Monthly Archives: January 2009

"...the initial rationale for the PSI was both nebulous enough to serve any purpose and sufficiently malleable to adjust to the desire for planned deployments against new adversaries of convenience, the evolution and extension of it gave the lie to its foundation myth and revealed its advocates' real intentions."

"Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt hit directly at the root cause of the Gaza conflict. "They will dig tunnels out of desperation and there will be no way of stopping all these tunnels if you don't open up the border," he said. Bildt was joined by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown who urged ending "Gaza's economic isolation by reopening the crossings that link it to the outside world."

"There is little or no credible reason to believe that Poe was an opium or drug addict as claimed by the administrator of his literary estate, the “character assassin,” one Rufus Griswold. Poe may have occasionally experimented with “laudanum,” Ackroyd writes. But, the author strongly argues: “The evidence does not suggest that [Poe] was an habitual imbiber of the drug.”"

"...it is necessary to focus attention on each element of the real costs - economic, political and moral – that Israel imposes on the United States. Winning these intellectual arguments will be half the battle won; this will persuade growing numbers of Americans to oppose a policy because it hurts them. Simultaneously, those who seek justice for the Palestinians must organize to oppose the power of the Israel lobby and take actions that force Israel to bear the moral, economic and political consequences of its destructive policies in the Middle East."

"If both the Israelis and Hamas claim they are victorious, who really are the losers? The Arabs of course. The Arab world emerges from this war far more divided than it has been in decades."