Roundup: Media's Take

Jonathan Turley: When justices won't go

... There is no evidence to suggest that [Chief Justice] Rehnquist's poor health has affected his intellect, but the speculation over his absences last session and the course of his illness has reignited debate about a long-standing problem for the court: If a justice is significantly impaired, there is no way to remove him from the bench. The Constitution provides for involuntarily removal of justices only by a process of impeachment. It requires a showing of serious wrongdoing bu

Hugo Hamilton: Does Hiroshima Give Suicide Bombers an Excuse?

[Mr. Hamilton is an Irish novelist.] Right now we are trying to enter into the mind of the suicide bomber who steps on the London Underground to take innocent lives. We are naturally horrified that there may be some logic, some fundamentalist argument thrashed out in smoky back rooms which seeks to justify this bloodshed.Perhaps the question is best answered by our own attitude to the history of bombing. With the passing of the anniversary of Hiroshima, we

Norman Solomon: Someone Tell Frank Rich the War Is Not Over

On Aug. 14, the New York Times published a piece by Frank Rich under the headline “Someone Tell the President the War Is Over.” The article was a flurry of well-placed jabs about the Bush administration’s lies and miscalculations for the Iraq war. But the essay was also a big straw in liberal wind now blowing toward dangerous conclusions. Comparing today’s war-related poll numbers for George W. Bush with those for President Lyndon B. Johnson, the columnist writes: “On March 31

John Gray: Tom Friedman Is Wrong ... The World Is Round After All

The belief that a process of globalization is underway which is bringing about a fundamental change in human affairs is not new. Marx and Engels expressed it in 1848, when they wrote in a justly celebrated passage in The Communist Manifesto: All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with his sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding

Jim Hoagland: Dynasties in Both Saudi Arabia and America

Texas and Saudi Arabia have much in common. Oil. Vast tracts of scrubland. And political dynasties. No wonder King Abdullah is the only foreign leader to have two bilateral meetings with George Bush at the president's sun-baked Crawford ranch.If conversation about OPEC or Middle East peace lags, they can always turn to what it is like to follow Dad's footsteps to the top. They belong to what historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch labels the "postheroic generation" o

Max Boot: A Dying Man's Cry for Freedom in Iran

THE HEADLINES out of Tehran concern the predictable failure of yet another round of farcical negotiations designed to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, a much more dramatic story is unfolding with much less attention. Investigative journalist Akbar Ganji has been on a hunger strike since June 11 to protest his unwarranted imprisonment over the last five years for the crime of criticizing the theocratic thugs who have hijacked his country. Recently, he has been moved from prison

Rob Salem: Jerusalem Does Not Need To Be Divided Over Religion

The battle for control of Jerusalem and its holy places has always provoked passionate and often belligerent emotions from Jews, Christians and Muslims. In the words of historian Karen Armstrong: "Once an issue like Jerusalem is elevated beyond the reach of compromise, the most extreme and immoral actions become not only possible but `holy' to a disaffected minority." Jerusalem need not be the cause of such conflict. The city is often mistakenly portrayed as a source of re

Noam Chomsky: We Must Act Now to Prevent Nuclear Holocaust

Noam Chomsky, in the London Independent (8-6-05): This month's anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki prompts only the most sombre reflection and most fervent hope that the horror may never be repeated. In the subsequent 60 years, those bombings have haunted the world's imagination but not so much as to curb the development and spread of infinitely more lethal weapons of mass

WSJ: Don Rickels Democrats Vs. Horatio Alger Republicans

WSJ Opinion Journal, Best of the Web Today (6-3-05)"Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean further burnished his shoot-from-the-lip reputation Thursday" by suggesting that President Bush won re-election because Republicans are lazy...A "60 Minutes" profile of Dean from October 2003, when he was the front-runner

The Perpetration of Hate in Pakistan

Waleed Ziad, an economist consultant, in the NYT (June 18, 2004):... contrary to popular theories, the fight against militant religious groups in South Asia is not a clash of age-old civilizations or a conflict between traditionalism and modernism. Rather, it is a more recent story of political ineptitude and corruption, and of a postcolonial class struggle between th

How Other Countries Defeated Terrorism in the Past Decade

Amir Taheri, in Arab News (June 18, 2004):...In March 1994 during a visit to Algiers it was hard to avoid the impression that the Algerian state was on the verge of collapse and that the terrorists would soon ride into the capital to seize power. The nation had suffered human and physical losses on the scale of a conventional war. The damage done to its economic and administra

"War is the Mother of Civilization": Reflections on the United States and Japan

Tsurumi Shunsuke, a philosopher-activist, in Japan Focus (June 2004): I lived in the United States from the age of 15 until I turned 19. When Japan went to war with America, I became a"hostile alien." In 1942, I was sent to a detention center -- a relocation camp.   I knew I was being detained unjustly, but fortunately I was treated fairly throughout my years of captivity. I was never tortured or abused.

