Category Archives: Situation Report

By way of further preview to my personal “50 Most Influential Rabbis” (i.e. people who taught me something about being Jewish in the world), following Sunday’s salute to Primo Levi, it is timely to introduce Amira Hass, if only because … Continue reading →

I’ve been slowly at work, for weeks now, on a project spawned by Newsweek’s decision idiotic to publicize a rather silly list of America’s 50 most influential rabbis according to a couple of corporate executive types. (Sorry, Gary, but it’s … Continue reading →

The Iran-Britain standoff looks to be over with Iran’s announcement that it will send the 15 captive Britons home. And it’s not surprising that Tehran is claiming victory: It has used the incident to sound a warning to the U.S. … Continue reading →

Not now, Condi, we’re busy I’ve marveled for some time now at the abundance of unmistakable evidence to the contrary, so much of the mainstream media in the U.S. appears to feel dutybound to parrot Condi Rice’s giddy fantasies about … Continue reading →

Update: I wrote the following in a piece earlier today on TIME.com: But the outcome of the standoff may well depend on the strategic calculations of the Iranian leadership. Seizing the British troops a day before the U.N. Security Council … Continue reading →

Kudos to David Rieff for making clear that all the retrospective posturing on Iraq by the Democrat frontrunners is meaningless — safe, even — and is made nonsense of by the fact that all of them hold positions on Iran … Continue reading →

The Fatah-Hamas deal brokered by the Saudis signaled the limits on U.S. influence in the region In my latest on TIME.com , I argue that the Baghdad talks involving the U.S., Iran, Syria and other Iraq neighbors are a further … Continue reading →

Dr. Khumalo In case you’re wondering why I’ve gone a little quiet on the big themes, it’s because I’m home, in Cape Town, for a couple of weeks. And the most charming thing I’ve seen in the 24 hours I’ve … Continue reading →

The U.S. media with very few exceptions enabled the catastrophic war in Iraq by its failure to challenge the core assumptions on which the march to war was based — assumptions which were patently false — patently, that is, for … Continue reading →