The New York Times runs an op-ed today on the current tensions between the US and “Europe” by one Regis Debray. Debray is described as a “former adviser to President Francois Mitterand of France, …editor of Cahiers de Mediologie and the author of the forthcoming The God That Prevailed. Quite what his article is about is hard to say: the French intelligentsia has not lost its talent for incomprehensibility. It’s also a shame that the NYT’s description of Debray is so bland.

Could this be the same Regis Debray who was once a crony of Castro and Guevara, the same Debray whose Revolution in the Revolution? was a basic manual for those who saw social revolution as the only way to resolve the problems of the Third World, the same Debray who traveled to Bolivia to join Guevara on his fruitless crusade to impose revolution on that country and who was jailed for his pains?

Yes, it could. Pity the New York Times didn’t say so.