Month: April 2004

The kidnapping and swift release last week of seven Chinese citizens brings to light China’s relationship with Iraq. The Chinese were released to a local association of Islamic clerics within 36 hours without having been harmed, threatened or televised. A local Chinese businessman, Chen Xian Zhong, reported to domestic media that the seven were safe … Continue reading “Chinese Workers Work, American Workers Die in Iraq”

The US Government’s 2003 invasion of Iraq spawned one of the most vocal, productive, and visible military protest movements in history, and inspired peace-minded artists the world over to create powerful images expressing and communicating their outrage. The new book Peace Signs: The Anti-War Movement Illustrated, from Swiss publisher Edition Olms and American distributor Trafalgar … Continue reading “Documenting the Creative Side of Peace”

The press had lots of fun with the recent robot debacle in the Mojave Desert. Competing for $1 million in prize money, 15 vehicles headed off on a 142-mile course through some of the most forbidding terrain in the country. None managed to navigate even eight miles. The robots hit fences, caught fire, rolled over, … Continue reading “Rise of the Machines”

I keep trying not to take it personally, the fact that this president annoys me more and more every time I see him in public. There’s the slow explanation part, over-pronouncing words, as if addressing a rather slow-witted fourth-grader, when he thinks he’s explaining what seems to me what he actually views as a complex … Continue reading “Bush in Deep Denial?”

George W. Bush wants to “change the world”: he said so a few dozen times the other night in his Q&A with reporters. That was his ultimate answer to everything. When confronted at his recent press conference with the embarrassing paucity, in retrospect, of the case for war – the complete absence of WMD in … Continue reading “George W. Bush: Neocon Napoleon”

Because we forget that the United States was once considered a rogue nation exporting terrorism, the nation’s senior officials risk making serious policy mistakes today. The United States a rogue nation? Though it may be hard to believe, before the Civil War, people in Latin America, Western Europe, and even the faraway Hawaiian kingdom were … Continue reading “The US Was Once Considered a Rogue Nation”

When the anchor of public television’s main news program goes out of his way to tell viewers that he’s setting the record straight about a recent historic event, the people watching are apt to assume that they’re getting accurate information. But with war intensifying in Iraq, a bizarre episode raises some very troubling concerns about … Continue reading “How the “NewsHour” Changed History”

In the twelve-course meal that is the war in Iraq, America has just been served the first entree. The fight with Iraq’s state armed forces was merely the amuse-bouche. The subsequent guerilla war with the Baath, as distasteful as we found it, was still just the appetizer. Over the past two weeks, we have been … Continue reading “Your Fish, Sir”

Almost a month since the pogrom in Kosovo, both its consequences and lessons seem to have faded from memory. Indeed, the occupation authorities are rewarding violence and appeasing its perpetrators, even as they grow more bold and hostile. They, too, see reports from Iraq, where a mass uprising against the occupation authorities has the Empire … Continue reading “Hubris and Nemesis”

Lawrence Kaplan, neo-Jacobin ideologue and shameless apologist for the carnage in Iraq, claims that Americans wouldn’t mind having 30,000 of our troops killed in Iraq if it achieves Bush’s “strategic objectives.” No one knows any longer what these objectives are unless it is to start World War III. The original strategic objectives were all propagandistic … Continue reading “Feeling a Draft”