Author: Eric Margolis

NEW YORK –  It’s been a treat watching the arrogant, Masters of the Universe Republicans wring their hands and ululate over the terror that is Donald Trump. Most of my serious Republican friends don’t know what to do:  they yearn to be close to power, but fear backing Trump will make them pariahs at their local golf club. So they are still hiding in the closet. ‘I am Shiva, destroyer of worlds!’ That’s Trump’s message to America’s oligarchs. And scared they should be because of even a modest Trump revolution would threaten their corrupt, stultified political system and their wallets. … Continue reading →

The post Trump Terror appeared first on LewRockwell.

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Syrian forces had surprised Israel and were fast approaching the edge of the steep Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 war. It seemed as if Syrian armor and infantry would retake Golan, then pour down into Israeli Galilee. Soviet recon satellites observed Israel moving its nuclear-armed, 500km-range Jericho missiles out of protective caves and onto their launch pads. At the same time, Israel was seen loading nuclear bombs on their US-supplied F-4 fighter-bombers at Tel Nof airbase. Believing Israel was about to use nuclear weapons against Syria and Egypt, Moscow put huge pressure … Continue reading →

The post Remember the Golan Heights? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Poor President Barack Obama flew to Saudi Arabia this past week but its ruler, King Salman, was too busy to greet him at Riyadh’s airport. This snub was seen across the Arab world as a huge insult and violation of traditional desert hospitality. Obama should have refused to deplane and flown home. Alas, he did not.  Obama went to kow-tow to the new Saudi monarch and his hot-headed son, Crown Prince Muhammed bin Nayef. They are furious that Obama has refused to attack Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Syria’s Assad regime. They are also angry as hornets that the US … Continue reading →

The post The Saudis Humiliate Obama appeared first on LewRockwell.

The great, long-awaited counterattack against ISIS has finally begun. The offensive that spans Syria and western Iraq is targeting the ISIS-held cities of Raqqa and Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. For a variety of reasons, the much ballyhooed “final offensive” against ISIS is moving with all the speed of a medieval army of drunken foot soldiers and all the audacity of a lady’s garden party. As a former soldier and war correspondent, I find the spectacle both pathetic and weird.  Back in my army days, our tough sergeants used to call such behavior “lilly-dipping.” There’s no risk that this pathetic campaign … Continue reading →

The post It Stinks to High Heaven appeared first on LewRockwell.

Should Japan and South Korea be permitted to develop nuclear weapons?  That was the very good question posed last week by candidate Donald Trump. Washington’s elite and neocon war party threw up their hands in horror at Trump’s heretical question. The media, heavily influenced by neocons who hate Trump’s call for even-handed US policy in the Mideast, scorned his nuclear proposal or simply ignored it. Too bad that Trump’s proposal was drowned in a sea of media noise. His idea has merit. This writer, long specialized in North Asian security affairs, has been advocating for a decade that Japan and … Continue reading →

The post Should Japan and South Korea Go Nuclear? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Long ago in Havana,  my mother and father would take me to the  famed “Floridita” bar to join a burly, white-bearded man and drink daiquiris. He gave me his book, A Farewell to Arms, autographed to “Eric, from his friend Ernest Hemingway. Havana, 1953” Those were the old days in Cuba, even before Fidel Castro. That’s how far back I go on this lovely island on the Spanish Main. I’ve twice been in battle in the west African state of Angola against Cuban troops that had been sent by Fidel Castro to fight white South African forces. After visiting Cuba … Continue reading →

The post Finally, Decent Treatment for Cuba appeared first on LewRockwell.

Palm Beach, Florida – Having an interesting dinner at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and residence – which may become the southern White House if fed-up American voters have their way. One feels an air of whispered importance and gravitas here. After Trump’s smashing primary victories this past week, there’s a growing sense that the Donald is headed for victory while his legions of bitter opponents are left wringing their hands. In fact, Trump is fast emerging as an American version of the People’s Tribunes of ancient Rome, the important state officials who voiced the people’s anger and concerns. As the … Continue reading →

The post Trump Is the Worst Candidate Running appeared first on LewRockwell.

Happiness is having your very own atomic bomb. This week we saw pictures of beaming North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, examining either a nuclear model or maybe even the real warhead of a miniaturized nuclear weapon. Having a nuclear warhead is not, however, enough to scare your enemies and neighbors. You’ve got to have a fast, reliable delivery system. On his last birthday, a joyous Kim revealed what may be a submarine-launched missile believed capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. Added to Kim’s new intercontinental ballistic missile (which may or may not work), the sub-launched strategic missile gave the South … Continue reading →

The post North Korean Revisionism appeared first on LewRockwell.

