War and Conflict

Latest Articles

Deval Patrick and the mosque

Letters to the Boston editor, July 2, 2010
I was extremely disappointed to read your close-minded, ignorant, and bigoted position on Governor Deval Patrick’s meeting with Muslims at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | June 30, 2010

A Congolese feast

Beans and rice, with African flair
I met Constance Kabaziga at the checkout at Mittapheap World Market. She was buying frozen cassava root and dried beans, and I really wanted to know what she was going to do them.
By LINDSAY STERLING | June 30, 2010

Review: The Oath

An indictment on the War on Terror
The oath referred to is that swearing fealty to Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 09, 2010

A Rhode Island filmmaker’s tribute to the Good War

Heroes
Amid the moral ambiguity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — the handwringing over weapons of mass destruction, drone attacks, and the rights of detainees — there is something startling about the raw patriotism of the documentary Navy Heroes of Normandy .
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 02, 2010

Physics lesson for Diamon

Letters to the Portland editor, May 21, 2010
Newton’s laws of gravity and motion are universally understood laws, not subject to anyone’s opinion.
By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | May 20, 2010

The Big Hurt: Red scare

M.I.A.’s ultraviolent new video misses the target
If you’re a dedicated follower of pop, you’ve no doubt heard about M.I.A.’s shocking new video for “Born Free,” the lead single from her upcoming album.
By DAVID THORPE | May 04, 2010

Open Your Mind to 9-11 Truth

Letters to the Portland editor, May 7, 2010
I was disappointed but not surprised to read Al Diamon’s shallow and cynical column on Dr. David Ray Griffin.
By PORTLAND PHOENIX LETTERS | May 05, 2010

High ideals and crazy dreams

Truthers hurt
I have nothing against conspiracy theories.
By AL DIAMON | April 28, 2010

Not your cup of tea?

Letters to the Boston editor, April 30, 2010
David S. Bernstein asserts that Glenn Beck fans his audience’s fears, yet the headline for his piece on the Tea Party is “ ‘Tea’ Is For Terrorism.”
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | April 29, 2010

Elena Kagan’s shaky record

What a Kagan appointment to the Supreme Court could mean for civil liberties
As a potential Obama nominee for Supreme Court justice, Elena Kagan has liberal bona fides and the likely support of the right. But if her record is any indication, she’s more likely to side with the conservative bloc on matters of executive power and war-time presidential authority.
By HARVEY SILVERGLATE AND KYLE SMEALLIE | April 16, 2010

The Two-State Solution

Slobsville vs. Snobsville
The Real Maine meets Northern Mass.
By DAVID KISH | April 21, 2010

Review: Life During Wartime

Solondz's return to Happiness is — surprise! — really depressing
You can’t get enough Happiness — or so Todd Solondz must have thought when he spun off this sour sequel to his 1998 misanthropic ode to suburban perversion.
By PETER KEOUGH | August 04, 2010

The horror

‘The Armenian Genocide: 95 Years Later’
In April 1915, Turks of the Ottoman Empire began killing the Armenians in their midst.
By GREG COOK | April 22, 2010

Review: The Warlords

Band of blood brothers
Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro, stars of Zhang Yimou’s superlative House of Flying Daggers , reunite, joined by Jet Li (from Zhang’s Hero ), in Peter Chan’s handsomely mounted historical epic.
By BRETT MICHEL | April 06, 2010

'Tea' is for terrorism

When even the most ‘legitimate’ voices of the right validate dangerously unhinged anti-government rhetoric — DUCK!
A year ago, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) produced a memo outlining the growing threat posed to this country from right-wing extremists. It compared the situation to that of the early 1990s — which culminated in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168.
By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN | April 12, 2010

Asher Roth & DJ Wreckineyez | Seared Foie Gras W/ Quince And Cranberry

School Boy (2010)
Now that Boston boy toy Sam Adams has blown onto hip-hop’s front lines, there’s almost room for original frat rapper Asher Roth to find a respectable position somewhere between the big-indie Atmosphere types and the upper echelon of major-label boom-bap.
By CHRIS FARAONE | April 07, 2010

A black leadership silent on abortion fabrications

Choice
Last month, controversial anti-abortion-rights billboards appeared in Georgia hinting that abortion is a tool of black genocide.
By MARY ANN SORRENTINO | March 24, 2010

Judicial ups and downs

Plus poppy hypocrisy, pressuring the Pope, and even more ‘Buttercup’ trivia
It was about time that Rogeriee Thompson was finally confirmed (unanimously, we might add) by the United States Senate for what amounts to an historic spot on the Federal Court of Appeals.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | March 24, 2010

Boston film group protests arrest of Iranian director

Power of cinema?
At the Montreal Film Festival last summer, I had the pleasure of interviewing the Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who was serving as president of the international jury.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 24, 2010

Boston Turkish Film Festival 2010

Divine madness rules the ninth annual Turkish Film Festival
In a scene in Çagan Irmak's IN DARKNESS (2009; April 3 at 3 pm), one of several provocative films in this year's Boston Turkish Film Festival at the Museum of Fine Arts, a woman explains to a TV interviewer that her political party is neither for Shari'a — extremist Islamic rule — nor for right-wing military coups. Well, good luck to her.
By PETER KEOUGH | March 17, 2010

Review: Green Zone

Follow the yellowcake road to the Emerald City
Paul Greengrass's Green Zone takes us on a frenetic trip down memory lane — back to the beginning of the Iraq War.
By SHAULA CLARK | March 17, 2010

B. Dolan | Fallen House, Sunken City

Strange Famous (2010)
Although I've always found B. Dolan to be one of hip-hop's mightiest politically charged performers, his disc-length poetic pieces have confused (and even bored) the piss out of me.
By CHRIS FARAONE | February 24, 2010

In the land of the stoner cops

On the front lines of Obama's campaign in Afghanistan
Major Jim Contreras was awaiting his marching orders. Literally.
By NIR ROSEN | March 01, 2010

Ransom Notes

Was the NY Times being hypocritical when it suppressed coverage of its journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban?
While reporting from Afghanistan two years ago, David Rohde became, for the second time in his career, an unwilling participant rather than an observer. On October 29, 1995, Rohde had been arrested by Bosnian Serbs. And then in November 2008, Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were en route to an interview with a Taliban commander when they were kidnapped.
By ADAM REILLY | February 12, 2010

Anti-solitary campaign expands

Stopping Supermax Torture
As the February 17 State House public hearing approaches on the bill to restrict solitary confinement at the Maine State Prison, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), which sparked national debate about Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, has announced its support.
By LANCE TAPLEY | February 03, 2010

Flynn-terrogation

Obsessed with the wrongs of Abu Ghraib, local author Nick Flynn traveled across the globe to meet its victims
In his powerful new memoir, The Ticking Is the Bomb (W.W. Norton), Scituate native Nick Flynn recounts a conversation he had with a man in Turkey.
By MIKE MILIARD | January 13, 2010

Airman punk

Running a band and writing music in Afghanistan
Perhaps the clearest sign that Afghanistan is not your father's war comes in the person of Airman First Class Peter Bourgeois, who, while deployed at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, has been busy managing the career of his former band, Jodi Explodi.
By SAM PFEIFLE | December 02, 2009

An Obama confidant on the surge in Afghanistan

War Dept.
Twenty-four hours before President Barack Obama announced a 30,000-troop escalation of the Afghan War, one of his key foreign policy advisors provided a view of the president’s thinking at Brown University.
By STEVEN STYCOS | December 02, 2009