Conviction
Now We Know
Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America By John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev (Yale University Press, 637 pp., $35) READ MORE >>
The Netanyahu Speech And The Peace Prospects
Officials of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah took just about no time to pronounce the death of the peace process. READ MORE >>
Dodd Complex
Obama V. Cheney
When Judges Go Bad
So let me get this straight: A federal judge in Texas gropes, kisses, and generally harasses two (that we know of) female subordinates (including his secretary, of all the pathetic cliches). When confronted, he lies, claiming that the gals in question were eager participants in all the boob fondling and crotch rubbing. READ MORE >>
Pirates: Serious In The Past, Very Serious Now
The very literate and cultured foreign and military affairs commentator Max Boot--as opposed to the not so literate and cultured others--goes back into the literature on (and of) piracy. Yes, much of this history traces to the Arab sultanates who foraged the seas for boats that had actually come to the trade. So what's new? But Boot reminds that there was plenty of ocean pillage in the waters of south and east Asia. Is there much now? READ MORE >>
Forest Fighters
Satipo, Amazon Basin, Peru--On the fourth floor of the National Museum in Lima, there's a photo exhibit of Peru's long "dirty war" against the leftist Shining Path guerrillas during the 1980s and '90s. A series of wall-sized photographs illustrate two decades of bombings, roundups, secret arrests, and massacres that left 70,000 dead. The exhibit has been criticized for both overstating and downplaying government atrocities, a sign that this era in Peru's history remains controversial. READ MORE >>
Durban Ii Dispatch: Libya On Trial
Geneva, Switzerland READ MORE >>
The Shah of Venezuela
I. READ MORE >>
The Arab states continue to be apoplectic over the Gaza war, at least apoplectic in public. This is true even though some of the most significant of these states secretly cheered Israel on and certainly did nothing to help their Hamas brethren fight or recover. Yes, I know they have pledged, this country, this many zillions and that country, that many zillions. Welcome to the world of the forked tongue as both routine chat and high rhetoric. READ MORE >>
