Dispatches

I'm Aboard. Pull up the Ladder.
11.03.2005 10:31 | RUSS WELLEN
Entropy--the inevitable and steady deterioration of a system or society--has long been the province of fiction and, recently, the liberal and progressive press. However, it's coming home to roost among the branches on high, where it was hatched. This i...

"Atomic Apartheid"
11.01.2005 09:24 | RUSS WELLEN
"Unsurprisingly, the phrase 'atomic apartheid' is being heard increasingly in Iranian government circles as well as by ordinary Iranians who feel that their country is being unfairly singled out [for exclusion from the nuclear club]." Talk about twisti...

Lawrence of Iraq
10.28.2005 12:18 | RUSS WELLEN
Double-crossed by his own government (T.E.) Lawrence of Arabia was unable to succeed in bringing to Arabs the independence he fought for with them. The British occupation of Iraq also frustrated him. Here's an excerpt from a 1920 Sunday Times article,...

It Wasn't Only Joseph Wilson They Were After
10.27.2005 07:41 | RUSS WELLEN
As has been remarked, the lengths to which the administration went to exact revenge on Joseph Wilson for pulling the tablecloth off the WMD rationale and letting the yellowcake crash to the floor were way out of proportion to his imagined offense. Especia...

Mud People Beware: Virginal Hate-Mongers on the Loose
10.25.2005 09:31 | RUSS WELLEN
From an October 20 article on the ABC News Web site, "Young Singers Spread Racist Hate": "Thirteen-year-old twins Lamb and Lynx Gaede have one album out, another on the way, a music video, and lots of fans. They may remind you another famous pair of si...

Truth Most Brutal
10.21.2005 12:09 | RUSS WELLEN
Last Best Chance, the nuclear terror fright flick produced by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, premiered on HBO this week. NTI, headed by Sam Nunn, is Ted Turner's anti-WMD foundation. With its movie production values and starring TV star Fred Dalton Tho...

Our Ever-Shrinking Security Blanket
10.19.2005 08:42 | RUSS WELLEN
From an article in the Washington Post today about the CIA under the reign of Porter Goss: "Goss, who served as a CIA operative in Latin America in the 1960s, is also eager to reopen stations there so the agency is prepared when conflicts arise in othe...

"Cashpaks" Incoming at Three O'Clock
10.18.2005 07:33 | RUSS WELLEN
I defy anybody to read Philip Giraldi's American Conservative article on corruption in Iraq, "Money for Nothing," and constrain his or her reaction to an American's usual facile cynicism: "That's politics." The scale on which the administration has doled...

Reconstituted Statehood
10.14.2005 07:27 | RUSS WELLEN
Iraqis are constitutionally incapable of caring about their constitution because their own constitutions are compromised by the hardships of their daily lives. From the Independent, in a story about its own inimitable Middle-East correspondent, Robert...

The Worst Person for the Job
10.12.2005 13:12 | RUSS WELLEN
"When defense attorney Ron Safer heard that Patrick Fitzgerald would lead an inquiry into the leak of a CIA operative's name," Judy Keen reports in USA Today, "his first thought was that, from the Bush administration's perspective, 'they could not have pi...

When the Right Wing Resorts to French. . .
10.10.2005 07:24 | RUSS WELLEN
. . . to express its frustration with Bush, you know his administration is in trouble. "There is now a distinctive fin de regime stink about Republican Washington." As the editorial on TheBusinessOnline.com from which the above quote was excerpted c...

When Political Rockers Stop Raging Against and Become the Machine
10.07.2005 11:28 | RUSS WELLEN
The original members of the sophisticated, but stark, quasi-Marxist band, Gang of Four, have reformed according to a Slate article by Simon Reynolds. Their new album is faithful covers of their old songs. Say what? Turns out, as Reynolds explains, that...

Justice in Case
10.06.2005 07:20 | RUSS WELLEN
Harriet Miers: crony--or crone? Were I to apologize for this glib sexist remark, it would be disingenuous, especially in light of my next comment: What's with the eyeliner? Is this her bid to become the first Goth SCOTUS? It does, however, match the judic...

A Scandal a Day Keeps Indictment Away
10.04.2005 07:41 | RUSS WELLEN
First there was Watergate, named after a hotel in Washington. Then "gate" was appended to the Iran arms for hostages to fund contras scandal (in which Reagan's White House breached the firewall that heretofore insulated the presidency from the Machiavelli...

Let's Start by Drawing a Line in the Sand
09.30.2005 12:24 | RUSS WELLEN
According to the always enlightening Wayne Madsen, CIA Director Porter Goss's successor as House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, has coughed up a choice piece of information. Some HPSCI me...

The First Good Use to Which American Forces in Iraq Have Been Put?
09.29.2005 11:43 | RUSS WELLEN
Withdrawal from Iraq is like another issue dear to our sense of national security--the autonomy of individual cells in the new Al Qaeda. In both cases, the heart of the matter is being overlooked. When it comes to Al Qaeda, cells aside, their pet proje...

Every Citizen a Politician, Part II
09.27.2005 10:50 | RUSS WELLEN
". . . for liberty will never be safe or durable in a republic till every citizen thinks it as much his duty to take care of the state, as to take care of his family, and until an indifference to any public question shall be considered a public offence [e...

Every Citizen a Politician, Part I
09.27.2005 08:07 | RUSS WELLEN
"In a republican government [a democracy, that is] it is the duty incumbent on every citizen to afford his assistance, either by taking part in its immediate administration, or by his advice and watchfulness, [editor's italics] that its principles may rem...

Pat Tillman and Noam Chomsky--an Unlikely Pair or Two of a Kind?
09.26.2005 09:08 | RUSS WELLEN
When given news at Northcom headquarters in Colorado that Hurricane Rita was much less serious than Katrina, President Bush, as reported by Newsweek, "didn't look all that relieved or happy. . . seemed cranky and fidgety. . . . rocked back and forth in hi...

Premonitions of New Orleans Devastation by a Rock Icon
09.22.2005 14:39 | RUSS WELLEN
On September 7 in a TimesOnline article called "New Orleans -- the ideal place to get shot," the Kinks' Ray Davies told of his visit to New Orleans last year to raise funds for a local school's Mardi Gras instruments and uniforms. However, he was shot dur...