Contributors to The Brooklyn Rail

  1. Michael Busch(4)
  2. Andrew Bast(1)

  1. Just Another City on a Hill

    by Andrew Bast

    Late last year, as my wife’s pregnant belly grew, I knew, surely, my kid would be unique. She would be born with an inherent sense of style and learn quickly how to conduct herself. We had just moved to Park Slope, and if Alexandra Delila (as she’d be called) wanted to be the principal violinist of the New York Philharmonic or an Olympic gymnast, let’s get to it, because the sky’s the limit! Unlike every other child to ever have been born to any other set of parents throughout history, there would be nothing normal about Alexandra.


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  2. Something Is Happening There

    by Michael Busch

    In Venezuela, the revolution is televised. Each Sunday, Hugo Chavez treats his country to a one-man variety show—Alo Presidente!—that would make Ed Sullivan blush. He sings, dances, grills subordinates, belittles the opposition, tells jokes, interviews distinguished guests, and delivers history lectures, all the while advertising his self-styled Bolivarian Revolution.


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  3. Three Trillion and Counting

    by Michael Busch

    As the boondoggle in Baghdad grinds into another year of disaster, Americans have lost interest in exploring the vast warehouses of Bush administration deceit. With economic meltdown looming on the horizon and Democratic self-destruction playing out in prime time, the criminally incompetent White House has been largely relegated to the quickly closing book on Bush presidency politics.


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  4. Seizing the Means of Production

    by Michael Busch

    While much of the world’s attention in late 2001 was focused on the nascent War on Terror unfolding in Afghanistan, the Southern Cone of South America witnessed the financial disintegration of a regional juggernaut. If September 11 inaugurated a cycle of corporate opportunism and unmitigated greed in the name of fighting terror, it also marked the close of a similar cycle carried out in the name of “development” in Argentina.


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  5. A Real Man of War

    by Michael Busch

    Given the degree to which Iraq and Afghanistan have disintegrated into little more than venues for stomach-turning violence, corporate plunder, and doomed efforts at state-building, it’s surprising to find someone outside the West Wing still clinging to the false promise of American Empire. And yet here he stands: Robert Kaplan, beltway darling and correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, arguing in his new book for a greater application of American military involvement overseas.


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