ….
Recommended Reading:
Jane Hamsher’s firedoglake for the latest on Plame-gate.
Larry Johnson’s No Quarter for the inside scoop on intelligence matters.
Robert Dreyfuss has a scoop in The American Prospect:
“The Prospect has learned that part of a secret $3 billion in new funds—tucked away in the $87 billion Iraq appropriation that Congress approved in early November—will go toward the creation of a paramilitary unit manned by militiamen associated with former Iraqi exile groups. Experts say it could lead to a wave of extrajudicial killings, not only of armed rebels but of nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists—up to 120,000 of the estimated 2.5 million former Baath Party members in Iraq.”
And the always-informative Laura Rozen has been blogging up a storm lately, and is plenty steamed, with good reason.
THIS JUST IN from Steve Clemons’ The Washington Note: Barbara Bush is out for Dick Cheney’s scalp — also Andy Card’s, and Karl Rove’s. Forget Pat Fitzgerald — if I were these guys, I’d run for the hills while I still could …
And this is good news, if true — although I wouldn’t bet the farm on it ….