The profiteers, the apocalyptos, the chicken hawks, they all wanted to go into Iraq without a thought to the most obvious fact of all—we would be magnifying Iran’s influence in the region tenfold while our policy was to contain it. It was obvious to the majority of Arabs, most of whom are Sunnis. It was [...]
Read More...(Regular podcast to journalism students around the world for The Student Operated Press.) Strange as it might seem, silence is an important element in good journalism, and in these days of Botox journalism it’s in short supply. Just listen to the Sunday yak television shows. The people being interviewed can hardly get a word in [...]
Read More...The United States of America was born out of conflict with imperialism, but it finds itself unsuccessfully trying to clean up imperialist messes from Indo-China to Iraq. How has this happened? I think the answer lies in the tension between Jeffersonian ideal and piratical capitalism. We have failed to reconcile these two driving impulses. Indeed, [...]
Read More...I’ve always thought of snobs as narrow of foot and thin of lip, given to cutlery stares and cold shoulders, none of which describes this broad-footed fellow. But now in my old age and especially when walking around Woodstock, New York, that rainbow-hued, pinwheel-kinetic redoubt of the New Age, I repent of ugly snobbery, because [...]
Read More...The Student Operated Press is an international online venue for journalism students from every nation to begin their careers by communicating with real readerships. It has been my privilege to be a mentor to these students, sharing my experience as a journalist and my reflections on journalism. In this capacity I make weekly podcasts on [...]
Read More...John Edwards is waging a thoughtful, dignified, intellectually challenging campaign. Hillary Clinton is waging a slick, wary, idea-stingy campaign. Barack Obama is waging a stirring, refreshing, shallow campaign. Because the Republicans operate in a content-free zone their strategy is Hillary Clinton, pure and simple. Their fallback strategy is Barack Obama. They’re convinced she has too [...]
Read More...My daughter gave me a lovely silver disk with a labyrinth incised into it for my birthday last Sunday. I noticed, to my pleasure and surprise, it was made in the United States. But then I began to ponder the significance of labyrinths. My wife was lost in our telephone service’s answering tree, and I [...]
Read More...Yesterday was a landmark in the history of publishing. The weekly Circuits section of The New York Times led off with a story, An Entire Bookshelf in Your Hands by Peter Wayner, about e-book reader technology. Nothing unusual there. Circuits, like Wired magazine, has covered e-book readers all along. What is significant about yesterday’s story [...]
Read More...The protracted charade about General David Petraeus’ September report on conditions in Iraq has become tedious to almost everyone but the reporters and politicians, so obvious is it that it has been overtaken by events. It’s just another version of the game the commander-in-chief has played all along: I’m just doing what the generals tell [...]
Read More...Things have been going well for the firm of Cheney, Bush, Rapture & Apocalypse, just as foreseen by Anthony Burgess, who wrote A Clockwork Orange. The dismantling of the American middle class is well underway. That pesky American Dream has been archived under D for drivel. Exploitable labor is plentiful, and we don’t even have [...]
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