Memo to the CIA: You may not be prepared for time-travel, but welcome to 2025 anyway! Your rooms may be a little small, your ability to demand better accommodations may have gone out the window, and the amenities may not be to your taste, but get used to it. It's going to be your reality from now on.
Early on Sunday morning, troops stormed the presidential palace of Honduras
and kidnapped the president. Immediately eyes turned to the United
States, which for more than a century has backed friendly dictators and
cooked-up coups in Central America.
Since the election of Barack Obama, mainstream observers have
commented on the turmoil in the backrooms of the White House and the
Pentagon. Apparently, the new President is trying to repair the damages
done by the irresponsible and reckless moves of the Bush era and
refocus the U.S. around a new set of policies. It is going to be very
tough. On a parallel track, many think that the long-term decline of
the U.S. is inevitable, partially because of its own internal fractures
(economic crisis, military overstretch), partially because of the rise
of emerging powers.
This week marks the end of the dollar’s reign as the world’s reserve currency.
It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political
decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the
American imperium. That’s over. It is not coming back. And what is to
come will be very, very painful.
Let's face it, even Bo is photogenic, charismatic. He's a camera hound. And as for Barack, Michelle, Sasha, and Malia -- keep in mind that we're now in a first name culture -- they all glow on screen.
There are many bizarre aspects to Obama's decision to try to
suppress evidence of America's detainee abuse, beginning with the
newfound willingness of so many people to say: "We want our leaders to
suppress information that reflects poorly on what our government
does." One would think that it would be impossible to train a
citizenry to be grateful to political officials for
concealing evidence of government wrongdoing, or to accept the idea
that evidence that reflects poorly on the conduct of political leaders
should, for that reason alone, be covered-u
Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be
declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal
Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US
to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still
picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be
fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into
one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the
arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal.
It is now a commonplace -- as a lead article in the New York Times's Week in Review pointed out recently -- that Afghanistan is "the graveyard of empires." Given Barack Obama's call
for a greater focus on the Afghan War ("we took our eye off the ball
when we invaded Iraq..."), and given indications that a "surge" of U.S.
troops is about to get underway there, Afghanistan's dangers have been
much in the news la
Under tight security in Baghdad, US Marines have raised their flag over the world's largest American embassy.
During an inauguration ceremony on Monday, US officials said the $700m state-of-the-art complex will usher in a new era of relations with Iraq, which it invaded nearly six years ago.
The ceremony was held a day after a suicide bomber killed at least 38 people at a Shia shrine just 6km north of the new embassy.
On Monday, four bombs went off in different parts of Baghdad just before noon, killing four people and injuring 19 others.
BAGHDAD - The US military took a step toward pulling combat troops from Iraqi cities yesterday, moving out of a Baghdad base that Iraqi officials said would be dismantled and converted back into a shopping mall.
It was the first US military base to be handed over to Iraq since American forces came under Iraqi authority on Jan. 1, in compliance with a new security agreement between the two countries.
