The King of Tonga turned 88 today. Four years ago the New Zealand papers had him dying, still he keeps going. I bring him up because I wrote a book about the murder of a Peace Corps volunteer by another…
Have you watched Ray Suarez of the NewsHour from Mexico City? He seems a different person entirely from the grim professional at the desk back in Virginia, or wherever they be. He’s impassioned, fuerte, and alive. He seems thrilled to…
The New Republic this week has a snidely-vicious attack on John Murtha as the destroyer of the Democratic party’s hopes for November. The article reflects TNR’s belief that the war in Iraq is a good thing, and underscores the deep…
A few weeks before the invasion of Iraq, Melissa Block of National Public Radio interviewed Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz about what war would mean for Iraq. It’s a good interview, worth reviewing. Wolfowitz is of course now at the…
My dog looks happy here, but he’s actually trembling, and extremely anxious. The first firecrackers have just gone off in the neighbor’s yard. He freaks out, scurries up to me, crawls into the hole I’m digging for a viburnum. A…
I watched Brazil-France with a Brazilian who had just flown here, at the bar of a packed restaurant in Little Brazil, W. 46th in New York. For more than an hour he was pure joy to be with. He strongarmed…
The videotape of a Palestinian girl running helplessly around a Gaza beach after the rest of her family was annihilated in an unclaimed explosion got the world’s attention three weeks ago. Horror like this is rarely captured so freshly (even…