What's said about sausage and journalism must also be true of foreign policy: that if you knew how it was produced, you wouldn't want to consume it. I'm certainly disgusted and alarmed to learn from WikiLeaks via Dawn.com that U.S. special operations forces deployed secretly on joint operations...
Posted May 23, 2011 | 01:22 PM (EST)
The evil that evil men do casts a long shadow, as a German court's recent conviction of former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk brings home. The sight of a 91-year-old working-class immigrant (Demjanjuk hid in plain sight for many years as an autoworker in the U.S. state of Ohio)...
Posted May 4, 2011 | 09:15 PM (EST)
Republished with permission from The Dawn.
As I begin writing this it’s 2:00 a.m. where I am and 3:00 a.m. in New York and Washington, where exuberant crowds have gathered at Ground Zero and the White House, belligerently chanting “USA! USA!” and singing the national anthem and...
30 Comments | Posted April 18, 2011 | 02:00 PM (EST)
We need to believe that the world, and/or our situation in it, can be improved, or else there really isn't much point in getting out of bed in the morning. That's the real issue at the heart of the controversy being raised by the 60 Minutes story on...
49 Comments | Posted April 7, 2011 | 06:26 PM (EST)
SEATTLE, April 3 -- There are so many reasons to feel alarmed, worried and/or confused at the moment -- Japan, Libya, Obama, take your pick -- that it seems almost quaint, "so last year," to single out the Quran-burning pastor in Florida. But his latest antic, and the resulting deaths...
Posted February 26, 2011 | 01:12 PM (EST)
ISLAMABAD, February 22 -- one of the stock lines I use in my public speaking around the U.S., when I'm trying to interest Americans in Pakistan and/or Haiti, goes something like this: "I grew up in an all-white town in Wisconsin. When I tell childhood stories, my wife says it...
Posted February 8, 2011 | 07:34 PM (EST)
One of the nicest compliments I've ever received for my work was when a Pakistani journalist, a young woman, told me I'm not afflicted by what she called "Have pen will write syndrome." I write when I have something to say, or a story to tell, that I believe others...
Posted January 18, 2011 | 07:02 PM (EST)
SEATTLE, JANUARY 12 - So now we know: The American right wing knows no shame and apparently will stop at nothing to bully the rest of us into shutting up and taking whatever they dish out.
On the sound principle -- understood by right-wingers but not by liberals -- that...
Posted January 10, 2011 | 10:45 AM (EST)
SEATTLE, JANUARY 8 -- Those of us who are concerned about the fate of Pakistan were still reeling from the January 4 assassination of Punjab governor and liberal newspaper publisher Salmaan Taseer in Islamabad, when we heard about the shooting of U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson. What does one...
Posted September 3, 2010 | 02:51 PM (EST)
Port-au-Prince, September 2 -- Haiti is, as a friend of mine put it years ago, a place for big questions. I've been trying to understand it for nearly thirty years, and its politics, history and culture have many twists and turns that are still opaque to me. At the same...
Posted August 16, 2010 | 12:14 PM (EST)
Yesterday a non-Pakistani friend here in Seattle emailed me: "I wanted to ask you which you think would be the best organization to make a donation to for the current crisis in Pakistan. We usually give to MSF, but their website doesn't seem to offer the opportunity to give specifically...
Posted May 26, 2011 | 03:49 PM (EST)