"...there was an unmistakable Enron-style genius in routing charity money and Saudi profits through Israeli arms contractors to buy munitions for Nicaraguan counterrevolutionaries. John Poindexter, Oliver North, Elliot Abrams, Richard Secord, John Singlaub, Robert MacFarlane, Adnan Khashoggi, Manucher Ghorbanifar: These legendary innovators created something truly new and brilliant - an offshore, autonomous, self-financing, global, anticommunist venture-capital outfit big enough to fight a private war against a sovereign nation. Lieutenant Colonel North liked to call it Project Democracy. It ran loops around Congress the way offshore Internet porn rings dodge the US Customs Service...

"But the real success story is the Contras, or rather their modern successor: al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden's crew is a band of government-funded anticommunist counterrevolutionaries who grew up and cut the apron strings. These new-model Contras don't need state support from Washington, Moscow, or any Accessory of Evil. Like Project Democracy, they've got independent financing: oil money, charity money, arms money, and a collection plate wherever a junkie shoots up in an alley. Instead of merely ignoring and subverting governments for a higher cause, as Poindexter did, al Qaeda tries to destroy them outright. Suicide bombers blew the Chechnyan provisional puppet government sky high. Cars packed with explosives nearly leveled the Indian Parliament. We all know what happened to the Pentagon. "

Sterling's latest book Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years is highly recommended. Sterling had just finished researching the Muslim world for his novel Zeitgeist when the Bush administration rode a wave of hanging chads into office... I think he has one of the best handles of any observer on the actual political and cultural state of the world at the beginning of the 21st Century...
Comments 11:14:47 AM    

"...media outlets -- which may have anticipated a quick and decisive victory in Iraq -- now worry that viewers and readers are on the verge of information overload and need a break. Moreover, the cost of covering the war is beginning to weigh on their budgets." Weblog hits were waning too, according to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit... but he notes a recent spike... gulker.com is down about a third from March 19 - 26...
Comments 8:56:35 AM    

Chris Gulker's view from Silicon Valley - in words and pictures