Even in the best of times, corporate fraud, Nazi connections, hate groups and Eastern European drug rings were lurking beneath Sweden’s surface.
It’s True: Sweden Was Too Good to Be True
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War & Peace
Richard Holbrooke: A Statesman’s Statesman — if You Take Your Diplomacy Straight up Without Principles as a Chaser
If nothing else, Holbrooke’s career illustrates the continuity of American foreign policy over every administration for which he worked.
The China-Philippines-U.S. Triangle
The United States is, by far, the Philippines’ most important strategic security partner. China’s ascent as a regional Asia Pacific powerhouse, coupled with the relative decline of the United States, has threatened to reconfigure this equation. Yet China’s growing assertiveness over territorial claims from Northeast Asia to the South China Sea might also unravel two decades of its relatively successful charm offensive, which calmed the nerves of many anxious Southeast Asian nations. Any display of aggression by China in the South China Sea could compromise its relations with the Philippines.
Q. So What Are You Fighting For? A. Ah’m Fightin’ Cause Yore Here
How and why the U.S. assures an endless supply of “terrorists” to fight and “enemies” to destroy.
U.S. Agrees to Transfer Nuclear Material to Yet Another Outlaw Nuke Regime
Like India, which the U.S. also provided with nuclear materials, Israel never signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement.
Oil or Terrorism: Which Motivates U.S. Policy More?
Among the batch of classified diplomatic cables recently released by the controversial whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, several have highlighted the vast extent of the financial infrastructure of Islamist terrorism sponsored by key U.S. allies in the ongoing “War on Terror.”
One November’s Dead: The American War Dead Disappear into the Darkness
Remember as the invasion of Iraq was about to begin, when the Bush administration decided to seriously enforce a Pentagon ban, in existence since the first Gulf War, on media coverage and images of the American dead arriving home at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware? In fact, the Bush-era ban did more than that. As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote then, it “ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers’ homecomings on all military bases.”
Is the Military Still in Charge in Pakistan?
This past summer, WikiLeaks, an on-line source of anonymous whistle-blower revelations, unveiled damning information about the war in Afghanistan and its “official portrayal.” Sidebar revelations also cast doubt on Pakistan’s alliance with the United States, charging Pakistani intelligence agencies with “aiding insurgents.” Pakistan and the United States forcefully denied any chink in their “strategic partnership.”
Lighting the Terrorist Fuse
Terrorist plots are suddenly everywhere. In Baltimore last week, a 21-year-old construction worker tried to blow up a military recruitment center. In late November, federal law enforcement officials arrested a Somalia-born teenager for plotting to bomb a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. In October, a jury found the Newburgh Four guilty of planning to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx.
In all three cases, the major accomplice was not al-Qaeda or the Taliban. It was the FBI.
In Today’s Open-Source World, Low-Tech Attacks by “Other Guys” Rule
Talk about return on investment. When it comes to low-tech attacks, will governments ever get the, uh, point?