Readings in the Age of Empire

At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention David Rieff Simon & Schuster 270 pp. It appears to be the season for second thoughts about American intervention in Iraq. William F. Buckley says the war was a mistake. National Review's John Derbyshire...

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Backtalk, June 23, 2006

Why I Won't Renew With Amnesty InternationalWhen Mr. Henderson wrote this – "When government intervenes, the particular government officials making the decisions have very little of their own wealth on the line. They don't get spectacularly rich if they make a...

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The Imperial Press and Me

[The person who runs TomDispatch is not usually the focus of this space, but I decided to make an exception and run this Nick Turse interview with me. It's my way of announcing some TomDispatch news: All the interviews I've done so far for the site are to be collected...

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Why Liberals Can’t Win the War on Terror

In a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Peter Beinart – former editor of The New Republic, who has declared that only liberals can win the war on terror (the self-proclaimed subtitle of his new book) – offers up a weak mea culpa for "mistakenly" backing...

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Their Barbarism, and Ours

The Baghdad bureau chief of the New York Times could not have been any clearer. "The story really takes us back into the 8th century, a truly barbaric world," John Burns said. He was speaking Tuesday night on the PBS NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, describing what...

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Empire’s False Concern

Just when one thinks the Empire is not capable of any further hypocrisy, word comes from Brussels that the mandarins of the EUSSR are "a little worried" about Serbia. Come again? After 15 years of demonizing the Serbs, blaming them for every incident of...

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Kurds Stuck in No-Man’s Land

RUWEISHID REFUGEE CAMP - A small stretch of desert, sandwiched between the borders of Jordan and Iraq, is a "no-man's land," created by the Iraqi government's decision to cede part of its western frontier to Jordan. It has become a place where refugees from...

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Odyssey to America

It started with a kiss. Finishing a bout of lovemaking in the back seat of Omar's car, Adil kissed him in the moment before their bodies parted – and that's when he heard it: a tapping on the windshield. The car was flooded with light and a veritable army of...

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Iran’s Rights Compromised

According to the United Nations statute establishing the International Atomic Energy Agency: "The Agency shall seek to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health, and prosperity throughout the world. It shall ensure, so far as it is...

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Who’s Against a Ban on
Fissile Material?

In 2005, Mohamed ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his outstanding work in the international control of nuclear weapons. In 2003, ElBaradei had proposed a verifiable ban on the production of weapons-grade fissile material – a positive move that...

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