It is often said that the roots of the conflicts in the Middle East, which many U.S. diplomats seem to think can be handled with just one more full-court-press and a conference, – and we're talking not just of disputes between Israelis and Palestinians but the...
If you pay attention to news about the "War on Terrorism," you may be a bit confused about what our government is doing. One day Mr. Macho tells us we're at war and we must put up with the intrusions of liberty that normally accompany war. The next day we're told this...
Hollywood did it again last weekend, as the Chris Rock-Anthony Hopkins feature Bad Company revolved around preventing "Yugoslav" terrorists from blowing up New York City with a nuclear weapon. Even the film critics saw through such a pathetic plot setup. But...
Going by the signals emanating from Almaty and Singapore, and from Washington, New Delhi and Islamabad, the level of official rhetoric of India-Pakistan hostility has come down by a few decibels during the past week. This must be heartily welcomed. But the lowering of...
In an earlier column, I theorized that when the hijackers rammed those planes into the World Trade Center, they must've torn a hole in the space-time continuum, opening the door to another dimension – the Bizarro World – an alternate universe where...
In a way, the news that the Bush administration is developing a new strategic doctrine that involves preemptive strikes against terrorists and states alleged to have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons could be viewed as simply formalizing what has been U.S....
If Tories were rats being drowned in a bucket, it would be neither water nor bucket that would bother them, but whether a Clarkeite's blanched belly bobbed to the surface first. The most recent example of this came after l'affaire Cummings, when the party's newly...
A C-Net news item, with the ominous title of "FBI digs deeper into the Web," details how the feds will be tracing the digital trails people leave as they surf the internet, and reports the outrage of civil libertarians. The new guidelines giving the Justice...
A Note from the Author: This is a continuation of my Wednesday column on the formerly libertarian Cato Institute's complete capitulation to the war hysteria, and is best read in that context. To summarize briefly: in endorsing Attorney General John Ashcroft's decision...
It was shocking, and I had to re-read the press release just to make sure: was the libertarian Cato Institute really saying that they had "no problem" with the FBI's new "guidelines" that gave the cops a green light to spy on domestic groups? For...
