Article

New fears of bioterrorism in the wake of the September 11th attacks have made smallpox front-page news. Could an epidemic be unleashed intentionally? In this 1999 article from The American Prospect, Wendy Orent examines the history and politics of smallpox eradication. And she makes a persuasive case for why we should hang on to our […]

Asia | Europe and Russia | Middle East and Africa | The Americas International Commentary Column Archive The Middle East The response of a country or a leader to the Israel-Palestine conflict is the barometer of justice used by many Mideast commentators. Adel Darwish, in the MIDEASTNEWS surveys the Arab coverage of the terrorist attacks, […]

As the two-month anniversary of the World Trade Center attack approaches, the Bush administration faces rougher going on three key fronts – domestic politics, economic and homeland security, and the war itself. Politics. Though the commander-in-chief’s personal approval rating remains around 90 percent, Democrats are poised to pick up two governorships, in moderate New Jersey […]

On his radio show on Thursday, Rush Limbaugh went ballistic about my recent American Prospect Online article “The Secret War on Tom Daschle.” Apparently the piece really touched a nerve: Limbaugh read most of the article on the air and pronounced it “fascinating” (needless to say, not in a positive sense). Limbaugh interpreted the article […]

Asia | Europe and Russia | Middle East and Africa | The Americas The World Responds Column Archive Middle East and Africa The PR Campaign Heats Up In the Middle East region, the spin is all the buzz. Or the buzz is all the spin. As public opinion in favor of the Afghan invasion wavers, […]

In a year or two, and for decades afterward, historians will feel entirely free to second-guess what went so wrong both before and after Sept. 11. Why did US intelligence fail? How could we have so foolishly put our oil connection with the Saudis above our national safety? Did we respond adequately to the economic […]

See “Thus Spake Noam” by Jeffrey C. Isaac and his counter-response I was intrigued by Jeffrey Isaac’s article, which quotes my demonstration of the moral bankruptcy of an argument that had been proposed (not by governments) for the NATO bombing of 1999. The demonstration proceeds by adopting the principle on which the argument rests, and […]

See “Thus Spake Noam” by Jeffrey C. Isaac and the response from Noam Chomsky Noam Chomsky wrote something foolish that likened Osama Bin Laden to Bill Clinton, and implied that the bombings of Washington D.C. and New York by Bin Laden would be on a moral par with NATO’s Kosovo intervention of 1999. I don’t […]

“The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an […]

Although gasoline prices are down slightly for the moment, this war against terrorism imperils America’s long-term access to cheap oil. And if the Mideast conflict refocuses us on energy self-sufficiency, that would be a constructive byproduct. For one thing, world oil production will peak during this decade. An important new book, ”Hubbert’s Peak,” by the […]