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Welcome to Empire Burlesque
Written by Chris Floyd   

AtDesk.jpgChris Floyd is an award-winning American journalist, and author of the book, Empire Burlesque: High Crimes and Low Comedy in the Bush Regime. For more than 11 years he wrote the featured political column, Global Eye, for The Moscow Times and the St. Petersburg Times in Russia. He also served as UK correspondent for Truthout.org, and was an editorial writer for three years for The Bergen Record. His work appears regularly CounterPunch, The Baltimore Chronicle and in translation in the Italian paper, Il Manifesto, and has also been published in such venues as The Nation,  the Christian Science Monitor, Columbia Journalism Review, The Ecologist and many others. His articles are also featured regularly on such websites as Information Clearing House, Buzzflash, Bushwatch, LewRockwell.com, Antiwar.com, and many others. His work has been cited in The New York Times, USA Today, the Guardian, the Independent and other major newspapers.

Floyd co-founded the blog Empire Burlesque with webmaster Richard Kastelein, who created the site using open-source software. Floyd is also chief editor of Atlantic Free Press, which was founded and designed by Kastelein.

Floyd has been a writer and editor for more than 25 years, working in the United States, Great Britain and Russia for various newspapers, magazines, the U.S. government and Oxford University. His career began in the hills and valleys of Tennessee and down in the piney swamps of southern Mississippi, covering moonshine raids, shotgun murders, drug-running evangelists, racial conflicts, the economic ravages of the Reagan Administration, and the relentless, turbulent campaign of the Religious Right to gain political power and cultural dominance throughout the "heartland." He returned to his home ground in the late 1990s, where he won awards for his coverage of a deadly hostage shootout and a bloody melee between county officials – swapping charges of corruption and adultery – at a school board meeting.  He also won two awards for column writing during his stints on Tennessee papers.

Floyd spent several years in the depths of the military-industrial complex, working for a security-restricted federal research laboratory on projects dealing with energy conservation, global warming, space travel, transportation, robotics, artificial intelligence and military logistics. On the side, he published fiction and poetry in small journals and taught Russian literature at the University of Tennessee. Later, he annotated Shakespeare, 19th century British poetry and American literature for a start-up company producing multi-media CD editions of literary works for colleges and schools.

In 1994, he made his way to Russia, where he joined the Moscow Times, an English-language daily and one of the first independent newspapers of the post-Soviet period. There he spent two years – the high casino of the tumultuous Yeltsin era – and began writing the "Global Eye" column, which he continued after returning to the United States in 1996. He was also the Times' movie reviewer from 1996 to 2000.

From 1998 to 2000, Floyd was the editor of Science & Spirit, an Oxford quarterly journal dealing with the contentious relationship between science and religion. His work there included interviews with such thinkers as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Steven Pinker, Frans de Waal, V.S. Ramachandran and others. He also worked with contributors from around the world – Islamic scientists, Jewish theologians, militant atheists, Nobel Prize-winning physicists, and authors such as Freeman Dyson, Paul Davies, Lisa Jardine, A.N. Wilson, John Polkinghorne and others. Since 2000, Floyd has worked as a freelance journalist and as a writer and researcher for Oxford University. 

His story, "Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Foment Terrorism," was chosen as one of Project Censored's "Top 25 Stories of 2002/2003." His pieces have been anthologized in various political collections in the United States.

In 2005, Floyd recorded a CD of his songs, Wheel of Heaven, with producer/musician Nick Kulukundis.

Comments (19)add comment

momrocks47 said:

0
greetings
i am a new member just today. i am very much interested in journalism and world politics, etc. i am a nurse, currently now working......my three kids are grown and i am soon to be a grandparent for a first time.
 
June 02, 2006
Votes: +0
Wow.... too scary., Lowly rated comment [Show]

a guest said:

0
To the guest comment below
Open your eyes mate, look past your daily news feeds
 
June 03, 2006
Votes: +0

a guest said:

0
Chris is one of the good guys
Anyone familiary with Chris' writings will know that he is one of the good guys. The neo-cons have run the US into the ditch. He calls them on it. There's no escaping the failures of the neo-cons and those associated with them. His "Global Eye" column keeps me coming back to the Moscow Times.
 
June 03, 2006
Votes: +1

fascistsbowdowntome said:

0
RW Fools
RWs get your heads out of your asses'

if you can't comprehend the truths written here
and us it to educate yourselve's,, there is no hope for you
 
July 03, 2006
Votes: +0

a guest said:

0
New member
Nice to find a fellow liberal "on the edge of extremism." And I'm going to have to get your book on the Bush Regime. I found your site thru Smirking Chimp after reading your stunning column on "Home Free." Can't wait to read more of your stuff.
 
July 07, 2006
Votes: +0

matt carmody said:

339
Good on ya, Chris
Anyone who thinks this stuff is too extreme should read the history of the Soviet Union from the 20s and 30s. As Stalin was solidifying his hold over the country after Lenin's death the state apparatus moved against the entire population of Russia.

