New, Rare and Unreleased Material from the DMZ Empire
New, Rare and Unreleased Material from the DMZ Empire
The U.S. Congress last week gave final approval to a South Korean-U.S. trade agreement (KORUS) despite strong opposition from the labor movement and a handful of organizations on the political left. The pact was approved along with treaties with Panama and…
I’ve been around the left for a long time and have participated in dozens, probably hundreds, of actions in Washington over the years. Suddenly last week it looked like we were about to have another major convergence – the DC…
A report on Michael Moore’s first stop on his “living room” book tour – in which I ask him something about Nader I’ve been burning to know for years. Last Friday I had the good fortune to be invited to…
Blackwater, the notorious mercenary company now known as “Xe,” has a new Chief Operating Officer (COO) – Charles (Chuck) Thomas, formerly of the British-owned defense and intelligence contractor BAE Systems Inc. According to today’s press release from Blackwater owner USTC…
It still pisses me off that the AFL-CIO has never apologized for working with the CIA and the Nixon administration to bring down the socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. This article, published in The Nation in…
During a visit to South Korea in 2008, U.S. congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) floated a proposal for the Korean government to send up to 30,000 mercenaries to serve as “constables” in Iraq, according to a diplomatic cable released last month…
In the fall of 2001, Joan Didion, one of the great chroniclers of American politics and foreign policy, had just published a new book, Political Fictions. Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, she went on a book tour to promote her…
Published by Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus and cross-posted at Z-Net. Thanks to editor Mark Selden for his fine work and encouragement. Since early 2011, major peoples’ revolutions have swept through North Africa and the Middle East. Most recently, the revolts engulfed…
A report from my friend Alan Gleason, an American expatriate living in Tokyo, about his recent visit to Japan’s earthquake zone with his hot jazz band, “The Hot Club of Osawa.” (That’s Alan, playing the stand-up bass) By Alan Gleason…
My latest, from The Nation. An excerpt: The fact that so many media organizations had to fly journalists to Japan underscores how much that country has disappeared from our political discourse since the early 1990s, when Japan’s economic juggernaut was…
Nuclear Gypsies – The subcontractors who do the dirty work As the six reactors at Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima power complex have burned out of control over the past week, both the foreign and Japanese press have been full…
Part One: Japan, Democracy, and the Globalization of Nuclear Power (Updated throughout 3/20/2011) Part Two: Nuclear Gypsies (posted 3/20/2011) Since I woke up last Friday, I’ve been monitoring the terrible earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan and watching with horror…
In 2002, Tokyo Electric Co. admitted to falsifying its records of nuclear inspections and hiding the facts for more than a decade. Ironically, the information came from a whistleblower at GE, which helped build the plants and has contracted with…
The latest e-mail dispatch from Alan G., my friend in Tokyo who’s lived in Japan for most of his life: The real question everyone has, both locally and here in Tokyo, is, just how much radiation has been released? And…
A friend, Alan G., just wrote me from Tokyo about the dangerous situation at the Fukushima nuclear reactor near Sendai, where the controversial utility TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) is desperately trying to forestall a meltdown of the core and…
Michael Isikoff reports at MSNBC today that a former top CIA official has told him there is “no doubt” that Moammar Gadhafi personally approved the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, one of the incidents that.…
Musicians and artists in the French Quarter, 2010 I spent the last few days in New Orleans poking around old haunts from my last extended reporting visits there in 2006 and 2007. As usual, I stayed in the French Quarter,…
To all my friends & colleagues, near and far – may we all be blessed in 2011. Here’s me, playing Auld Lang Syne on my guitar and harmonica – Bob Dylan-style.
My latest, in Daily Beast. To my amazement, my article and my name were mentioned at the top of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show today. Apparently what caught his attention was the Beast’s lead-in: As American commanders meet this week for…
One of America’s most experienced diplomats, Richard Holbrooke, passed away today after suffering heart problems over the weekend. Tonight the cable news shows are devoting much time to his career, focusing primarily on his early years as a foreign service…