RSSArchive for September, 2005
Prophylactic Spin on Iraq
Mindful of the American public’s sharply declining enthusiasm for squandering more blood and treasure on his failed Iraq enterprise, President Bush is once again adopting his administration’s preferred prophylactic strategy for spinning the slow moving disaster. Thus, his warning on Wednesday that insurgent violence will increase ahead of next month’s constitutional referendum. Just as [...]
U.S.-Iran: Here We Go Again
Tempting as it is, I shall avoid invoking my all time favorite lede in discussing the U.S. effort to get UN sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. That — my all time favorite lede — would be the observation by a certain 19th century German journalist that all the great events in history occur [...]
Abu Ghraib as America
New allegations of prisoner abuse in Iraq not only give the lie to the administration’s claims that the Abu Ghraib torture was just the work of “bad apples” like Lindie England, it also reminded me of a column I wrote back then for TIME.com about how these abuses are not at all out of [...]
What Makes Food Jewish?
Originally published in the Anglo-Japanese magazine Eat in August 2000
There’s nothing more Jewish than fish on Fridays. Or so I thought, growing up in a household that tucked into pedestrian fried hake and chips every week after blessing the meal with the Sabbath “kiddush” prayer, wine and challah bread. If we were lucky, of course, [...]
Musharraf’s Balancing Act
Mary Anne Weaver’s typically excellent (I’ve been a fan since 1999, when I read her book Egypt and militant Islam, which remains the best analysis of al-Qaeda’s history I’ve seen) chronicle of the Tora Bora debacle raises the key question in U.S.-Pakistan relations in a little aside towards the end: Is it [...]
Social Darwinism and New Orleans
I’m probably still way too angry about what we’ve seen in New Orleans over the past two weeks to be writing about it. But a piece by Timothy Garton-Ash in the Guardian, of all places, has finally forced me to say something.
Garton-Ash is a very clever chap, and he tells us that what we [...]
Catering Camp David
Only Clinton had an appetite for a deal
Published in the Tokyo-based magazine Eat in September 2000
Just what were those crafty Americans up to? The only soupcon of information tossed out to a ravenous pack of journalists after the first day of July’s failed Camp David peace summit was this: The previous evening, President Clinton, [...]
Judaism, Zionism and the Gaza Grotesquerie
Settlers cynically appropriate the Holocaust: Jews can’t claim the support of other Jews when they violate Judaism’s fundamental ethics. Expelling Jews when they occupy other people’s land seems to me to be a very Jewish idea
We’ve already discussed why Israel’s withdrawal of its Gaza settlements is unlikely to move forward any kind [...]
Whose Coke Is It, Anyway?
Published in the Cape Times, July 1998
The Mayan church at St. Juan Chamula, in Chiapas: When
Pepsi arrived here, it was simply incorporated into indigenous rituals
The revolution will not be televised, not in Afghanistan, any way. The country’s ruling Taliban militia have banned television and given Afghans two weeks to destroy all TV sets, VCRs [...]
East Village Chimurenga
Sunday August 28
St. Mark’s Place is packed solid with traffic, hardly moving, which is all the more frustrating since we’ve been driving for three hours, hungry, from upstate New York, where Gabe had been at a swords-and-sorcery day camp. The sight of familiar faces from our old East Village neighborhood leading their children clad in [...]
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Guest Columns
How I Overcame My Jewish-Evangelical Upbringing and Learned to Love Christmas, Anyway
Guest Column: Gavin Evans Back in the day, when Gavin and I were young activists trying to change the world, the doorbell rang at our Observatory student house. I opened it to see a tall and handsome man in the silky purple shirt and dog collar of an Anglican Bishop. "You must be Tony," said Bis...Featured Analysis
Does Obama Have a Mideast Plan B?
It's hardly surprising that President Barack Obama chose to schedule a White House visit by Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the dead of night on Monday, because right now Obama has little to show for his 10-month effort to revive a Middle East peace process. The Israeli leader's refu...Unholy War
Who Lost Fatah?
‘Who lost China?” was the battle cry of a witch-hunt conducted in the US State Department following the 1949 victory of Mao Zedong’s communists. The department’s “China hands”, critics charged, had been woefully ignorant of the dynamics at work on the ground in China after the Second W...A Skeptical Read
More Iran Hysteria from the NY Times
The surest sign that another neocon bill of goods is being hawked in respect of the Iran "nuclear peril" is the revival of Rumsfeld-esque "unknowable unknowns", a la Iraq WMD panic circa late 2002. In the real world, of course, solid progress is being made towards a plausible diplomatic deal to ...99c Blogging
The 'Metrics' of Obama's Vietnam
Why is the Administration conducting a "test run" for its metrics of success in Afghanistan? Because the metrics used will be those that provide the desired verdictHear! Hear!
Helena Cobban Explains FatahIf I Was a Blogger...
More Dennis Ross Dissembling
Obama's Iran point man can't seem to get his head around the reasons for Israeli emigrationA Wondering Jew
Obama, Foxman and Israel's Purpose
Having spent decades drumming home the idea that Israel is rooted squarely in the Holocaust experience, and should be viewed by the world as the state of the survivors, Israelis and some of their most fervent backers in the U.S. are suddenly insisting that this is a misleading, even hostile idea.Glancing Headers
The Shebab, the Shahids and the Champion's League Final
The Shebab gunman on the left appears to be a Gunner, i.e. an Arsenal fan... In honor of today's Champion's League final, I republish my op ed that ran in the National a year ago. What was most fascinating about the photograph of the Somali gunman who was part of the crowd dragging the body...Annals of Globalization
The Shebab, the Shahids and the Champion's League Final
The Shebab gunman on the left appears to be a Gunner, i.e. an Arsenal fan... In honor of today's Champion's League final, I republish my op ed that ran in the National a year ago. What was most fascinating about the photograph of the Somali gunman who was part of the crowd dragging the body...The Whole World's Africa
Congo's Not Africa's WWI, It's Worse Than That
If there is a European analogy to be applied in the Congo, it would be the brutal Thirty Year War in Germany that ended in 1648Shameless Cronyism
Embedded with the Jihadis
My crazy friend Nir Rosen goes on embed with the Taliban, and finds out just why the U.S. can't win in AfghanistanRebellion Into Money
Why Joe Strummer Was a Socialist
Hint: It had nothing to do with bailing out banksCould Die Laughing
Whatever Became of that Nice Mr. Blair...
The problem with a global conversation between Muslims and Christians refereed by Tony Blair? Two words: Tony Blair.The 51st State
A Teachable Moment in Basra
It should come as no surprise that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's disastrous offensive against the Mahdi Army of Moqtada Sadr in Basra has had the exact opposite effect of that intended -- strengthening rather than weakening Sadr, and making clear that he, and the Iranians, have far greater in...Futures Market
Will Russia Partition Kosovo?
Why my tea-leaf reading suggests that Moscow has a nasty surprise in store for Washington in the BalkansCuisine
Yummy yummy Umami
Why a leftover lamb bone turned a bean stew into an ecstatic eventHousekeeping
'Lost' Entries on Rootless Cosmopolitan
Previous entries that now register as "not available" are ones that got left behind in a server migration. We're working on retrieving themNew York Moments
The Debka Made ‘Em Do ItFrom Tony's Archive
A Playground Lesson for Bush
How a spontaneous alliance of jocks, do-gooders and lesser bullies against the biggest bully at the school changed the balance of power at Milnerton Primary
