The Specter of Fascism This article was spot on. While watching the towers burn in NY on TV, my first thought was for the people in the towers, and my second was how this would energize all the authoritarians who would bend the Constitution to limit our freedoms and...
In The Image, Daniel Boorstin's ground-breaking and magisterial study of the rise of the modern media and the public relations profession, the renowned historian coined the term "pseudo-event." He was referring to a "happening" that is designed to...
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a major advocacy group, has filed the first challenge to "rendition," known by critics as "outsourcing torture," a practice used by U.S. intelligence agencies to deliver detainees to prisons in countries...
President Bush has nominated John Bolton – currently undersecretary of state – to be ambassador to the United Nations, a presidential appointment that requires Senate confirmation. Will examining Senators focus on what they expect Bolton to accomplish in...
Human rights groups and some senators are expressing growing frustration over the Pentagon's failure to hold senior officers or civilian leaders accountable for widespread abuses by U.S. forces against detainees in Washington's "war on terror." The latest...
KIRKUK – Whatever the circumstances, Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena is free at last. But questions remain at what price. Her release has been clouded over by the death of the Italian intelligence agent who freed her from kidnappers. He was killed on the road...
We had just finished a meal of lamb, rice and tabbouleh. My host, an intellectual and fluent in several languages, was talking about the Middle East. He was a Kurd and Syrian. "A French general put his foot on the grave of Saladin and said, 'Saladin, we have...
President Bush was uncharacteristically slow to take credit, in his speech this week at the National Defense University, for what appear to be democratic-like changes in the Middle East. This might have been in part because if you're just counting numbers, which to...
The news that the American government fabricated the story of Saddam Hussein's capture – that he wasn't found hiding in a hole, that he did fight back, and that one Marine was killed during the encounter – may or may not be true, but the former wouldn't...
Sadly, it has come to this. Two years after the invasion of Iraq, the online powerhouse MoveOn.org – which built most of its member base with a strong antiwar message – is not pushing for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. With a network of more than 3...
