Category: Politics
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The little steps on the way to catastrophe
So many people around the world believe Bush and Cheney and the rest are power-mad fools who have failed miserably in their Iraq war. It is sometimes hard to remember that they’re still in power. Dangerously so. Now Congress is ready to pass a law on so-called enemy detainees that goes against the spirit and…
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Embracing violence, it embraces us
What does this say about us? America turns its resources to fighting the vague but real threat of terrorism. We start two wars. Support another one. The Middle East is radicalized, and new terrorists attracted daily with marketing campaigns more effective than Nike’s slam dunks. And what do we get? At home gun crime and…
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The Nazis march, but are outnumbered
A genuine Neonazi demonstration marched past our window today. The first we knew of it was a flyer on our door, of unclear origin, advising us of the approach, and suggesting a few ways to protest. Hang a flag, write our local councilperson, turn up music loud out our windows as they marched past. We…
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Go to war, miss the way the world changes
And so this is the outcome of Israel’s war. They have destroyed some of Hezbollah’s military capacity, rocket launchers and fighters. These are renewable resources. They have killed hundreds or perhaps thousands of Lebanese. Destroyed thousands of homes, and crippled the country’s infrastructure. They have inflamed hatred across the region; and the United States’ tin-ear…
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Even Germans think the Democrats are screwed up
A fascinating look in Der Spiegal at various German papers’ interpretations of Lieberman’s loss in Connecticut. None are particularly happy about it, even though few think the GOP is anything but a disaster. Left wing paper focuses on “the kiss,” and say Clinton (who also should be defeated for the same anti-war reasons) isn’t likely…
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US decides torture is bad. No, really.
So, better late than never? Now that the world has been exposed for several years to our humane, no, let’s say genuinely vacation-like resorts at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and is currently being treated to the spectacle of an alleged brutal rape and murder by GIs in Iraq, policymakers have decided that the Geneva Conventions…
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Gavin’s health plan for San Francisco
Give Gavin Newsom credit for thinking big. He’s proposing a new plan that would offer health coverage to currently uninsured people who live in San Francisco. Under the current system, far too many people are uninsured, and costing the city money anyway at emergency rooms, he argues. True enough. Anyone with half an eye open…
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On football, nationalism and cantaloupes
There are probably other things going on in the world besides football/soccer. Wars, Zarqawi’s death, violence in Palestine again. But around us here every day is football, which provides its own lessons in international relations. A bit of texture first: All of Berlin, at least, is dedicated to watching as many minutes of the thrice-daily…
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The World Cup, and Europe’s race and racism problem
A piece in the New York Times today that echoes much of the soul-searching that’s been happening in German and other European newspapers: With the World Cup imminent, racial tensions here are being put on a world stage. Several ugly racial incidents have dominated headlines in the month-plus we’ve been here. A Ethiopian-born man was…
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Der Spiegel interviews, debates Iran’s president
A fascinating interview utterly unlike anything that would happen with a major U.S. publication. Der Spiegel talks at length to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (link is to English translation) about the Holocaust, Palestine, German responsibility to Jews, and about the current nuclear debates. Ahmadinejad accuses the interviewers of “fanatically” taking the side of European politicians, and…
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I blame the computers. Not the Republicans.
Y’see, It’s not spying if we just happen to keep track of every number which everybody in the United States calls. Because, see, we don’t know who’s at that number. Well, we do, because we can look that up. But we don’t know what you’re saying. Well, we do, because we recorded that. But we’re…
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South Dakota passes abortion ban
How many days has Roberts been on the Supreme Court? And already we have South Dakota passing an all-out ban on abortion, with the intention of forcing the Court to revisit Roe v. Wade. The governor there has vetoed a similar bill in the past, but is viewed by both sides as unlikely to do…
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Shrine bombing, restraint, and the apocalyptic imagination
Apocalypse is the mood in Iraq today. Clerics and prisoners are being killed, reprisals for the gaping hole in a shrine’s once-golden roof. The bombing of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra targeted the tombs of the 10th and 11th Imams – in Shi’ite tradition, the descendants of the Prophet, and infallible leaders of Islam. Nearby…