From what's been going on here in America it's hard to believe that the Bushies have actually illuminated their intentions to enslave the American people with neon lights. Stalin carried out his atrocities by impoverishing everyone in the name of "national security" just as this regine is doing. Family farms, ordinary working people, professiionals seeing their jobs outsourced, it's all there and it's all been done before.

The road to totalitarianism is seldom so well marked and the move towrads it is usually less blatant.

But then the Bush crew has no opposition and the masses are far from informed
 
July 10, 2006
Votes: +1

a guest said:

0
...
Chris, You are one of the bravest journalists I read, don't let the noise out there silence you. You are a true American and a patriot since to takes a lot of courage and legitimate concern to denounce the crimes of this regime.

Keep it up.
 
September 01, 2006
Votes: +1

a guest said:

0
Now for some real journalism
Chris,

I just joined today. I've appreciated your work for some time. Keep up the good work. Although it looks like the neofacist coup d'etat in the US in 2000 has succeeded, much is crumbling around their heels. Someone has to fight the constant propaganda American brains are washed in 24/7.
 
September 03, 2006
Votes: +0
I\'ll give him a pass..., Lowly rated comment [Show]
"Serenity Now", Lowly rated comment [Show]

William Fritz said:

0
Worthy of Shakespeare
Chris writes with language that invades the dull space of the mind like a Lear or MacBeth confronting the world with the outrage of his passion and terror, perfectly answering the kind of sleek, silky linguistic polish of all those voices on the Right which make ugly cruelty sound so refined and reasonable. It is so right to the taste that is almost proves its truth by the quality of the medium. thanks, Chris. May your keyboard never be stilled.
 
November 30, 2006
Votes: +0

Cori Galeano said:

766
Heard a lot about you from Brooks Frankl
I used to work at The Lebanon Democrat and I heard a lot of complimentary stuff about you from Brooks Franklin. Saw this Web site and it's very interesting. I look forward to frequent visits in the future.
 
December 13, 2006
Votes: +0

Bruce Gruber said:

759
...
For more than two centuries we have survived the Hamiltonian-Jeffersonian debate over who has the right 'fix' on the Founders' achievements and intentions. The debates and compromises that produced our living, evolving form of representative democracy are unique to the personalities and influences that created and maintain them. They are not a transferable truth, they are a principled concept. Of late the political environment seems like a high school football game between bitter rivals whose winner-take-all goals are achieved with camouflaged, military tactics. Our revolution may have run its course.
Humanity is now subject to being subjugated to profitability in the manipulation of manpower and natural resources. We are at risk of being driven to annihilation in the names of gods whose presence has not been measurably present on the landscape for thousands of years except through their spokesmen whose success at righteousness is measured in the weight of their respective collection plates (whether filled with money or suicidal bodies). We condemn those voices of reason and moderation as guilt-ridden apologists rather than truth seekers.
In the US politics has become the art of gaining control regardless of the cost or methodology. Control is 'might' and 'might makes right'. Pity the Colonials if the French had not seen us as a counterweight to the East India Company .. pity the French for not realizing that we would become 'it'. Republicans and Democrats cannot rediscover the essence of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or property) if they are both handmaidens to Wall Street, the Carlyle Group or the military industrial complex which has given us nearly one hundred years of continuous major and minor opportunities to buy and used arms worldwide.
Our goal may need to be a universal, non-denominational, bi-partisan, non-profit, humanitarian demand for a clear set of priorities that address LIFE, LIBERTY and the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. Without term limits (go back to Rex Tugwell) and publicly financed elections we cannot even start to get things back in citizens' control.
Remember, corporations may be men (or may insulate men from responsibility) ... but they are not citizens.
 
December 13, 2006
Votes: +0

Robert Mawn said:

904
Vice president,, charged with overall co
Excellent site, now I can read Chris's essays before they are posted to "Bushwatch" and "The smirking chimp".
 
January 17, 2007
Votes: +0

Arthur James said:

261
Snowman/women
Chris,

I in a grouch mood too. Everything here malfunctions, lately. I am not sure my e-mails get to ATF. Ask R.K. if he got what I sent today? It's okay for file-13, okay?

Don't listen to yesterday's Armed Appropriation, pre-Plan, murderous adventures, I'd say. But, thanks for those who can listen. Those who do listen have the better worls' respect. Let's stop the vulgar 'surge' crappers on Capital Hill. Thanks.
 
February 28, 2007 | url
Votes: +0

jalanhi said:

0
Awesome site
I just discovered your site. Great stuff. It's great to have guys like you covering and writing intelligently about the tragedy -- and folly -- of imperial power.
 
June 20, 2007
Votes: +0

Abdi Ali said:

0
...
I am very glad that I have got this opportunity to say THANK YOU FOR YOU'RE COMON Sense's show UN bay-est news and those who are anther the fire and have no voice could and would benefit from it,history it is beter to be told as it is. thank you again I am Somali national too.
 
August 14, 2007
Votes: +0

Randy said:

0
Dissident
got here from globalresearch.ca -- following the 'God That Failed: The 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult' link...
the article is excellent.

hats off to those who dare dissent and compliments to those like chris who do it so well.
 
October 22, 2008
Votes: +0

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