I went to Libya in 1987 to interview its strongman, Muammar Gaddafi. We spent an evening talking in his colorful Bedouin tent outside the Bab al-Azizya Barracks in Tripoli which had been bombed a year earlier by the US in an attempt to kill the troublesome Libyan leader. Gaddafi predicted to me that if he were overthrown, Libya would break up into two or three parts and again fall prey to western domination. His efforts to bring the Arab world and West Africa out of subservience and backwardness would be ended, he foretold. The Libyan “leader” was right. Today, after … Continue reading →

The post Bloody Hillary appeared first on LewRockwell.

VERDUN – One hundred years ago this week, German artillery launched a mighty barrage of one million shells at French defenses on the wooded hills and deep ravines above the ancient fortress city of Verdun.  The thunderous explosions of the “trummelfeuer” were heard 160 km away. By the second year of World War I, static trench warfare extended along the Western Front from the Belgian coast to Switzerland – a bloody modern version of medieval siege warfare.  Neither the German Empire nor the Allies could impose a decisive victory.  Suicidal frontal attacks against machine guns and field artillery slaughtered hundreds … Continue reading →

The post The Hell Called WWI appeared first on LewRockwell.

“The evil that men do lives after them,” wrote Shakespeare. A prime example, former US President George W. Bush who appeared last week campaigning in South Carolina for his amiable younger brother, Jeb. George W. continues to haunt the Republican Party and damage its electoral chances. At home, Bush has been staying out of public gaze; abroad, he is widely hated and limits overseas travel due to fear of war crimes arrest for his 2003 invasions of Iraq. Republican spin doctors and the rightwing US media has been trying to soft soap Bush and his mentor, Dick Cheney, for years … Continue reading →

The post W Is No Cowboy Saint appeared first on LewRockwell.

“When I’ve finished occupying the Soviet Union,” quipped a relaxed Adolf Hitler at dinner one night in 1941, “I’ll put that man Stalin back in charge. He’s the only person who knows how to deal with Russians.” Stalin was the biggest murderer of modern history – and maybe in of all mankind’s past. His number of victims was only rivaled by Genghis Khan and, in our era, Mao Zedong. Which bring me to the current observations of the 71st anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp Auschwitz. Our media is full of stories about the persecution and mass killings … Continue reading →

The post Stalin Killed Far More People Than Hitler appeared first on LewRockwell.

Did Russia’s president Vladimir Putin approve the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko? The renegade Russian FSB agent died an agonizing death after being poisoned in late 2006 with the deadly radioactive isotope, Polonium 210. So charged an official British inquiry chaired by Sir Robert Owen after years of investigation. Owen also accused former FSB chief Nikolai Patrushev and two former FSB agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dimitri Kovtun. As the first western journalists to be invited to interview KGB’s then chiefs at their Lubyanka headquarters in Moscow, I’ve naturally been closely following the Litvinenko case since it began. Here are … Continue reading →

The post Who Murdered the Russian Spy Litvinenko? appeared first on LewRockwell.

A new low in the presidential primary debates was reached last week when candidate Ted Cruz charged that Donald Trump represents “New York values.” This was almost as a bad as when presidential candidate John Kerry was accused of looking “too French.” New York values, claimed Cruz, are socially liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, and a focus on money and media. What Americans outside of New York in the heartland really heard was: “you are from Sodom and Gomorrah, a cesspool of perversion and depravity, where oligarchs and money changers rule the temple and the Antichrist lives in a Park Avenue … Continue reading →

The post New York Values appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Let’s begin 2016…with the thrilling explosion of our first hydrogen bomb, so that the whole world will look up to our socialist, nuclear-armed republic and the great Workers’ Party of Korea!” Kim Jong-un North Koreans may be happy, but the rest of the world certainly is not. Predictably, the US, Japan, China, Australia and South Korea seethed with fury at the explosive North Koreans. China scowled and muttered. This hypocrisy and hysteria made world equity markets, already reeling from new Chinese financial blundering, crazy as uninformed investors ran for the lifeboats. The UN shook its tiny fist at North Korea, … Continue reading →

The post Ka-Boom appeared first on LewRockwell.