Great. That’s all we need. There is a cholera epidemic in Iraq caused by the “decrepit water supply system”. The outbreak started in northern Iraq, aka Kurdistan, the peaceful portion of the former nation-state of Iraq, now rendered a bloodbath thanks to “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. The outbreak has spread to Baghdad, where all hell happens without warning on a daily basis. You break it, you own it. Washington is the occupying power. The government in Baghdad is a client, installed under a U.S. military occupation, ongoing and “enduring”. By invading the county, Washington has made itself responsible for the security and … 
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On a bookshelf in my office sits a copy of the third printing of Joseph Sobran’s wildly popular 1983 book Single Issues: Essays on the Crucial Social Questions. I have another copy, a first edition, at home. Both bear the same Introduction by J.P. McFadden, the founder and first editor of Human Life Review. Sobran dedicated the book “To J.P. McFadden . . . with affection.” Both the Introduction and the dedication are especially appropriate, since the book is composed of 15 essays, all of which first appeared in Human Life Review. Each essay in the collection is a sparkling gem, … 
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One tends to do a lot of reading on board a boat while sailing far from the madding yobs.  Mostly books, thank God, as newspapers are hard to find until they’re ready to wrap fish. The Spectator, of course, is sent wherever I am by my nice personal assistant who buys it first thing Thursday morning and has it delivered by special messenger to the nearest marina. When times are good it comes even faster, with sweet young London things doing the delivering. Last week I read David Gilmour’s review of The Force of Destiny, by Christopher Duggan, and a very … 
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A few days ago I was diverted from working on my computer by an exchange on FOX between Bill O’Reilly and someone described as his “ombudswoman.” The lady in question pointed out to O’Reilly that he had been rude to Ron Paul, who had been on his show, and that he kept interrupting his dignified guest with a scowl. O’Reilly responded that “that’s the kind of thing you hear from Ron Paul fanatics,” who apparently are not to be taken seriously. Needless to say, Ron Paul and his admirers do not rate the adulation that O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and the other … 
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The Baker-Hamilton Report has come and gone. The Petraeus Report has come and gone. Nothing has changed. There is no exit. More to the point, there is no plan for an exit. Give credit to Cheney and Bush. They do what they please, and get away with it. They are blinkered and we are bamboozled. The White House is staying the course, muddling through, like jingo John Bull during the Boer War. Senator Chuck Hagel summarized the Cheney-Bush Iraq policy a few days ago on television: “...it’s dishonest, it’s hypocritical, it’s dangerous and irresponsible…. This war policy, where we are today, … 
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As the Bush administration comes corkscrewing back to earth, like one of the early V-2 test shots that nearly obliterated its own launch team, the trickle of self-justifying memoirs from the perpetrators is widening into a flood. For sheer three-hanky mawkishness, nothing will probably be able to match the forthcoming cri de coeur of that noble martyr, Colin Powell. And Douglas Feith’s impending auto-hagiography will doubtless win the championship for impudent effrontery. But until then, we can satisfy ourselves with Alan Greenspan’s The Age of Turbulence, now on sale at your local bookstore.   Spendthrifts and Hypocrites   The media takeaway … 
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Um, one hardly knows how to respond to Scott’s blog, which touts me—in the spirit of jest, one hopes—as one of the Premier Attractions of the upcoming meeting of the John Randolph Club, in Washington, D.C. There will be many more learned and interesting speakers and special guests, not least among them Tom Fleming, editor of Chronicles magazine, among the most educated men I know. In any case, Scott is too kind. I should say, though, that traveling and blogging don’t always mesh: in spite of wireless technology, it’s difficult—for me, at any rate—to write “on the road,” so to speak. … 
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Come one, come all!  Readers of Taki’s Top Drawer have a rare opportunity to meet the great man in the flesh this Friday and Saturday (September 21-22), at the 18th Annual Meeting of the John Randolph Club in Washington, D.C.  Sponsored by The Rockford Institute, the publisher of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, the JRC was first established as a discussion club for the two wings of the paleo movement—paleoconservatives and paleolibertarians.  The death of cofounder Murray Rothbard (the other cofounder was Thomas Fleming, editor of Chronicles and president of The Rockford Institute) led to the departure of the paleolibertarians, … 
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When H. G. Wells wrote his fantastic tale about a scientist who breeds human-animal hybrids with sadistic intent—created to destroy one another, plus any humans unfortunate enough to wash up on The Island of Dr. Moreau—that utopian socialist probably didn’t envision his own country becoming another island of lost souls.   Morally speaking, however, modern-day Britain increasingly resembles the futuristic dystopia Wells depicted in The Time Machine: a post-historic world where mutant cannibals, the Morlocks, sustain themselves upon the helpless descendants of modern men, the Eloi.   A harsh analogy? Just consider this breaking news: Britain’s own Moreaus have been given … 
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Uh oh, it looks like the neocons have settled on a presidential candidate, and it is (you guessed it) ... “They are officially known as Rudy Giuliani’s senior foreign policy advisory board, but they also could be dubbed something else: Neocons For Rudy.” That’s David Saltonstall, writing in the New York Daily News, a paper that covers a town where neocons have been known to hang out, especially in that elephant’s graveyard of former Trotskyists-turned-Likudniks known as the Upper West Side. We are further informed that a number of top neocons are “advising” Rudy, chief among them Norman Podhoretz, of whom … 
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