In the LRB, David Runciman provides some telling insights in a review of recent books about the “off-shoring” of the world economy into tax havens, where the hyper-elite hide their money from the taxes and regulations that ordinary citizens are subject to. The review also deals with the political machinations involved in this corrosive process, which lies behind much of our dysfunctions and discontents. You should read the whole article, which provides rich historical context, but are some excerpts, in medias res: When officials from Delaware toured the globe in the late 1980s advertising their services (and hoping, among other

Wise man William Pfaff speaks the truth like rolling thunder here: The struggle is under way to re-establish American control over the successors to those despots whom popular uprisings have ousted from Tunisia and Egypt, threatening the careers of still other abusive absolute monarchs and presidents-for-life (and their offspring). The report that Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh is to be thrown to the crocodile crowds by the American government, allowing for bids by the CIA for a successor, was “leaked” (meaning not announced at a press conference) to The New York Times. His fault, in American officials’ eyes, is not

Arthur Silber, one of the most incisive and eloquent analysts writing today, is, in his own words, “sick, broke and scared.” Silber is wracked by chronic and worsening health problems, which he is having to endure in dire poverty. Voluntary contributions to his website are his only source of income; but of course, when he is sick, as he often is, he can’t post new material, and therefore donations drop off. He is in a particularly bad spiral at the moment, with mounting medical bills and an all-too-real prospect of homelessness. This is what often happens to fearless truth-tellers in

Ian Patterson notes that the air war unleashed on Libya by the Western powers last week coincides very neatly with the 100th anniversary of the first military air strike — which was launched by a Western power against … Libya. From The London Review of Books: The world’s first aerial bombing mission took place 100 years ago, over Libya. It was an attack on Turkish positions in Tripoli. On 1 November 1911, Lieutenant Cavotti of the Italian Air Fleet dropped four two-kilogramme bombs, by hand, over the side of his aeroplane. In the days that followed, several more attacks took

The American war against Libya grew in intensity on Sunday, raining death in all directions — including on civilian vehicles and Libyan forces in full retreat. Behind the full-scale barrage launched by the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, the armed opposition led by recent henchmen of Moamar Gadafy pressed forward in a military offensive. Libyan soldiers were gunned down as they fled — a reprise of the “turkey shoot” American forces conducted on retreating Iraqis back in the first glorious Gulf War. (But weren’t they supposed to retreat? Wasn’t that the purpose of the UN directive? Oh, it’s so confusing!) Here’s