acceptance speech, he has also provided us with cover to post what may be the most incredible item — truly the hardest to believe — we’ve ever put up. It’s not only about genocide, which we’ve written about before, it’s about “the coming genocide of the Sunnis in Iraq,” to quote a friend of ours, […]
Archives for 2005
NO PENETRATION
The “amazing progress” made there during the past two-and-a-half years. ROCKS I think that I shall never push A rock as stubborn as George Bush. A rock whose lopsided bottom Is covered over with something rottem. A rock that looks at God all day And has no rational thing to say. A rock that thinks […]
READING VAN CREVELD
A mathematician we know, who evaluates weapons systems for the U.S. military, sent us a message about a Van Creveld’s article ran in the Forward on Nov. 25. What popped up yesterday in The New York Times? Bingo! An article headlined “Why Iraq Will End as Vietnam Did.” Most of it details at great length […]
TIMES BOOK FAVES AND A BIG NON-FAVE
When it comes to the last year’s picks (four of 58). 10 Best Books list, however, which restores a tad of credibility to the Book Review’s picks. For a minute there, we thought we’d have to come up with an exposé. Even so, counting all journalists whose books made the notable non-fiction list — a […]
NON-EXPERT OPINION
A reader writes, in re: that item is a nice comment, too, on why you occasionally look at As to the to the contrary, he still has to be dragged kicking and screaming toward reality. That’s our totally unsourced take on him, without benefit of expert opinion.* For us, he’s still a four-letter word working […]
PLAN FOR MORE BULLSHIT
“Mission Accomplished” on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to Bullshitter-in-Chief when, in fact, it means the exact opposite: We’re going backwards. The slogans say it themselves. talking-points prez on rewind, left, weren’t enough to make you throw up, how does this “the same tired argument that everything’s going just fine.” Even USA Today, the […]
GET SERIOUS
In re: said so little about recent genocides, like the genocide in Darfur, or for that matter, the
YEAH, THE HOLOCAUST REALLY HAPPENED
The hidebound circle jerks of the Vienna Philharmonic, whose long-buried historical relationship with the Holocaust still has contemporary echoes. For instance, at Bruckner-Konservatorium) in Linz (Hitler’s hometown), not far from Vienna, the big concert hall is named for Wilhelm Jerger, who was director of the conservatory until 1973. Jerger, right — a contrabassist in the […]
WHICH PARADE WAS THAT?
When 16,000 demonstrators marched in Columbus, Ga., earlier this month to protest U.S. military involvement in torture, they received less national attention than the Thanksgiving Day Local press offered the best, most extensive, coverage of the protesters, who demanded that the Army shutter its Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly the School of the […]
GET OUT OF ABU GHRAIB FREE
The Telegraph reports. The game’s creator “opposes the US presence in Iraq,” according to the London daily, but he’s been criticized “for capitalising on war.” His response: “As an American, I was raised to believe that we should have ideas and try to make money out of them. That’s the American way.” Spoken like a […]
THE DOOFUS MARCHES ON
Courtesy of an Air Force colonel: Battle Hymn of the Republicans Mine Eyes have seen the bungling of that stumbling moron Bush; he has blathered all the drivel that the neo-cons can push; he has lost sight of all reason ’cause his head is up his tush; The Doofus marches on. I have heard him […]
MAINSTREAM MYOPIA
Louis Menand writes that “From the Ashes,” was pretty remarkable, too — that is, until our friend William Osborne — an American expat composer, musicologist and cultural observer who has lived in Europe for more than a quarter century — offered his take on it. Menand, left, writes: “The European model, Judt says, was mostly […]
THANKS, BUT NO THANKS
The best, least fawning part of George Will’s grammatically challenged
BLOWJOB, PLEASE
Bullshitter-in-Chief to bomb an Arab TV station in Qatar, a key Gulf ally — is one more reason to ask (along with the protesters, below): “Would somebody please just give him a blowjob so we can get him impeached?! Somebody?!” Yesterday’s The Guardian reports today. The British government claims the Bullshitter was only joking, and […]
I HAVE A DREAM
Need we say more? — Tireless Staff of Thousands Postscript: Yeah, yeah, why we call him the Bullshitter-in-Chief, not —
NEWS NOTES
Click the photo to see the entire sequence. Then there was the serious stuff about Curveball: BERLIN — The German intelligence officials responsible for one of the most important informants on Saddam Hussein’s suspected weapons of mass destruction say that the Bush administration and the CIA repeatedly exaggerated his claims during the run-up to the […]
LESS FLAG-WAGGING, PLEASE
On the evidence of Ethan Bronner’s “The Great War for Civilisation,” we couldn’t help wondering: Is this what The New York Times really thinks, or is the paper’s Contrary to Bronner’s review, we find Brit journalist Robert Fisk’s massive book enlightening, beautifully written, filled with the skeptical wisdom of bitter experience. It’s both an absorbing […]