RSSArchive for October, 2007
Give Fareed Zakaria a Medal!
Fareed Zakaria deserves a medal for breaking with the mainstream media pack to slap down, with the requisite rudeness, the hysteria over Iran being manufactured by the neocons, opportunist Israeli politicians and the Bush Administration. Perhaps stung by having participated in a secret Bush Administration policy discussion to help shape the Iraq war policy [...]
Jewish Glasnost Update: Zionist Panic!
Is Israel’s top liberal daily a fifth column?
Apropos my earlier piece arguing that the ferocious backlash by the Zionist right against Jewish critics of Israel — also targeting as ‘anti-semitic’ those like Archbishop Desomand Tutu who seek to judge Israel by universal moral standards — is a sign of panic over losing their claim [...]
Dual Power in Tehran?
The resignation of Ali Larijani as Iran’s top nuclear negotiator — and his replacement as such by Ahmadinejad acolyate Saeed Jalili, who was 14 years old when the Shah fell in 1979, has limited experience and is reportedly prone to communicate via turgid lectures rather than discussion — has been widely interpreted as a victory [...]
Bob Dylan and Ayatollah Khamenei
In Bob Dylan’s 1963 song “Talking World War III Blues,” he dreams of being the last person alive after a nuclear apocalypse, then discovers that his shrink has been having the same dream, and so has most everyone else. Dylan concludes with a solution: “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be [...]
Rice-Olmert-Abbas: End of the Affair
A few months ago I noted that the Bush Administration’s claims to be pursuing a Middle East peace process was equivalent to The Emperor’s New Clothes fairy tale except for one important detail: “In the fairy tale, the emperor’s courtiers are careful never to let on that they can see their monarch’s nakedness; [...]
Can Al Gore’s Vision Avert a Climate-Change Catastrophe?
The Nobel Peace Prize award to Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change left me a little uncomfortable. I have no problem with the IPCC, obviously, but singling out Gore seemed a little too Hollywood to me. I may well be naive, but I have a hard time buying the idea of Al [...]
Iran, the Inflatable Bogey
I’m delighted and honored to welcome Dr. Trita Parsi as a guest columnist at Rootless Cosmopolitan. Following the escalating tension between Iran and the West over the past two years, I’ve found Trita to be a singular voice of sanity in the proverbial world gone mad. As both a scholar and as president of [...]
My Favorite ‘Anti-Semite’
The utterly charming thing about the Zionist Thought Police is their apparent inability to restrain themselves, even from the very excesses that will prove to be their own undoing. Having asked sane and rational people to believe that Jimmy Carter is a Holocaust denier simply for pointing out the obvious about the apartheid regime [...]
Israelis Fighting Israeli Apartheid
I’ve never imagined a simple equation between the non-racial democracy for which we fought (and which we won) in South Africa and achieving a unitary state democratic solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Indeed, I’ll admit to being anything but dogmatic on just how that conflict is to be solved. While in principle, I’d certainly [...]
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Glancing Headers
World Cup 2010
For a variety of reasons, I ended up watching the World Cup Final on a TV tied to a tree at the soccer fields in the Red Hook section of BrooklynRebellion Into Money
How Slovenia Wins the World CupGuest 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.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 AfghanistanCould 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
