What a strange week this has been. The Mexican navy seized more than a ton of cocaine that had been stuffed inside frozen sharks, the Venezuelan government banned Coke Zero because of unspecified health concerns, and American neo-conservatives suddenly developed a pious concern for the Iranian people. Bill Kristol, for instance, wrote passionately in the [...]
Despite the unusually gloomy weather here in Santa Monica, I feel like summer is already here. I’m done with my book tour, I met two pressing deadlines, and my last class of the quarter at UC Riverside was yesterday. So I’ve had some time to catch up on the news and especially on the coverage [...]
Harper’s Scott Horton links to footage from an interview that General Petraeus gave to Fox News, in which he argued in favor of the release of the remaining photographs showing alleged prisoner abuse. Says Horton: Petraeus argued in favor of release, saying “Let’s lance this boil.” He feared that the damage from withholding the photos [...]
The Telegraph reports that Major General Antonio Taguba, who authored the infamous report that exposed the abuse in Abu Ghraib and other prisons in 2004, has now revealed that there are photos of U.S. soldiers allegedly raping Iraqi prisoners. These photos were part of the initial set that became widely known a few years ago, [...]
The Egyptian novelist Alaa al-Aswany had an opinion piece this past weekend in the New York Times: PRESIDENT OBAMA is clearly trying to reach out to the Muslim world. I watched his Inaugural Address on television, and was most struck by the line: “We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and [...]
Despite the fact that I voted for Barack Obama, I’ve refrained from commenting about him since his election. I didn’t really want to speculate about what he could or could not do, what he might or might not do, and especially what he should or should not do. I figured that January 20th would come [...]
The L.A. Times Book Review asked a few writers to think about the significance of Barack Obama’s election for the arts in this country. Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Rubén Martinez, Rebecca Solnit, and Ted Widmer contribute short essays. For his part, Ben Ehrenreich has a wish list for the president-elect. Here’s an excerpt: 2. An [...]
Interesting piece by Slavoj Žižek in the LRB. I think he’s right that far too many political observers get caught in cynically realist positions and don’t see what is happening in front of their noses: The paradigmatic cynic tells you confidentially: ‘But don’t you see that it is all really about money/power/sex, that professions of [...]
I voted for Barack Obama. I donated money to his campaign several times. I phonebanked for him. So I am very, very happy that he has won; I am relieved; and I am hopeful. Still, campaign slogans notwithstanding, the idealists who think Obama will change everything have no brains; and the cynics who think Obama [...]
