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War appears to be on the verge of making everyone — except for a few U.C. Berkeley students (see below) — sane. As George Will recently observed, because of the present conflict, “Both conservatism and liberalism have been purified by being purged of some anachronistic ingredients.” Conservatives have given up on their more radical anti-federalist […]

Belgian students have an odd way of introducing newcomers. At the beginning of the school year, university drinking clubs — the low country equivalent of fraternities and sororities — dress new recruits in white lab coats and baseball caps with improbably long bills, force them to drink excessively, roll in chicken excrement, and then parade […]

“Pardon, ou est les bureaux de l’UNHCHR?” The Swiss soldier consulted a map. “UNHCR?” he asked. “Non, l’UNHCHR.” “Non, l’UNHCR.” The alphabet soup of aid- and relief-organization headquarters in and around the United Nations nerve center in Geneva can be a bit confusing to the casual visitor, apparently for security as well. Up the hill […]

See the response from Noam Chomsky and the counter-response from Jeffrey C. Isaac The huge slaughter. . . in East Timor is (at least) comparable to the terrible atrocities that can plausibly be attributed to Milosevic in the earlier wars in Yugoslavia, and responsibility is far easier to assign, with no complicating factors. If proponents […]

In his address to the nation Thursday night, President Bush made several impassioned pleas for Americans not to blame Arabs or Muslims for the terrorist attacks. “I ask you to uphold the values of America and remember why so many have come here,” he said. “No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or […]

“U.S. Warns It May Skip Conference On Racism” — The Was hington Post, July 27, 2001 “U.S. rejects accord on germ warfare; Move wipes out 7 years of negotiations” — Houston Chronicle, July 26, 2001 “178 Nations Reach A Climate Accord; U.S. Only Looks On” — The New York Times, July 24, 2001 “U.S. at […]

It was only a few days into the tense balloting for Labour candidate for the new position of Mayor of London in February. At the Town Hall in Ealing — a sandstone castle in the midst of this mall-heavy West London neighborhood — a small meeting had been booked in a basement room. Ken Livingstone, […]

The Idea Log is a new column by Chris Mooney. It will appear on TAP Online every Tuesday. After attending last Saturday’s 7,500 person peace march in downtown Washington, D.C., sponsored by “International A.N.S.W.E.R.” (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), I was left with a rather odd conclusion: The protesters hadn’t watched enough […]

In the 1950s a gem of an article appeared called “The Fluke That Saved Formosa.” The idea was that an outbreak of fluke-borne schistosomiasis among Chinese troops, then preparing to invade Taiwan, saved the island from communism. In November 2000 an election fluke to end all election flukes handed the presidency to George W. Bush, […]