Monthly Archives: December 2006

Dead at the Apollo

If I had the time, I’d build James Brown a proper online shrine, with “Night Train” welcoming you and Tom Tom Club’s exquisite JB tribute song “Pleasures of Love” bidding him farewell… (“What you gonna do when you get out … Continue reading

Posted in New York Moments, The Whole World's Africa | 10 Comments

Saddam is But a Footnote, Now

No one should cry any tears for Saddam Hussein, who will no doubt be executed within a matter of days. He was a vicious butcher who terrorized his own people, and ran a regime of fear in which arbitrary execution … Continue reading

Posted in Situation Report | 12 Comments

Israel and Apartheid: In Defense of Jimmy Carter

Nothing makes liberal American supporters of Israel more uncomfortable than the comparison between the circumstances it has imposed on the Palestinians and those that the apartheid regime imposed on black South Africans. That’s precisely why it is so important and … Continue reading

Posted in A Wondering Jew, Situation Report | 78 Comments

Cricket’s Coded Conversation

It is with unrestrained joy that I introduce my friend Balaji, a Madras-born scientist currently teaching at Princeton, who, in agreeing some months ago to write an analysis on the cultural and political subtexts of Australian umpire Darryl Hair falsely … Continue reading

Posted in Annals of Globalization, Glancing Headers, Guest Columns | 37 Comments

What Arab Holocaust-Deniers Should Learn from Mandela

Haganah fighters take aim: Survivors of the camps arriving in Israel in 1948 having been denied anywhere else to go weren’t going to see the war as anything but a matter of physical survival No, this is not another one … Continue reading

Posted in A Wondering Jew, Situation Report | 86 Comments

Gracias, Pinochet — For Proving That Your Victims Are Better Than You

Milton Friedman comes to Chile General Augusto Pinochet died, Sunday, shamed as a butcher and human rights abuser — even an international terrorist, given the CIA’s finding of his complicity in the 1976 Washington, D.C. car bombing that killed Orlando … Continue reading

Posted in Situation Report | 10 Comments

Bush, Baker and Iraq: Why the Patient Can Not Be Saved

Discussing the report of his bipartisan Iraq Study Group with the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, former Secretary of State and Bush-pere fixer James Baker must have already sensed the inevitability that nothing will come of his efforts to … Continue reading

Posted in Situation Report | 30 Comments

And Bush May Ask Himself, How Do I Work This?

In lieu of scripture, the reading today comes from Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime”: And you may ask yourself What is that beautiful house? And you may ask yourself Where does that highway go? And you may ask yourself … Continue reading

Posted in Situation Report | 11 Comments

In Nuevo Jork, Jew Doesn’t Always Mean Jew

Long live Juan Epstein, sitcom land’s archetypal Jewish Latino! “Shut up! Shut up!” The petulant and rather camp fellow with the long hair (whose tone suggested to me that he may be an off-duty drag queen) and whose superior attitude … Continue reading

Posted in A Wondering Jew, New York Moments | 10 Comments

A New U.S. Option in Iraq: Panic!

Things really are coming apart so quickly in Iraq that some blogging appears to be in order. No sooner had we noted that Washington’s Arab allies are pushing it hard to remain engaged and protect the Sunnis then the Washington … Continue reading

Posted in Situation Report | 14 Comments