Category Archives: Prose Screeds

CAIRO, May 9 – With the tone of a teacher and the certainty of a believer, the president of Iran wrote to President Bush that Western democracy had failed and that the invasion of Iraq, American treatment of prisoners and … Continue reading →

ACCRA, Ghana — More than a quarter of children under the age of 5 in the developing world are underweight due to hunger, poor diet, or disease, according to the first UN study in 15 years to examine global nutrition … Continue reading →

The inability of the elected individuals in Iraq to form a government lies in the fact that they are not trying to form effective institutions that can actually govern. Rather, they are trying to find a formula for divvying up … Continue reading →

The Dowbrigade remains deeply embittered and betrayed by the premature death of his fourth-generation iPod at the tender age of 14 months, two months after the expiration of its warranty, converting it instantly into an attractive, leather-clad $300 doorjamb. Terminal … Continue reading →

Back when the Dowbrigade was a rambunctious young refugee from Ivy academics we  served an extended apprenticeship with a middle aged San Pedro shaman in a tiny seafront town in the middle of the Atacames desert on the Pacific coast … Continue reading →

KINGSTON, Jamaica – Mortimo Planno, a philosopher regarded as a key figure in the development of the Rastafarian religion, has died. He was 85. from MSNBC Mortimo Planno was born in Kingston on September 6.1920. He was one of the … Continue reading →

WASHINGTON — The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has grown to as many as 12 million, and they now account for about one in every 20 workers, according to an estimate by an offshoot of the Pew … Continue reading →

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 The Muslim world erupted in anger on Friday over caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad published in Europe while the Bush administration offered the protesters support, saying of the cartoons, "We find them offensive, and we certainly understand … Continue reading →

A recent visitor to the Dowbrigade household remarked on a carved wooden light-pull which spells out the name "Jesus" in the form of a fish. Perhaps, being aware at least of our traditionally Jewish surname, he wondered if we were … Continue reading →

The similarities between Iraq and Vietnam are moving from disquieting to disturbing to desperately dire. Then as now, a gullible and gung-ho public was duped into a foreign war by a corrupt administration with the complicity of a sensationalist press … Continue reading →

Over the years, as we have watched the Soviet Union disintegrate, Yugoslavia implode, thousands die from the persistent struggle for Tamil independence and dozens of other low-grade but nevertheless brutal and deadly civil wars around the globe, we have become … Continue reading →