The recent increase in fighting around Basra, which is rapidly spreading to Baghdad, has the punditariat in a lather. Their sacred Surge has turned into a mere splurge – of resources, lives, and misplaced hope. Well, I could have told you that, and, indeed, I...
China's continuing crackdown on Tibetan pro-independence protesters is a big, big issue here in San Francisco. Why, just the other day, I was coming out my front door, and there was one of my neighbors – a very nice woman in her fifties, albeit an archetypal...
Well, I guess that makes it official: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) has introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives "expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the current economic slowdown in the United States is directly related to the...
What better journalistic symbol of the Beltway know-it-alls than the Washington Post? Their coverage of the Iraq debate in the run-up to invasion mirrored the uncritical assumptions and stereotyped thinking that led to our quest for "weapons of mass destruction" that...
On Sunday, I spoke at an event organized by a coalition of peace groups marking the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Being the reclusive writer type, I don't really get much of a kick out of speaking in front of an audience. However, in this case, aside from...
The smear machine is taking out after Barack Obama, and with a vengeance. Not that this is surprising, or even anything new: they've been conducting a low-level hate campaign ever since he attained front-runner status, and now they're going into overdrive with a...
As Colombia invaded Ecuador and bombed an encampment of the rebel FARC guerrilla group, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was waging the war for hearts and minds in the international media: at a dramatic press conference, he unveiled a captured laptop computer that had...
"If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran," says the March Esquire, "it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man." The piece describes this top military figure as the last obstacle...
The response to my "confession" of admiration for Barack Obama is instructive on several levels, the first being the amount of sheer emotion generated. Here, for example, is a response from some of Ron Paul's more hard-core supporters: to hear them tell it,...
Dear fellow Obama-maniacs, Okay, I'm coming out of the closet, and admitting I'm one of you. There, I can say it, at last, out loud and proud: I'm a conservative-paleo-libertarian with a man-crush on Obama. Whew! What a relief! Now that I've got that off my chest, I...