Glenn Reynolds: Time to Scrap the Geneva Accords and Start All Over

Glenn Reynolds, in his blog (June 1, 2004): We've heard a lot about the Geneva Conventions over the past couple of years.  And some people -- noting, among other things, that the United States hasn't fought against an enemy who applied the Geneva Conventions to our troops in nearly 60 years -- are wondering if we should scrap the Conventions.

Kerry's Slogan Can Be Traced to a Communist-Inspired Poet

From Insight Magazine (May 24, 2004): Insiders say John Kerry has settled on "Let America Be America Again" as the motto and theme of his presidential campaign. The line comes from a Langston Hughes poem Kerry quoted at an NAACP event in Kansas. Apparently the pedantic St. Paul's and Yale graduate didn't bother to note that it was written for an International Workers Order (IWO) pamphlet called A New Song. The IWO was an officially cited affiliate of the Communist

Books Are Changing American Politics This Year

David Kirkpatrick, in the NYT (April 25, 2004):WELL-PLACED former government officials have committed their recollections to books at least since 1934, when a former White House usher, Irwin Hood Hoover, published the memoir "Forty-Two Years in the White House." And journalists have chronicled the offstage dramas of politics at least since Theodore H. White's "The Making

Curt Andersen: May Day: How Workers Got All Those Rights

Curt Andersen writes for the Green Bay News-Chronicle.When Vince Lombardi came to Green Bay in 1959, and after a frustrating year of too many close losses, Lombardi is reported to have assembled the players and lectured them on the mistakes that led to the losses, saying, "Gentlemen, we are going back to basics." At that point, he held up a brown object and said, "THIS...is a football." The few laughs were immediately cut short.Perhaps this is a good time to go back to basics on the history of the workingman. In Barbara Tuchman's 1978, "A Distant Mirror - The Calamitous 14th Century," Tuchman describes the conditions during and following the outbreak of Bubonic Plague in the mid-to-late 1300s. The story is full of surprises about life then. With a post-plague population reduced by fifty percent by the end of the century, there were few workers left to do all the work needed. Suddenly, and likely for the first time in recorded history, workers could demand and get better pay for their labor.

Bush's News Conference: Presidents as Communicators in Wartime

Linda Feldmann, in the Christian Science Monitor (April 16, 2004):Like a Rorschach ink blot, Bush's performance in a rare primetime news conference Tuesday evening was interpreted by the public and pundits, usually according to their established ideas. Republicans thought he was effective, showing resolve and determination to see through his vision of turning Iraq into a model of democracy. Democrats found his lack of detail and range exasperating. One nota

The Media Are Giving Kerry a Free Pass About His Radical Past

Shawn Macomber, in frontpagemag.com (March 3, 2004)By choosing to ignore the giant elephant, er, donkey, that Matt Drudge led into America’s living room, the national press once again showed its true stripes. After all, there is far less proof that Bush was AWOL than there is that Kerry had an affair, Alex Polier’s rote denial notwithstanding. Yet, while America was abuzz with the rumor, not one major cable network was willing to sp

Nicholas Kristof: Gay Marriage a Bad Idea? So Was Interracial Marriage a Few Decades Ago

NIcholas Kristof, in the NYT (March 3, 2004): Shakespeare's"Othello" used to be among the hardest plays to stage in America. Although the actors playing Othello were white, they wore dark makeup, so audiences felt"disgust and horror," as Abigail Adams said. She wrote,"My whole soul shuddered whenever I saw the soo

Did Haiti Benefit from America's Years of Occupation (1915-1934)

From GlobalSecurity.org:Due to civil disturbances and lack of a stable friendly government, the United States occupied and ruled Haiti by means of a military government between 1915 and 1934. During the occupation, a number of infrastructure development projects were accomplished that made real material improvements to the country and the people. These included road and bridge bui