Author Archives: Martin Sieff

The smartest guy in his West Point class

The imaginary inner world of a fool is a dangerous place, especially if he happens to be the Secretary of State of the United States of America. Continue reading

How the British Empire created and killed George Orwell

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), happily amplified by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in the United States which carries its World News, continues to pump out its regular dreck about the alleged economic chaos in Russia and the imagined miserable state of the Russian people. Continue reading

Senile, demented & incontinent: NATO at 70

“Old Age,” the great French President Charles De Gaulle famously said, “is a shipwreck.” We should certainly feel that way about the 70th birthday celebrations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—the most venerable security alliance and organization in the world. Continue reading

The world turned upside down

When a still-bewildered General Earl Charles Cornwallis surrendered his entire army to George Washington and to the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown in 1781, according to legend, a British military band heightened the humiliation by playing a ballad called, “The World Turned Upside Down.” The composer Lin Manuel Miranda later reimagined the song as a hit number in his acclaimed modern musical “Hamilton.” Continue reading

Teaching Boris Johnson three dates of destiny

1839, 1937 and 1941—These are three dates for blustering, bullying British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to learn before he sends Britain’s two new aircraft carriers to the South China Sea where the Chinese if they wanted to could sink them within minutes. Continue reading

The deeper lessons of Marco Rubio’s murder threat tweet

What should we make of Senator Marco Rubio’s astonishing Twitter message threatening President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela with the same fate of torture-murder by broken bottle inserted into the anal cavity as suffered by Muammar Gaddafi, ruler of Libya for 43 years, in 2011? Continue reading

George H.W. Bush: The man behind the mask

What a difference living long enough can make to a man’s reputation! Continue reading