Hans Blix believes the Bush administration is courting catastrophe in its handling of Iran. “It is playing at very high stakes,” Mr. Blix said. “The risk is that a spark could fly and that things could happen unexpectedly.” Mr. Blix’s dark warnings come at a time of particularly high tension. The United Nations is grappling Read More
In the 15 years during which I more or less regularly conducted a column for this newspaper, I can’t recall presuming to address issues of foreign policy more than once or twice. I suppose this is because I’ve always found the question of what kind of country we want this one to be more interesting Read More
The Forward has a nice piece this week on how U.S. Rep. John Hall, rocker-turned-Congressman in the Hudson Valley, anchored his narrow victory over Republican Sue Kelly last year by winning the burgeoning Kiryas Joel compound of Orthodox Jews to his side, over a water-rights issue. Good reporting. The Forward notes that the Israel Read More
To the Editor: I just finished reading Ron Rosenbaum’s column in The New York Observer about the seminar held in Tehran to “assess [the] Holocaust” [“The Iranian ‘Scholars’: Times Bends Backwards for Holocaust Deniers,” the Edgy Enthusiast, Dec. 18]. I think it’s always important to hear both sides of an issue where the debate merits Read More
Holocaust denial is a particularly insidious evil. It was almost painful to read The Times’ earnest struggle to report on the Iranian Holocaust-deniers’ conference in anticipation of its opening on Dec. 11. It will be fascinating to see how the rest of the media reports on this conference of “scholars” whose distinguished keynote speaker is Read More
Holocaust denial is a particularly insidious evil. It was almost painful to read The Times’ earnest struggle to report on the Iranian Holocaust-deniers’ conference in anticipation of its opening on Dec. 11. It will be fascinating to see how the rest of the media reports on this conference of “scholars” whose distinguished keynote speaker is Read More
The SAT, that infamous rite of terror and No. 2 pencils, is still a solid four months away for this year’s crop of precocious high-school juniors. But in certain precincts of the city—the ones with the good public schools that neighborhood kids still don’t attend—some students have already written their 25-minute essay. In their minds, Read More
Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami’s widely covered and high-profile 12-day trip to the U.S. was all about symbolism. Or so it seemed, at least as far as the media and the public were concerned. For though he delivered four major speeches, President Khatami disappointed some who thought—or at least hoped—that he was here either to Read More
If you ever needed a reminder of how important the realist intellectuals' spring assault on the Israel lobby is, today's Times bore it out. Its polls show that most Americans feel that Israel's indiscriminate destruction in Lebanon will lead to a wider war, and that we don't have a dog in that fight Read More
George Ajjan has an amusing item on Why Iran's President Ahmadinejad never wears a tie. Ajjan heard this from an unnamed Iranian friend: Shortly after the revolution...the tie itself began being associated with "Western imperialism", especially after Ayatollah Khomeini branded a large group of intellectuals (who were less religiously zealous than he would have Read More
Two weeks back, Paul Krugman got off a brilliant stroke in the Times, when he cited that "peculiar rule, which still prevails in Washington, that you have to have been wrong about Iraq to be considered credible on national security." The examples of this are legion. The author Peter Beinart, for instance, putting Read More
If they weren’t real, many of Mark Bowden’s characters would seem like the creations of a lazy Hollywood scriptwriter crafting roles for Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell. He favors men who are gruff and hard-living, honorable but contemptuous of authority. In his fascinating, occasionally frustrating new book, Guests of the Ayatollah, Mr. Bowden describes Col. Read More
If they weren’t real, many of Mark Bowden’s characters would seem like the creations of a lazy Hollywood scriptwriter crafting roles for Bruce Willis and Colin Farrell. He favors men who are gruff and hard-living, honorable but contemptuous of authority. In his fascinating, occasionally frustrating new book, Guests of the Ayatollah, Mr. Bowden describes Read More
A few weeks ago, Iranians living in the U.S.—or at least those known to the regime in Tehran—began receiving postcards in the mail detailing plans for the Presidential elections of 1384, or A.D. 2005. The postcard—covered on both sides entirely in Farsi except for the name and address, and unintelligible to presumably anyone but the Read More
A few weeks ago, Iranians living in the U.S.-or at least those known to the regime in Tehran-began receiving postcards in the mail detailing plans for the Presidential elections of 1384, or A.D. 2005. The postcard-covered on both sides entirely in Farsi except for the name and address, and unintelligible to presumably anyone but the Read More
