Taki's Daily Blog
The night Diana died I was dining with Jeremy Menuhin, son of the great violinist, and my close friend Oliver Gilmour, a symphony orchestra conductor. This was in Gstaad, and we got into an argument over Diana’s behavior. “The mother of the future King of England cannot be seen with a coke snorting no good playboy like Dodi Fayed,” said Oliver. … [Read More]
The Greek fires which are ravaging the country may be a tragedy, but it’s a tragedy fuelled by greed. Once upon a time, Athens was the most romantic city of Europe. Laid out and built by Bavarians—the first post-independence King was Otto of Bavaria—it was a marvel of wide boulevards, sidewalk cafes, parks and neo-classical public buildings. I remember as a … [Read More]
Unlike my eldest daughter, who is a mathematician and econometrician, I have about as much training in statistics as did St. Anselm of Canterbury or Augustus Caesar. But I did check out the recorded hits for major paleoconservative and paleolibertarian websites with those who have knowledge of such matters, and so I am surprised that my figures did not always match … [Read More]
Opus the Penguin has seen his share of controversy, especially back in the 1980’s, when Berkeley Breathed’s Bloom County was a more liberal (and more intelligent, and more funny) version of Garry Trudeau’s (even then) tired Doonesbury. But this last weekend, the penguin dove in where angels fear to tread, and Breathed’s current comic-strip, Opus, found itself blacklisted by a number … [Read More]
By now the news that Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested for “lewd conduct” at the Minneapolis airport rest room—thereby carrying on a long tradition of ostensibly anti-gay, pro-"family values” Republicans caught with their pants down—is all over the place. But what, exactly, is he accused of doing, specifically? The Senator pleaded guilty to the charges, but now says that “in … [Read More]
Here’s a bagatelle, a French word denoting something unimportant, however cute. It has to do with Paul Gottfried. History has repeatedly proved that the nobility has always been better fitted for the business of ruling. Paul, mind you, is noble in his mind and behavior, which as far as I’m concerned, trumps nobility of birth. Recently he had invited me to … [Read More]
It is rather late in the day, granted, but perhaps we can learn something from the track record of the British, especially from their mistakes. The British went everywhere, it seems, for various reasons, some good some bad, and created along the way the greatest empire the world has ever seen or ever will see. The problem was, they lost all … [Read More]
The publication of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, a book-length version of the now-famous essay by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, is—naturally!—an occasion for the Lobby to go into high gear, and the intimidation tactics are already well along. Mearsheimer and Walt were invited by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs to speak before the group, but the event … [Read More]
Sixty two years on, American and European commentators continue to blather on about the unwillingness of Japanese prime ministers to apologize about World War II. The Yasukuni shrine, where Japan’s 2.5 million dead soldiers are buried, has the same effect on our all-knowing ones as a man sucking a lemon in the front row of a concert has on a flutist … [Read More]
What are we to make of Hugo Chavez’s decree that the clocks of Venezeula shall all be set forward by half an hour—in order to increase the “metabolism and productivity” of workers? My question is: why only half an hour? If the government can regulate metabolism and productivity in this manner, when why not accelerate time by an hour or two, … [Read More]