Mole hunt! Mole hunt! That’s the cry over at the CIA, and it’s exciting! See, here’s the deal. Back in the day, it seems that the Chinese were picking off our “key informants” (aka, “spies”), and no one knew how or why. Thanks, however, to bungled “tradecraft” on the part of the Chinese, the good…
Tag: China
Dirty Chinese try to prevent the U.S. from spying on them
Jerry Chun Shing Lee, a former case officer with the CIA, pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide intelligence information to the Chinese government. He did not admit to actually providing information. You can read about the case in this story from the New York Times by Julien E. Barnes. According to Barnes, Lee’s case “highlighted…
Shorter Trump “Doctrine”: Ain’t nobody here but us Caucasians
Fareed Zakaria, attempting to suss out a Trump foreign policy “doctrine” other than the obvious “Don’t Fuck with US”, comes up with a reality as predictable as it is unappetizing—it’s all about the racism. Fareed sees no point in attempting to dissect the “thought” of President Trump himself, aka “Mr. Malaprop”, passing him up in…
The dollar still sound as a dollar, studies show
If you search on the Internet for “Why the dollar will never collapse” or, conversely, “Why the dollar will collapse”, well, you’ll get a lot of hits. What you won’t find, unfortunately, is a piece I read in Bloomberg several weeks ago explaining, well, why the almighty dollar remains so goddamned almighty, and which I…
Who’s dumber, Trump or the “Intelligence Community”?
I won’t keep you in suspense. IT’S TRUMP! The bad news—or, I guess, the worse news—is, it’s a close contest. And the worst news—for now—is that it’s not just funny dumb but, all too likely, disastrous dumb. Because the real objective for both sides—though they’re choosing different routes—is a new Cold War, with ever-tightening tensions,…
We now interrupt this regularly scheduled bad news to bring you much much worse bad news
Several weeks ago—about a decade in Trump years, I would estimate1—I planned to write yet another article ridiculing our nation’s massive addiction to wasteful military spending, category “Star Wars”, springing off an article in Bloomsberg, by “the Editors” themselves, no less, “How to Blow North Korean Missiles Out of the Sky”, bemoaning the fact that,…
The Washington Post demands combat!
It’s time to get tough with Cuba! It’s time to get tough with Russia! It’s time to get tough with China! It’s time to get tough with North Korea! It’s time! It’s high time! That’s the rap over at the Washington Post editorial page, which is definitely cruisin’ for a bruisin’, and I mean a…
New Pentagon Strategy: Don’t fight real wars, prepare for imaginary ones!
As I’ve said before, if you want to know what official Washington is thinking, read Wash Post columnist David Ignatius. In his latest and greatest, David fills us in on what the Pentagon is thinking. The good news is, the Pentagon wants to stay out of the Middle East: “This generation of military leaders has…
I predicted this!
Ah, the temptations, if the not the complacencies, of the peignoir pundit! About six weeks ago, I took a punch at Fareed Zakaria for waxing too credulous over the might and power of a disciplined China, something folks as varied as Thomas Friedman and Barack Obama are wont to do. I suggested to Mr. Zakaria…
Fareed Zakaria, mixing marmalade with applesauce
In a column bearing the stentorian head “With an absent United States, China marches on”, a mildly hyperventilating Fareed Zakaria warns us that those clever Chinese folks are trying to win friends and influence people with “an avalanche of cash.” Fareed says that, according to David Shambaugh “if you add up China’s promised investments in…