Author: Eric Margolis

The huge military parade held in Beijing this week was billed as a commemoration of China’s role in World War II.  Over 15 million Chinese died in its eight-year resistance to Japanese invasion. China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, dressed in a finely tailored Mao suit, stood atop the Forbidden City’s Gate of Heavenly Peace to observe 12,000 troops and a legion of armored vehicles, missile carriers, and warplanes. Interestingly, Xi underlined that China’s political development is based on Marxist-Leninist theory and the thinking of Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping. China rightly observed that the West has long ignored, its important … Continue reading →

My father, a New York financier, used to call dubious stocks or bonds,  “Chinese paper.”   Last week, we saw a blizzard of  Chinese paper, both in China and around the world. As manager of a sizeable investment portfolio (an unwelcome second job from my main work, journalism),  I watched last week’s near death experience on world markets with a mixture of cynicism and alarm. First of all, remember when Americans – and particularly Republicans – demonized Mao’s China and endlessly warned about the perils of Communism?  Well, the Chinese seemed to have listened.  China ditched Communism and embraced runaway capitalism … Continue reading →

The deaths in Southeast Asia of three of the West’s ‘Great Satans’ were announced in recent weeks: Mullah Omar and Jalaluddin Haqqani in Afghanistan; and Pakistan’s Lt. Gen.  Hamid Gul. I never met Mullah Omar though I was present at the birth and expansion of his movement, Taliban. Mullah Omar was a renowned combat veteran of the 1980’s great jihad against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.  In 1989,   the Soviets wisely withdrew. Afghanistan was convulsed by civil war between the eleven mujahidin factions, many of whom were supported by CIA through Pakistani intelligence. The ethnic Pashtun region of southern Afghanistan … Continue reading →

Gov. Jeb Bush repeated one of the biggest falsehoods of our time during the recent presidential candidate debate: “we were misled (into the Iraq War)  by faulty intelligence.” US intelligence was not “misled.”  It was ordered by the real, de facto  president, Dick Cheney, to provide excuses for a war of aggression against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. PM Tony Blair, forced British intelligence services to “sex up”  reports that Iraq had nuclear weapons; he purged the government and the venerable broadcaster BBC of journalists who failed to amplify Blair’s lies.  Bush and Blair reportedly discussed painting a US Air Force plane in … Continue reading →

All war is a crime. There is no such thing as a “good war.” As the great Benjamin Franklin said, “there is no good war; and no bad peace.” We are now in the midst of the annual debate over the atomic bombing of Japan by the United States. Seventy years ago this week, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, killing or injuring some 140,000 people. A few days later, a second atomic weapon was dropped on Nagasaki,  causing 80,000 casualties. Most of the dead in both cities were civilians. Passionate debate has raged ever since between those … Continue reading →

There’s been so much dramatic news these days – from Greece’s miseries to Iran, China from blowhard Donald Trump – that the shocking story of how America’s National Security Agency has been spying on German and French leadership has gone almost unnoticed. Last year, it was revealed that the NSA had intercepted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone. She is supposed to be one of Washington’s most important allies and the key power in Europe. There was quiet outrage in always subservient Germany, but no serious punitive action. Brazil’s president, Dilma Rousseff, was also bugged by American intelligence. Her predecessor, Luiz … Continue reading →

Barack Obama is the first American president to stand up to the Israel lobby since Dwight Eisenhower ordered Israel to withdraw from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula in 1956-57. Freed of re-election concerns and the need for vast amounts of cash, President Obama finally made the decision to put America’s strategic interests ahead of those of Israel by making peace with Iran. This was a huge accomplishment: the United States has waged economic and political warfare against the Islamic Republic since its creation in 1979. Iran now looks likely to join Cuba in getting paroled from prison. Both refused to bow to … Continue reading →

