Grandpa’s Battered Radio

"Ramzy, I must admit it, it's so hard being a Palestinian these days." That's how a friend of mine, a dedicated individual who is spending her days and years advocating justice for the Palestinian people, ended a distressing message to me a few months back. I...

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Backtalk June 7, 2005

Vast (but Empty) Hide-Out of Iraqi Rebels Found Thanks to Antiwar.com for the parenthetical "empty" inserted into the N.Y. Times' hyped headline regarding the "vast" (well, ok, a quarter of a skyscraper's worth, anyway) underground insurgent hideaway. Such a facility...

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The Forgotten Spirit of the Magna Carta

In 1215, disgruntled English barons unwittingly won a great victory for Western liberty. After King John waged several unsuccessful, senseless wars, the barons, sick of financing wars in which they had no interest, temporarily ended John's despotism by forcing him to...

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9/11 Commission for Prisoner Abuse?

On the heels of the dustup over the nomination of John Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, President George W. Bush's next congressional tsunami may well be a provision tucked away in a proposed anti-terrorist bill. That legislation would establish...

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From Bad to Worse

While Israel's new chief of staff, Air Force General Dan Halutz, was assuming his new job, I stood with a group of demonstrators at the gate of the General Staff building to protest against his appointment. Our slogan was: "You have blood on your wings!" – a...

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Bolton Already Has a Legacy

Even if Undersecretary of State John Bolton isn't our next ambassador to the United Nations, he already has a legacy. At the recently concluded Review Conference for the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, his underlings managed to seriously undermine both...

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The War Party on Trial

The discovery of a labyrinth of underground bunkers used by the insurgency – complete with air-conditioning, shower facilities, and furnished living space – in western Iraq yielded a rich arsenal of sophisticated weaponry, including: "Mortars, rockets,...

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From Watergate to Downing Street

You wouldn't know it from the media focus on Deep Throat last week, but the lies that Richard Nixon told about the Watergate break-in were part of his standard duplicity for the Vietnam War. It wasn't just that the Nixon administration engaged in secret illegal...

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