RSSArchive for May, 2006
Is Condi Rice Finally Growing Up?
Here’s to Condi…
After five years of impotent hawkish posturing has done nothing to restrain North Korea’s nuclear program, the Bush Administration is finally showing the maturity to admit defeat — by its actions, if not in as many words. It was reported this week that the Administration is planning to offer North Korea direct negotiations [...]
How Jewish is Israel?
Israel is still largely shaped by the unresolved trauma of its birth
My favorite Israeli newspaper Haaretz (the best paper in the Middle East, along with Lebanon’s Daily Star) asked me to contribute to a debate in their pages on the question of Jewish identity, sparked by the author A.B. Yehoshua’s recent ruffling of [...]
Bend it Like Mahmoud?
Ahmedinajad trains with Iran’s World Cup Squad
Having failed so far to get any traction on efforts to impose sanctions on Iran, frustration is creeping in among some of its foes as they seek new, innovative ways to punish Tehran. And with Iran due to join 31 other teams at the World Cup in Germany in [...]
U.S. and Gadhafi: Oil is Forgiven
If President Bush’s immigration speech was an attempt to divert attention from his failures in Iraq, then Condi Rice’s announcement this week that the U.S. would restore diplomatic ties with Libya — and that Iran and North Korea should take note — may have been a useful distraction of attention from the fact that in [...]
Hamba Kahle, Ace Ntsoelengoe
If you were a white boy in the suburbs of Cape Town during the heyday of apartheid in the early 1970s, you didn’t know any black people. Not only socially, but even as public figures. That was the whole idea: Apartheid laws meant your school was all white, your suburb was all white (and any [...]
Behind Ahmedinajad’s Letter
You don’t see much of this man in the Western media, but Hassan Rohani speaks for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man who actually rules Iran. Rohani is promoting a negotiating agenda quite different from Ahmedinajad’s — and he has the blessing of his boss
As we’ve been saying for a while now, President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad does [...]
Iran’s Girls of Summer
Iranian women recently cheering on their women’s national soccer team in a match against Germany
President Mahmoud Ahmindenajad may be a hardline hawk and who spends much of his time constructing political messages that challenge Iran’s ruling Mullahs from the nationalist right, but he also clearly has a populist’s touch rather than the heavy hand of [...]
Roasting Bush, Shaming the Media
Colbert: Dirty work, but somebody has to do it
The media furor over whether Comedy Central’s conservative talking head-impersonator Stephen Colbert’s sharp-elbowed humor roasting President Bush at the White House Correspondents Dinner (video link here) was funny or not seems to miss the point. And as my colleague Jim Poniewozik points out, much of it [...]
Why Jack Straw Lost his Job
Plainly, the Tony Party is in deep, deep trouble. Labour not only got thumped in local elections all over Britain, it actually finished third. Hardly surprising, really, given the shambles that Blair’s cabinet had become, with John Prescott gefuffling with his secretary, Charles Clarke inadvertantly losing a thousand convicts eligible for deportation, and so on. [...]
From Zarqawi’s Cutting Room Floor…
In the director’s cut, Zarqawi looks every inch the rambo figure as he busts loose with a heavy machine gun. The outtakes show he needed some help to fire the thing
Yuck. You don’t really want to use the “cutting room floor” metaphor in reference to a man who became a visceral presence in America’s collective [...]
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If I Was a Blogger...
... on Lebanon/Iran democracy claims
Elliot Abrams isn't telling you the whole truth about Lebanese democracyGuest Columns
The Pathologies of Israel's Guilty Conscience
Guest Column: Eitan Bronstein The proposal to legally bar the commemoration of the Nakba on Israel's Independence Day reflects growing trepidation in Israel about the inevitable encounter with the Palestinian Nakba and the understanding that the Nakba is a foundational part of Israeli identity....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...99c Blogging
Is Israel Planning to Provoke Iran?
My, oh my, where would we be without a free press in Israel? Haaretz's Aluf Benn today not only outlines how Netanyahu is continuing to build momentum -- and public expectation -- for war with Iran, but he also offers some insights into just how the Israelis might go about positioning themselv...Featured Analysis
Why Obama Must Shackle Bibi
Without any sense of irony, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told fellow paranoiac Jeffrey Goldberg that Iran is ruled by "an apocalyptic messianic cult." Yet, as Goldberg makes clear, perhaps inadvertently, Netanyahu himself is guilty of the same: His view of Iran as simply the latest ...Unholy War
Israel's Apartheid Anxiety
Israel fears being targeted by a grassroots boycott movement of the type that was so effective in pressuring South Africa to end apartheid In a remarkable interview last November, the Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert cautioned that unless it could achieve a two-state solution quickly, Israel...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 banksA Skeptical Read
All the Hysteria That's Fit to Print, Take II
Now the New York Times wants you to take seriously the idea that the prime issue for the American voter is the danger of al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons. Oh, grow up!Could 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.Hear! Hear!
Bush's 'Peace' Effort Imperils Peace
Daniel Levy explains why the farcical negotiations between Olmert and Abbas actually undermine the prospects for Mideast peaceA Wondering Jew
Israel is 60, Zionism is Dead, What Now?
Israel at 60 is an intractable historical fact. It has one of the world's strongest armies, without peer in the Middle East, and its 200 or so nuclear warheads give it the last word in any military showdown with any of its neighbors. Palestinian militants may be able to make life in certain parts...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
