Monthly Archives: 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 … Continue reading

Posted in Situation Report | 5 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in Featured Analysis, Situation Report | 9 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in From Tony's Archive | 4 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in A Wondering Jew, Cuisine | 20 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in 99c Blogging, Featured Analysis, Situation Report | 5 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in Situation Report | 4 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in Cuisine | 8 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in A Wondering Jew | 11 Comments

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 … Continue reading

Posted in Annals of Globalization | 6 Comments

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. … Continue reading

Posted in New York Moments | 4 Comments