History never repeats itself, of course. But human nature being what it is — and the tropes of power and dominance being what they are — there is a great deal of assonance in history: near-rhymes, recurring echoes in the present which do not chime exactly with the past but fall closely enough to resonate with meaning. Reading Timothy Synder’s account of the genocidal famine in Soviet Ukraine in the early 1930s (in his new book, Bloodlands), I ran across the following passage. In it, Snyder describes how Stalin sought to explain away the manifest, catastrophic failure of his policy

The career of the late imperial courtier par excellence Richard Holbrooke is summed up well here by Diane Johnstone. As she notes: The Dayton Peace Accords were presented as a heroic victory for peace extracted by the brilliant Holbrooke from a reluctant Milosevic, who had to be "bombed to the negotiating table" by the United States. In reality, the U.S. government was fully aware that Milosevic was eager for peace in Bosnia to free Serbia from crippling economic sanctions. It was the Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic who wanted to keep the war going, with U.S. military help. In reality,

At 3:25 p.m. on Tuesday, a UK judge reverses an earlier court decision and granted bail to Julian Assange, who is being held in a British prison on a warrant for "sexual misconduct" charges in Sweden. The bail is attached with heavy conditions, including the demand for a large wad of cash upfront, a daily curfew (which will keep Assange off the prime-time news), and the requirement of wearing an electric tag. The ruling does not free Assange, however; he is sent back to jail pending the gathering of the cash, and pending a decision by Swedish authorities to appeal

It has always seemed the strangest thing to me, the way that people will lacerate others — with cruelty, with lies, with dirty dealing, with petty spite, with cold neglect, with violence, violence on the body and the soul — just to gain, for just a moment, some bestial sense of dominance, on one level or another, from the highest to the lowest, turning the inexpressible miracle of existence, this paradise of consciousness and sensation we’ve been given, into a stinking, churned-up living hell. I look at all this, and I think: These people don’t know they’re going to die.

(A version of this article originally appeared at CounterPunch.) Well, they got him at last. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the target of several of the world’s most powerful governments, turned himself into British authorities today and is now at the mercy of state authorities who have already shown their wolfish – and lawless – desire to destroy him and his organization. It has been, by any standard, an extraordinary campaign of vilification and persecution, wholly comparable to the kind of treatment doled out to dissidents in China or Burma. Lest we forget, WikiLeaks is a journalistic outlet – just like

Even as WikiLeaks fights for its life —  a phrase that becomes less metaphorical by the day, especially for Julian Assange, hounded and hunted by several governments — its revelations continue to shake the world’s power structures. Every day we are treated to the edifying spectacle of the most powerful and privileged people on earth scurrying around like panicked rats, trying to escape the streams of light pouring into their filthy backrooms, exposing their ruthless machtpolitik — and their monumental incompetence at every level. The trove of leaked diplomatic cables is too rich to encompass or fully process right away.

One of the most important stories of the day continues to be almost universally ignored, both by the corporate media and most ‘progressive’ bloggers, eternally absorbed with the shallow and pointless factional foolery amongst the cliques at the imperial court. But Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com has continued to shine a high, harsh light on this sinister development, which is adding a vast storehouse of anguish, hatred and violence that will be the Peace Laureate’s chief legacy to future generations. We refer of course to the Obama Administration’s escalation of air strikes in Afghanistan. As Ditz has been noting for some

  For approximately the ten thousandth time, let me say: go read this piece by Arthur Silber. Savor the savage wit he employs against the cretinous call by über-goober Glenn Reynolds for the United States to murder more than 23 million people on the Korean peninsula — and spread death and disease to hundreds of millions more across Asia. Silber gives us the money shot from Reynold’s latest war porn: JUST WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW: North Korea fires artillery barrage on South. If they start anything, I say nuke ‘em. And not with just a few bombs. They’ve caused

  Michael Hudson has consistently been one of the best guides through the labyrinth of lies that surround the monumental act of elite thievery known as the “economic crisis.” Patiently and perceptively, he applies his economic expertise to the realities behind the blather, laying out – in grim, heart-sinking detail – how our great and good are using the crisis they created to move in remorselessly for the final kill on any dreams of a decent life for the rabble – that is, the 99 percent of us who fall outside the golden circle of the rentier class. So when Hudson

A few quick takes, as we dig out from the latest hack. Money for Old Rope This is what $70 billion a year in whiz-bang, top-shelf "intelligence" buys you: Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor. The United States of Insouciance Since his return from a self-imposed hiatus, Paul Craig Roberts has been a man on fire, penning a series of riveting, ravaging articles that speak hard truth to the imperial state — and to a society seemingly content to countenance, if not cheer, that state’s worst malefactions. Roberts has done it again with his latest piece: "Insouciant Americans."