It’s true, the regime does always seem to be bedevil the Brits. I don’t always agree with the man, but this part I do like:
The tendency of outside media to check the temperature of the clerics, rather than consult the writers and poets of the country, shows our own cultural backwardness in regrettably sharp relief. Anyone who had been reading Pezeshkzad and Nafisi, or talking to their students and readers in Tabriz and Esfahan and Mashad, would have been able to avoid the awful embarrassment by which everything that has occurred on the streets of Iran during recent days has come as one surprise after another to most of our uncultured “experts.”
From The Nation:
Myth 1. It’s a dangerous world. We face an array of serious national security threats that require an experienced Commander in Chief.
Myth 2. The surge has worked. To withdraw from Iraq now would snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and embolden Islamic extremists.
Myth 3. We cannot allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for terrorists. We therefore must redouble our military efforts there or face another terrorist attack.
Myth 4. Iran is responsible for much of the violence against US forces in Iraq; by using its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, it threatens to dominate the Middle East.
Myth 5. To talk to the leaders of “rogue” states like Iran and Cuba without conditions legitimizes their position and weakens American leverage.
Myth 6. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is an authoritarian state pursuing an anti-American agenda aimed at reconstituting the Soviet Union in the form of a new Russian empire.
Myth 7. Because the American military is stretched thin by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must increase the size of our conventional armed forces.
Myth 8. A League of Democracies would create a global coalition for peace and freedom and would enable the United States and its democratic allies to intervene to solve humanitarian and other crises when the UN Security Council is paralyzed.
Myth 9. Globalization has strengthened the economy, and we cannot avoid it by hiding behind protectionist walls.
Myth 10. The world needs American leadership.
Interesting myths, no? To find out more about why they are myths, click and read The Nation:
This was probably not that far-fetched of an idea… especially since the US and UK probably tried to implement this after WWII, and the Soviets and US did just that. Either way, funny to read it now:
An amateur diplomat alarmed British officials during World War II by proposing that Germany and Britain divide the world between them, according to records released Sunday.
James Lonsdale-Bryans, a fascist sympathizer, traveled to Italy early in the war to meet the German ambassador, Ulrich von Hassell.
“It would appear that Bryans may be taking part in unofficial discussions,” said a Secret Service memo released by the National Archives.
“Bryans’ idea is that the world ought to be divided into two parts. That Germany should be given a free hand in Europe and that the British Empire should run the rest of the world.
“I am not sure that this is a very desirable point of view to publish at the present time.”
Incidentally this almost spilled the war over onto Iran. Turns out the Iranians were not exactly at fault… gee, sort of like Iraq. The lies and propaganda of the Coalition of the Willing continues:
Newly released Ministry of Defence documents state that:
— The arrests took place in waters that are not internationally agreed as Iraqi;
— The coalition unilaterally designated a dividing line between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Gulf without telling Iran where it was;
— The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ coastal protection vessels were crossing this invisible line at a rate of three times a week; It was the British who apparently raised their weapons first before the Iranian gunboats came alongside;
— The cornered British, surrounded by heavily armed Iranians, made a hopeless last-minute radio plea for a helicopter to come back and provide air cover.
Iran always claimed that it had arrested the Britons for violating its territorial integrity.
What’s interesting is that the Democrats and Republicans are running over very different stances about GWB’s legacy. Democrats say it was a disaster (it was); Republicans pretend to see it as America’s golden era, or do they believe it?
Who cares. Outsiders see it as a disaster:
Historians will argue over whether George W. Bush is the worst president the United States has ever endured. But that is not the point. Five years after Bush’s ill-starred invasion of Iraq, three years after Hurricane Katrina and seven months into the unravelling of the U.S. financial system, the point is that the 43rd president of the United States – regardless of his ranking in the pantheon – is a unique and unmitigated disaster.
A recurring theme: empires fall when they over stretch:
The Archbishop of Canterbury has launched a stinging attack on America, comparing it unfavourably with the British Empire at its peak.
Dr Rowan Williams condemned America for moving on from Iraq and leaving others to “put it back together”.
In an interview with Muslim lifestyle magazine Emel, reported in The Sunday Times, the head of the Church of England said America’s attempts to accumulate influence and control around the world were “not working”.
America in Iraq had tried a “short burst of violent action” in an attempt to “clear the decks”, he said.
He told Emel magazine: “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources in to administering it and normalising it.
“Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did - in India, for example.
Read more.
When Tony Blair was still the Prime Minister of the UK, News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch offered him a board seat on his company.
Today, the member of the coalition of the willing decided to sign with Bertelsmann’s Random House to sign his memoirs.
The memoirs of former British prime minister Tony Blair will be published in Britain and the United States by Random House, the world’s biggest book publisher said on Thursday.
Sure, Random House is the largest publisher in the world… but I am surprised he didn’t sign with News Corp.’s Harper Collins.
For the first time in modern history, China will next year contribute more to global economic growth than the United States.
The landmark moment was predicted yesterday by the International Monetary Fund and is the latest illustration of the fast-growing Asian country’s importance to the world economy.
While China’s economy is still far smaller than America’s, it has overtaken the UK as the world’s fourth biggest economy. With the IMF projecting 10pc growth this year, the country will pump more new money into the global system next year than the US, which is expected to grow by just 1.9pc.
If the forecasts spelled out in the IMF’s World Economic Outlook prove correct (and the institution did not foresee the recent credit crunch), China’s continued resilience will come at just the right time for the global economy, as the developed world enters a period of slower growth.
It is what many have called the “happy handover” scenario and is already taking place as China, India and Russia combined have already “accounted for one half of global growth over the past year”.
Read more.
A British museum has canceled a lecture by Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix, after he claimed black people are less intelligent than whites in a recent newspaper interview.
Watson, who won the 1962 Nobel prize for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, provoked a storm of criticism after his comments were published in the Sunday Times.
The eminent biologist told the British newspaper he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”
Read more.
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