“The Turks have passed by here; all is in ruins and mourning. “ So wrote France’s great writer, Victor Hugo,  of the horrors he had witnessed during the Balkan liberation wars of the 1880’s. If Hugo were alive today, he might well have used the same haunting lines to describe the smoking wreckage of the Mideast. Except this time it was the  United States, France and Britain who  wrought havoc in the Arab world, assisted by modern Turkey. The UN’s refugee czar, Antonio Guterres, just asserted that there are now 4,013,000 Syrian refugees outside their homeland, and another 7.6 million … Continue reading →

PARIS – As the squalid drama of Greece’s bankruptcy unfolds, many alarmists claim the European Union is about to disintegrate. British and Americans are cheering the ills of the EU.  On top of all this, it’s a blazing 39.8 C here in the City of Light. In spite of all the bad news from Greece,  we must not lose sight of the miracle on the Rhine. Having covered 14 conflicts and observed the world’s problems and woes for decades,  I never forget that the greatest miracle I have ever seen was the profound reconciliation between historic foes France and Germany.  … Continue reading →

PARIS – Mon dieu!  France is in the gravest  peril. France has always been the mother of gastronomy with a noble tradition stretching back to the Middle Ages.  The names of great chefs like Escoffier, Careme and Prunier  are shining stars in the firmament of grand cuisine. These luminaries  must be turning in their graves as France forgets its noble gastronomic traditions and plunges into industrialized food preparation worthy of airline swill. My father, Henry Margolis, was part owner of New York City’s renowned Café Chambord, which was America’s leading French restaurant in the 1940’s and 1950’s.  I used to … Continue reading →

This week, North Korea’s dynastic leader, Kim Jong-un, was beaming from ear to ear as a Pukgeukseong-1 missile shot out of the water, apparently launched by a new “Sinpo” class strategic submarine. For Kim, Christmas arrived early. The United States and South Korea publicly sneered at the missiles launch calling it a fake, a dummy,  trick photography or a re-tread old Soviet SSN-6  missile. Washington has always underestimated North Korea ever since the Korean War of the 1950’s.   South Korean intelligence has an entire department that routinely spreads phony stories about the North, like the canard that Kim had his … Continue reading →

METZ,  FRANCE –  The dramatic seaborne rescue of 328,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk in June, 1940 is well known. But the tragic effort of almost 300,000 French troops to  break out of encirclement in eastern France  along the Maginot Line is almost totally unknown. On 10 May, 1940, Germany unleashed a new form of mobile warfare known as “blitzkrieg” against the combined armies of France, Britain, Holland and Belgium.  At the time, France had Europe’s most powerful, battle-hardened army with more tanks, artillery and warplanes than Germany possessed. France and her British allies were prepared to re-fight the same static battles … Continue reading →

As tensions in the South China Sea between the US and China continue to rise, the US Navy and Air Force are quietly gearing up to fight a war in the disputed region. If necessary, that is.  Both sides say they don’t want any military confrontation on China’s extensive coastal waters, but both are acting as if a military conflict is increasingly likely. Optimists say that a peaceful resolution of China’s rise as a great power is achievable.  The economies of the two powers are so enmeshed that a war sounds unthinkable. Such is the thesis of an important new … Continue reading →

It was churlish for western leaders to boycott this week’s Victory Parade in Moscow that commemorated the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany 70 years ago. Historic events are facts that should not be manipulated according to the latest political fashions. Being angry at Moscow for mucking about in Ukraine does not in any way lessen the glory, admiration and thanks owed to the Russian people for their heroism during World War II. Americans and Canadians like to believe they won the war in Europe and give insufficient recognition to the decisive Soviet role. Most Europeans would rather not think … Continue reading →

It’s good and right that we commemorate the mass killing in the Ottoman Empire during World War I of between 500,000 and 1.5 million Armenians. Many nations now call the slaughter of 1915-1916 a “genocide.” This week the 100th anniversary of the notorious event was observed. Pope Francis and the European parliament called on Turkey to recognize the killings as genocide. Turkey, successor to the Ottoman Empire, admits many Armenians were killed in WWI, but rejects the label of “genocide,” saying their deaths occurred in the confusion of war, not by design. The United States, a very close ally of … Continue reading →