Mayor Bloomberg is planning Draconian new measures to crack down on what he calls the "disruption" caused by the protesters at Zuccotti Park, and he is citing neighbors' complaints about noise and mess. This set of talking points, and this strategy, is being geared up as well by administrations of...
Posted September 1, 2011 | 14:25:23 (EST)
NEW YORK -- As I listen to the news coming out of England after the recent wave of urban riots -- and as I read Robert Douglas-Fairhurst's compelling new biography of Charles Dickens, Becoming Dickens -- life and art seem...
Posted July 7, 2011 | 11:47:30 (EST)
It is hard to ignore how many highly visible men in recent years (indeed, months) have behaved in sexually self-destructive ways. Some powerful men have long been sexually voracious; unlike today, though, they were far more discreet and generally used much better judgment in order to cover their tracks.
Of...
Posted June 6, 2011 | 11:56:18 (EST)
Have two British academics found the key to why Americans keep being bombarded today with a discourse that highlights dramatic "emergency" events -- that then leads inevitably to legislation that chips away (or chisels away) at what is left of the Constitution? I believe they have. Dr. Stephen Morton and...
192 Comments | Posted May 27, 2011 | 11:46:31 (EST)
So this blog post is titled: "My Sex Life with the TSA". Because I am getting a LOT of action from them.
I went through JFK this past week. As usual, I request not to go through the backscatter machines. And as usual, they tell me that...
Posted April 12, 2011 | 23:14:59 (EST)
Al Jazeera correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin is on a victory lap in the United States -- or rather, Al Jazeera is sending him on its own victory lap.
After all, Mohyeldin is a modest guy, despite being one of Al Jazeera's best-known reporters -- and clearly a rising international media star.
...Posted February 4, 2011 | 11:40:08 (EST)
Now that the WikiLeaks releases about Tunisian corruption have directly sparked a peoples' uprising in Tunisia; now that Egypt is in the throes of pro-democracy protest driven in large measure by WikiLeaks' revelation in the Palestine Papers about US manipulation of Palestine, surely one would expect...
Posted January 31, 2011 | 16:15:10 (EST)
I am here in Park City, Utah, for my first encounter with the Sundance Festival; I had expected starlets in ski boots and parties in which people said 'Darling' and perhaps many worthy little films with artistic merit, but -- my mistake, probably due to the grudging reluctance on the...
Posted December 15, 2010 | 13:59:06 (EST)
As I have been making the case on media outlets in the past few days that the British and Swedish sex crime charges related actions against Julian Assange are so extraordinarily and unprecedentedly severe -- compared to how prosecutors always treat far more cut-and-dry allegations than those in question in...
Posted December 13, 2010 | 12:40:14 (EST)
How do I know that Interpol, Britain and Sweden's treatment of Julian Assange is a form of theater? Because I know what happens in rape accusations against men that don't involve the embarrassing of powerful governments.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in solitary confinement in Wandsworth prison in advance of...
Posted December 10, 2010 | 12:28:16 (EST)
This week, Senators Joe Lieberman and Dianne Feinstein engaged in acts of serious aggression against their own constituents, and the American people in general. They both invoked the 1917 Espionage Act and urged its use in going after Julian Assange. For good measure, Lieberman...
Posted December 7, 2010 | 09:40:34 (EST)
Dear Interpol:
As a longtime feminist activist, I have been overjoyed to discover your new commitment to engaging in global manhunts to arrest and prosecute men who behave like narcissistic jerks to women they are dating.
I see that Julian Assange is accused of having consensual...
Posted December 2, 2010 | 11:22:33 (EST)
OXFORD - Just when it seemed that America's "Homeland Security state" could not get more surreal, the United States Transportation Security Administration has rolled out a costly Scylla and Charybdis at major airports: either you accept dangerous doses of radiation and high-resolution imaging of your naked body, or, worried about...
Posted August 25, 2010 | 20:49:48 (EST)
Well, just when I thought my 'Banks Siding Against the Customer in Bank Fraud' story couldn't get any more shocking -- it did. I had assumed that when I posted the account this week of how WaMu and now Chase were apparently systematically stonewalling customers -- myself included...
Posted August 23, 2010 | 13:19:56 (EST)
Like most consumers, I had always assumed that banks and customers are united in wanting to curtail bank fraud. Unfortunately, I have learned that in fact bank fraud is a big and profitable business -- for the banks themselves; and that changes in electronic banking, combined with the power of...
Posted August 3, 2010 | 13:17:22 (EST)
OXFORD -- Where does America put God? Historically, there has always been tension between the separation of church and state that the United States has enshrined in its Constitution and regular upsurges of religious faith, even religious extremism, that seek an outlet in the political process -- or even seek...
Posted February 4, 2010 | 14:30:44 (EST)
You may recall that in June of last year, I was in Guantanamo when the detainees' representative, Mohamed al Hanashi, was found dead in his cell, "an aparent suicide" according to the Gitmo press office. To recap, there was plenty wrong with that picture: al Hanashi had been taken out...
Posted October 29, 2009 | 17:52:38 (EST)
For four years now, I have been following the fates of the hundreds of men who have been -- and the 200 plus men who still are -- being held at Guantánamo Bay, and, the record is now clear, most of whom have been tortured. But until this week I...
Posted October 5, 2009 | 15:13:17 (EST)
When caricature takes the place of dialogue, everyone suffers -- especially when it comes to understanding issues affecting women, who struggle worldwide against being silenced. Some right-wing American bloggers recently twisted an article that I wrote in a way that did just that.
I wrote that many women activists in...
Posted July 10, 2009 | 13:14:20 (EST)
SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND - Once the crowds were in the streets in Tehran, one could, if one knew the script, begin the countdown: if today there are mass protests, tomorrow there will be threats of retaliation in the name of "national security." By day three, we see journalists imprisoned and media...

1175 Comments | Posted October 22, 2011 | 17:03:27 (EST)