By Jan Herman Economist Jeffrey Sachs was his usual stellar self earlier this week at the Council on Foreign Relations — calm, cogent, full of facts (all of them broken down into relevant categories), persuasive, angered by the Bush regime — contemptuous of it I’d say, but he managed to keep his contempt in check […]

Any fan of Paul Desmond, let alone his biographer, rates a big welcome in my book. Doug Ramsey joins the

“Exhibit A” of a “domesticated” press. That’s what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls this morning’s Washington Post editorial, which describes the main revelation of the Downing Street memo as “vague but intriguing.” In other words, it doesn’t believe that “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” to invade Iraq. McGovern, who ripped […]

I never thought I’d be glad to hear from a Goldwater Republican, much less agree with him. But Straight Up reader M. Paulding has changed my mind. He writes in response to Battle of the Prewar Memos: The second DSM [Downing Street Memo] is more damning than the first, despite Sanger’s observation. I’m a conservative, […]

More Camp X Ray frolics: An 18-year-old Saudi camper of Chadian descent who was just shy of his 15th birthday when he was seized in Pakistan by local authorities has told his lawyer “he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an […]

Another prewar memo, written July 21, 2002, two days before the famous Downing Street memo, has come to light. Here it is, as posted by The Sunday Times of London. Now compare Walter Pincus’s report on it in Sunday’s Washington Post with David Sanger’s in this morning’s New York Times. The difference is night vs. […]

The latest Frank Rich column is a dandy recap of what’s been happening in The Land of Oz. “The attacks [on the press] continue to be so successful that even now, long after many news organizations, including The Times, have been found guilty of failing to puncture the administration’s prewar W.M.D. hype, new details on […]

It took James Woolcott to lead me to a wrenching, eloquent piece on the realities and myths of war by Chris Hedges, who begins this way and never lets up: The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the […]

Summer is soon upon us, and it won’t be long before it’s off to overnight camp for many lucky youngsters. They’ll be writing home, of course. Low Culture recently posted a letter from a camper who got a jump on the season’s frolics. Here’s an excerpt: Dear Mom and Dad, Greetings from Camp X Ray […]

A reader took notice of my recommendation the other day. (OK, if you must know, it was one of my staff of thousands who took notice.) He writes: Jan, we bought the Watson book “Ideas.” It is good, but not as good as I had hoped. Too breezy. I like a tighter line. He spends […]

Subject: James D. Guckert — Reprinting Government Press Releases as His Own Work You remember when Guckert (a k a Jeff Gannon) published White House press releases, verbatim, as his own reporting? Well, he did not break the law prohibiting the “use of appropriated funds for publicity or propaganda,” the Government Accounting Office ruled Thursday. […]

I recommend this book review by my favorite aphorist, the British philosopher John Gray, although he is not aphorizing, as he does in his own books (such as “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals” or Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern.” Gray points to a key question of Peter Watson’s […]

Obi Wan Canoli says, “The true ways of the farm are almost forgotten.” Click the link, watch and listen. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. You’ll wonder why George Lucas hasn’t sued. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

A reader writes: “This is so priceless, and so easy to see happening, customer service being what it is today. Be sure to cancel your credit cards before you die — just in case.” A lady died this past January, and Citibank billed her for February and March for their annual service charges on her […]

The original “correction” about David D’Arcy’s MoMAGATE story that NPR ran on its corrections page reads: Jan. 27, 2005:MoMA Embroiled in Battle over Painting Seized by NazisMorning Edition, Dec. 27, 2004 In a story on All Things Considered on Dec. 27, we reported on the controversy over ownership of a painting on loan to the […]

The Guardian of London reported: “Fresh evidence has emerged of the extent of destruction and appalling conditions” in still-deserted Falluja, a “city of ghosts where dogs feed on uncollected corpses.” That was in January. I guess the corpses have been collected by now. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit

When you put a face on death, the madness of war becomes clear. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit