Archive for December, 2005
Another ‘Flesh Wound’ for Chalabi
Remember that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in which the Black Knight loses three limbs in a sword fight and ends up hopping around on one leg, insisting that he’s suffered only a flesh wound, and insisting that he will smite his assailant, King Arthur? Well, if the knight’s name had been [...]
The Price of Solidarity
Driving my kids to school through the gridlocked streets approaching the Brooklyn Bridge Tuesday morning, past picket lines of dreadlocked transit workers chanting “No contract, no work!” — their action paralyzing a mass transit system that ferries 7 million people to work — my mind traveled back to a student rally in Cape Town in [...]
Making the Muslim World Laugh
Okay, kudos to Albert Brooks for his new film Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, which parodies U.S. ignorance of the lands it is trying to transform. The plot line has Brooks playing an unemployed comedian contracted by the State Department to travel to the Islamic world to find out what makes Muslims laugh. [...]
Who’ll Stop Brazil?
Ronaldinho: For the defending team, a player who smiles that much on the ball is just plain scary Premilinary Thoughts on the World Cup Draw There’s Brazil, and then there are the rest. I recently had a look at the squads of the 16 finalists of the European Champion’s League competition for this year (uncontestably [...]
Are Jews White?
A Jewish convict in California has applied to the state’s courts to have the penal system reclassify him from “white” to “other”, for practical reasons of personal security: When the prison is locked down because of any clash among prisoners, prisoners are segregated on ethnic lines. That means in a moment of stress in the [...]
Don’t they know it’s Kwanzaa?
Published in the Cape Times, December 1997 Only in America, as the saying goes. Africans spending their first holiday season in New York are usually surprised to find that sharing equal billing with Christmas and Chanukah (which gets pretty much equal status to Christmas in a city which is home to the highest concentration of [...]
Will U.S. Troops Leave Iraq?
Yes, there will be a big change next year in the number and nature of U.S. forces deployed in Iraq, and in their location and mission. But no, this is not a prelude to a full and expeditious departure desired by the generals (who are channeled by the likes of Rep. John Murtha and retired [...]
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