Although Google has slapped a warning on this site, we just wanted to let you know that Empire Burlesque isn’t poisonous. We’ve just been hit, once again, by malicious and relentless hackers, who infected the site and eventually took it down. But webmaster extraordinaire Rich Kastelein is on the case. As you can see, he’s got the site back up and running, and is working on getting us off Google’s blacklist. This is probably a good time to remind readers that should the site go down for several days due to hacking — as it has done in the past;

  Here’s what they are saying about America’s Terror Warriors in the UK’s arch-conservative Daily Telegraph: Since the beginning of September alone, President Obama has authorised at least 25 targeted killings. The total since he came to office is more than 100. These have certainly killed some of the senior operatives of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They have also killed dozens of people, including a large number of women and children, who were not involved in terrorism.   And yet there has been very little protest, certainly compared to the storm of international criticism that greeted the decision to hold

Our guest blogger today is Mr. Herman Melville. "… And, doubtless, going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this: Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States. WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL. BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.” Moby Dick, 1851

"On the backroom table, by the backroom couch…. " Some oldish wine in a new video wineskin, from the album Wheel of Heaven, here featuring the poignant playing of Mr. Nick Kulukundis. This one goes out to our old compadre Ken Jackson, who once paid the song the high compliment of calling it "chicken skin music."    For more illustrated song-sketching, go down to the parish, take a vow, have some bread and a bitter laugh, then ride it on down the line.   

(UPDATED BELOW) All across Europe,  thousands of people have been taking to the streets in angry protests against the “austerity measures” being imposed upon them by their governments. A general strike in Spain. Mass protests in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, France, Lithuania, Belgium and several other nations. Legislators in Iceland had to literally run and hide from their own citizens at the opening of the nation’s parliament this week. Why, ask the outraged crowds, should our lives be degraded in order to pay for the crimes and follies of the financial elite –- who are richer, more powerful and more arrogant

While Barack Obama busies himself in public with hectoring his "base" for not appreciating the super-progressive wonderfulness of his administration, behind the scenes he is rapidly escalating America’s war on its own ally, Pakistan, with a series of deadly incursions that seemed designed to provoke the Pakistanis into a violent response — which could then be used to "justify" a further escalation. The new "surge" against Pakistan is not limited to attacks on "militants" (the description now given to any Pakistani — man, woman or child — who is killed by American ordnance) but is also being waged against the

  Los Angeles is boiling in record-breaking heat, putting the lives and health of many people there at risk. One of these is Arthur Silber, whose chronic poor health is severely affected by the heat, as he explains in his most recent post. Silber is an extraordinary  writer and powerful analyst, and his blog is his only source of income. When his health prevents him from writing, contributions naturally drop off. But as he notes, he is still here, and will be writing again as soon as he can, and he still needs support to meet basic needs. (Yes, you

I’m sure that if I had met Paul Craig Roberts 25 years ago — or indeed, had even known of his existence — I would have felt strongly antagonistic toward this Reagan Administration apparatchik and all that he stood for. And for all I know, if I met him today, I still might find that we were at loggerheads on some issues, maybe many issues. But I must say there are few people out there today speaking truth about power with the unblinking, unvarnished ferocity of Roberts. (And as I’ve noted here before, it is speaking truth about power —

  Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com continues his lonely vigil of documenting the carnage being inflicted upon civilians in Pakistan by the increasingly frenzied drone missile attacks ordered by the Peace Laureate in the White House. Almost every day, Ditz has fresh hell to offer up on the story of this remarkably brazen campaign of outright war crimes. Most of his pieces draw on foreign sources; there is almost nothing in the American press about this literally inhuman invasion of the sovereign territory of a nation allied to the United States. It is truly a bizarre situation; then again, in a

  I. The political-media-blogospherical establishment is currently working itself into a lather over the elevation of a "nutty" Tea Party woman to the Republican nomination for a Senate seat in Delaware. The selection of Christine O’Donnell by a tiny sliver of voters in a closed primary in a tiny state whose main claim to fame is its decades of whorish service as a protective front for rapacious corporations is, we are told, an event of world-shaking proportions fit for endless analysis and scary headlines all over the world. It’s true that O’Donnell has taken the politically risky step of denouncing