by Fred Reed
Ages ago, for reasons I no longer remember, I was wandering across Asia and decided to spend some time in Taiwan. The Chinese interested me, and Taiwan was then as close as it was practical to get. Then, as now, the Chinese were thought by many to be exotic, inscrutable, devious and unlike normal people …
Oh help. As I write, the mumbling egg plant in the White House shovels money and arms into two wars, neither necessary, and he and Lockheed Martin prepare for a third, also unnecessary, over Taiwan, which is none of their business. Since in the Federal Bubble on the Potomac there is chatter at the mental …
I wonder how many Americans quite understand what the Us is facing in its aggressive confrontation with China. Washington clearly prepares the public for another unnecessary war. Given America’s routine defeat in war and catastrophic miscalculations in fighting small powers, picking a fight with what, increasingly, is again becoming the Middle Kingdom seems less than …
If you are a young man wondering what to do with your life, you may consider enlisting in the military. Don’t. Yes, the military has its appeal, or seems to. You may need a job. The uniform looks good. There can be adventure. You might get laid by Asian lovelies in foreign countries. These things …
We gringos south of the border hear considerable rumbling and grumbling from the US about things that Mexico does that set poorly in the north. Well, yes and no. There are other ways of looking at things. A few reflections. In 1965 the United States, not Mexico, changed the immigration laws, apparently to encourage immigration …
What happened was, I came to the Yankee Capital from where I growed up in East Needle, Tennessee, that’s so far back in the mountains that the sun don’t hardly shine and we don’t get too much news about what they do in the flatlands. Mostly people in East Needle just stays where they are. …
I am communing in my office with a sufficiency of Wild Turkey, the whiskey of the great Hunter Thompson. With its help I think curmudgeonly thoughts about America, which is over, done, surrounded by feeding leeches, ticks, hag fish, lampreys, and corporations. And Joe Biden. I find this deeply satisfying. Here you have to understand …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_George_Floyds In my police-reporting days Question: Was their anything racial in Floyd’s death? That is, is there any reason to believe that if Floyd had been a white petty criminal and drug addict, but otherwise identical to Floyd, would Chauvin have behaved differently? Accounts differ. By some he is said to have been …
Everybody and his dog is writing about Palestine. The dogs are probably doing it more intelligently, but I can’t change my phylum, or even species. We columnists do what we can and suffer what we must. OK, Israel. The current war is an ordinary case of colonialism. In the late Forties the Jews grabbed Palestine …
I expect my columns to be gems of lucidity and concision, such as to arouse despair in other writers. I have been expecting this for decades now. It may still happen. Meanwhile I fear today’s effort will be helterskelter, having the literary aspect of a tossed salad. I beg patience. The Earth holds some eight …