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“Broken Light”: Work, for the Night is Coming

Below is the epilogue from the Empire Burlesque book, providing a glimpse of the ultimate viewpoint from the which the book, and this blog, is written. Most of the chapter was originally published as a column in the Moscow Times.

Broken Light: Work, For the Night is Coming

Black milk of daybreak, we drink it at evening. 
–  Paul Celan, “Deathfugue”

The children were walking to school. The young people were going out to a dance.

The children stepped on a booby trap planted by a

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Logical Conclusions: Taking the True Measure of the Situation

Not a day goes by without someone in the Bush Gang telling us that things are “getting better” in Iraq, that every new terrorist bombing or insurgent attack is actually evidence that “the insurgency is weakening,” growing more desperate, in its “final throes”. (Even if, as Condi Rice notes, those throes may last for 10 years or more.)


Of course, we’ve been seeing this same witless cud dribbling out of Bushist mouths for years now. Below, in an excerpt from the Empire Burlesque book, we see this logical conclusions applied, er, logically, to other

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Going Nuclear for Fun and Profit

It seems the uber-macho pair of Bush and Blair (one a prep school cheerleader, the other nicknamed “Emily” by his schoolmates) are limbering up for more he-man action on the warfront — this time against Iran. Although, as the Guardian reports, the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspectors have found that Iran is now in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Bush and Blair strongarmed the IAEA board into overruling their own experts and referring Iran’s nuclear program to the Security Council. Now we are hearing the exact same noises we heard before the invasion of

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Flop Sweat

Having railed at the wanton criminality of the Bush
Faction for so long, this site naturally partakes of the general glee
arising from the looming possibility of genuine, grade-A grand jury
indictments for some of the gang’s top thugs.

Of course, we all know that the fix is in: if anyone
in the White House is actually indicted and convicted for the high
crime of exposing the identity of an undercover agent – in wartime, no
less – they will certainly be pardoned when George W. Bush finally
limps away from the steaming, stinking, blood-soaked ruin of his<br

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Gainspotting: Terror War Meets Drug War

Here is some eminent good sense from Norm Stamper, former police chief of Seattle on how to vastly reduce crime – and America’s scandalously high prison population – and, not incidentally, stanch the relentless spread of corruption throughout government and the business world, while helping to heal some of the nation’s most greivous racial and class divides. What’s the secret? It’s simple: legalize drugs.


The Los Angeles Times is to be applauded for publishing such a provocative piece, which flies in the face of deeply entrenched (and deeply profitable) conventional wisdom – and to be

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Reindeer Games

Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution continues to fire on all cylinders. Here, he explains, succinctly, wittily, perfectly, the reality of the modern news media — and why it’s never going to get any “better.” No point in excerpting it; just go read the whole thing: There Is No Santa Claus.

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Freedom’s Just Another Word for Blowing up Buddhas and Killing People

The peculiar understanding of “liberation” that George W. Bush imposes upon the countries he conquers was on vivid display in Afghanistan this week. AP reports that the Taliban wild man in charge of blowing up two giant, 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha in 2001 — an unconscionable crime against culture, against history, indeed, against humanity — has been duly elected to parliament, where he will add his wise voice to the guidance of policy in the regime of warlords, druglords and virulent extremists installed by Bush.


No doubt

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Big Time Crooks

The New York Daily News reports that a “senior” White House figure has flipped on the Bush gang, and is now cooperating with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
The speculation — and of course that’s all it is (but who cares, let’s
enjoy the moment anyway) — is that Bigtime Dick Cheney himself is the
main target of the “secret snitch” as Fitzgerald edges “closer to a
blockbuster conspiracy charge.” (via Carolyn Kay)

Now, if there is any fire whatsoever to this most savory smoke, any

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Planet Waves

This article was originally published in the Oct. 14 edition of The Moscow Times. You can find annotations and links here.

Humankind received yet another harsh message from its
landlord last week. In the agony of Kashmir, in the laments of
Guatemala, the planet once again laid down the hard truths of its
brutal gospel: The earth doesn’t love you. The earth doesn’t need you.
The earth doesn’t know you are here.

All across the Hindu Kush, spreading through Central and South Asia, an
underground tsunami of stone sent tens of thousands down to Sheol

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The Big Fix

Jonathan Schwarz continues his ruthless exposure of the lies of Colin Powell in yet another outstanding post at A Tiny Revolution. Step by step, with relentless detail, he shows how almost every assertion of “fact” Powell made during his pre-attack UN presentation (which “clinched the deal for war,” as the mooing herd of punditry all agreed afterward) was unsupported by intelligence data — and that Powell knew this when he spoke. Jon has chapter and verse, link and source — it’s devastating.

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