John le Carre, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, George Smiley played by Gary Oldham. Does it get any better than this?
Continue readingAuthor: The Mound of Sound
The Disaffected Lib: A Marriage Made in Hell
Pakistan and the United States, bride and groom, betrothed in a supposed war on terrorism. But there never was any love, no trust, hardly any common ground. It was never more than a transactional relationship. Was it…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: A New Middle East Reality
Oh my, my. Mahmoud Abbas has called Barack Obama’s bluff and applied to the United Nations for Palestinian statehood. It will fall to the United States to veto the motion, spilling international political capital the US no longer has …
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Guess Who’s Back?
Full marks if you guessed Vlad Putin. As expected, his United Russia Party has approved another job swap. Current president Dmitri Medvedev will slip back into his old job as prime minister. Putin, the current prime ministerial …
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Georgia Board of Pardons Commutes Death Sentence – For White Killer
Just two days after black inmate Troy Davis was executed, the Georgia Board of Pardons commuted the death sentence of white inmate David Crowe to life imprisonment.Let’s see: Crowe is white, Davis was black; Crowe admits he killed his former empl…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Make Room in Hell For One More
Serial child-killer Clifford Olson is dying. That sick, twisted monster is said to be dying of cancer and to be just days from breathing his last.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Netanyahu’s Sock Puppet Addresses UN General Assembly
Barack Obama showed what he was made of today – not very much at all.In a flaccid speech that appeared to convince no one, Obama said that recognition of Palestinian statehood was premature and the UN instead ought to use its efforts to push Israel and…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: General Walt, Answer Me This
So you wracked up a million bucks worth of jet taxi fares. Fine, maybe it was just a mistake, an error of judgment. Forget about reimbursement. Military types aren’t paid like their civilian counterparts. No stock op…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Can You Feel Your Hide Thickening?
We’re all going to get pretty thick skinned in the years and decades to come. The more you want to cling to your way of life and the greater the global suffering that results, the thicker the skin you’ll need. Some already are quite well a…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Taking Stock, Just With Better Metrics
Steve Harper may be in church today, probably seeking some sort of absolution for his sins, but the real altar at which jokers like Steve worship at is sepulcher of the Lord GDP. It’s gross domestic product that turns Harper’s crank. &…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The IMF Comes to Its Senses – Income Inequality is Ruinous
It’s about time. The International Monetary Fund, it seems, has opened its eyes and discovered that income inequality, the growing gap between rich and poor, is ruinous to modern economies.IMF researchers Andrew Berg and Jonathon Ostry ask,…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: America’s Climate Change Paralysis
An editorial in the environment section of today’s Guardian ponders why, despite the onslaught of hurricanes, drought, floods and wildfires, America’s political leadership and its media opinion makers, simply cannot take up the issue of global wa…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Wisdom of the Great – Mark Twain
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.””Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.””I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.””Go to heaven for the climate and hell fo…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Scary Times In the Middle East
It’s a bad time for Israel to be stuck with a boneheaded president like Benjamin Netanyahu. The neighbourhood is changing and Netanyahu’s bad boy bully tactics have fallen out of vogue. An editorial in today’s Guardian speaks of an om…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: But No, This Isn’t Class Warfare
From the far right “American Thinker,” an item entitled, “Registering the Poor to Vote is Un-American.””Why are left-wing activist groups so keen on registering the poor to vote?”Because they know the poor can be counted on to vote themselves more ben…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Why Commemorate 9/11?
It’s hard to determine what legitimate purpose there is in commemorating the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon. The difficulty arises in going back and seeing how those nearly 3,000 de…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: In Washington, "Peace" Is a Dirty Word
They’ve utterly demonized the meaning of “liberal,” driven “socialism” into the cellars of Lubyanka, transformed “entitlement” into something anything but deserved; and now they can no longer stand the foul stench of “peace.” Welcome to the…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: What Do We Do If The Global Economy Fails?
The global economy is a relative newcomer, at least for most of us. There’s always been global trade but it was subject to capital controls, tariffs and import restrictions. Then, as the world moved out of the world wars and col…
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: America’s Iraq Mini- My Lai Massacre Erupts
A Wikileaks firebomb. This time it’s a U.S. diplomatic cable indicating that, in 2006, American soldiers entered a house in the Iraqi village of Ishaqi, near Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit, and killed everyone inside. …
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: James Hansen Arrested at White House
He might be the world’s foremost climate scientist. NASA Goddard Space Laboratory director, Dr. James Hansen was arrested outside the White House today while protesting against the Athabasca Tar Sands and the Keystone XL pipeline.Before he was t…
Continue reading