“Iraq isn’t a rogue state; it’s a captive nation, the world’s first prison state, kept under a level of microscopic control and surveillance that would have made Jeremy Bentham tremble with envy. All the recent chatter in the media about a forthcoming war on Iraq conveniently ignores the fact that the US and Britain have […]
From an Associated Press article: “Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters circled the White House on Saturday after Jesse Jackson and other speakers denounced the Bush administration’s Iraq policies and demanded a revolt at the ballot box to promote peace, while thousands gathered in cities across Europe and elsewhere around the world to demand an […]
“According to a recent (Sept. 21) article by David Blair in the London Telegraph, ‘The Maoist movement now wields de facto control over most of Nepal. By following the Mao Tse-tung model of guerrilla warfare—- becoming ‘fish swimming in the ocean of the people’—- the insurgents have won dominance of the Himalayas and of the […]
“Thank God, I often say, for the Israeli press. For where else will you find the sort of courageous condemnation of Israel’s cruel and brutal treatment of the Palestinians? Where else can we read that Moshe Ya’alon, Ariel Sharon’s new chief of staff, described the ‘Palestinian threat’ as ‘like a cancer–there are all sorts of […]
“U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, the populist Democrat who was known for his impassioned work on behalf of the underdog, died Friday morning when his plane crashed in frosty woods on Minnesota’s Iron Range.” Read the sad details here, and commentary here, here, here (just the Mickey Kaus post at the beginning), here, here, and… well, […]
“The response of some to the capture of the Maryland sniper, John Allen Williams, a.k.a .John Allen Muhammad, illustrates an idea that has been preoccupying me of late: the relationship (if any) between ideology and truth. Ideology of any sort inevitably distorts the mental processes, and a writer – that is, a serious writer, and […]
“Oh, the irony and symbolic fecklessness of our foreign policy! The White House was so confident, the chickenhawks were so arrogant, the warhawks were so gung-ho to go in there and prove that the U.S. of A was going to assert its global hegemony after the humbling shock of 9/11 – and it all went […]
“But the bizarre thing is this: the more people, politicians and experts question the idea that Iraq and al-Qaeda are linked, the more the Bush administration makes these claims central among its arguments for bombing Baghdad. Despite the dearth of evidence, Bush and co are going further and further down the Saddam/bin Laden route. Why?” […]
“Listen to the American hawks after a few glasses of wine, and you might be seduced into thinking that after overthrowing Saddam Hussein we’re going to turn Iraq into a flourishing democracy. But I’m afraid it’s a pipe dream, a marketing ploy to sell a war.” A great piece about the fact that the U.S. […]
“President Bush continues to encounter war critics in the unlikeliest of places — the United States military, for example. Last summer, retired Gen. Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security advisor to Bush’s father during the Gulf War, bluntly expressed his doubt about a unilateral war against Iraq. A few weeks later, a trio of […]
