Archive for January, 2010

Why Are They at War With Us?

“We are at war. We are at war against al-Qaida, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people and that is plotting to strike us again.”

Thus did Barack Obama clear the air as to whether we are at war, and with whom and why.

Humanitarian Bribery

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has finally asserted herself as a foreign policy leader of Metternichian or rather Machiavellian proportions. On January 6, the day before Rajiv Shah is sworn in as director of USAID, Madame Clinton delivered her first major policy address, “Development in the 21st Century,” at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

First Circle: Liberty Has Been Lost

I had just finished reading the uncensored edition of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book, In The First Circle (Harper Perennial, 2009), when I came across Chris Hedges’ article, “One Day We’ll All Be Terrorists” (Truthdig, Dec. 28, 2009). In Hedges’ description of the U.S. government’s treatment of American citizen Syed Fahad Hashmi, I recognized the Stalinist legal system as portrayed by Solzhenitsyn.

Nuclear Poker with Iran

On New Year’s Day, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki issued an ultimatum to the West: Accept a swap of part of our 2 ton stockpile of low-enriched uranium for your higher-enriched uranium for our U.S.-built reactor, or we start enriching to 20 percent ourselves.

Church and State A

The debate over the proper or legal relationship between Church and State usually takes place in a very narrow context, e.g., religious pluralism in 21st century America or the “theocracy” of the Estates of the Church. This debate is usually acrimonious because it involves, in the first case, a struggle between atheists and theists and in the second between groups of Christians, each convinced that it holds a monopoly on truth and that other Christians are not only wrong but damnably and devilishly wrong.

Faust

German movies of the 1920′s receive a remarkably poor press in conservative circles. Some critics regard them as little more than obvious reflections of Weimar decadence, as some of the lesser films doubtless are. Sometimes even the ubiquitous use of expressionist technique is presented as definitive proof that the mental derangement of souls in pain means that the art itself is deranged—a genuinely confusing subject with object.

Ethnic Cleansing

Some memories of auld lang syne on New Year’s Day 2010. This Rockford Files first appeared in the August 2002 issue of Chronicles.

Family traditions often get started by accident—especially, perhaps, those that center on food.