The aftershocks from last week’s terrorist strikes against the United States will long reverberate–in some communities longer than others. Just two days after the attacks, The New York Times carried a report that foretold how the tragedy could continue to traumatize Arab Americans, Muslims and other people of color. The newspaper told the story of […]
Jon Elliston
Posted inNews
The Next Step
One of the enduring myths–and legitimate hopes–of democracy in the United States is that anyone, no matter their background, can grow up to be president. Last Sunday, USA Today‘s weekend insert, USA Weekend, carried a cover story that explored the rising political power of this country’s fastest growing ethnic group and asked, “Who will be […]
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Profiled out
Abdullah Al-Arian, a Duke University political science major from Tampa, returned to campus this week for his senior year. But he got his real education over the summer, working on Capitol Hill. The biggest lesson came the day he was invited to meet with White House officials–and then unceremoniously kicked out of the building. A […]
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Incoming
The Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Dare County near the North Carolina coast is one of the state’s richest ecological enclaves. Its 152,000 acres of marshes, brackish canals and thickly forested nooks are home to endangered species like the red wolf and the red-cockaded woodpecker, as well as clusters of an increasingly rare tree, […]
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A mother of history
Thelma Clark’s death of a heart attack July 7 in a Lumberton hospital didn’t attract much notice, considering how closely she was tied to one of North Carolina’s most controversial figures. Clark, who was 67 when she died, grew up dirt poor in Richmond County and quit school during eighth grade to spend more time […]
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Quality of Justice
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has generally staked out pro-death penalty positions since she joined the U.S. Supreme Court 20 years ago. So opponents of capital punishment were surprised and heartened by her remarks in a July 2 speech. “If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed,” […]
Posted inGuides
The Trial of Henry Kissinger
President Richard Nixon may have resigned in shame, but the Nixonian approach to foreign policy–marked by deceit, influence peddling, bullying and outright brutality–lived on. It did so under the auspices of Henry Kissinger, that cynical and duplicitous power-player who, even today, somehow manages to don the cloak of respectability from time to time. Kissinger is […]
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Brett Ingram
Brett Ingram, a documentary filmmaker, is happy to hear that he has won an Indies Arts Award. But he’s not exactly bouncing off the walls with excitement. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I don’t put a whole lot of stock in awards,” the soft-spoken Ingram says in an interview at his Durham home, sitting […]
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A Radical on the Road?
Times are tough for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The nation’s top law enforcement agency has been skewered for several recent cases of misconduct, most notably the bureau’s sloppy records management in the Oklahoma City bombing case. There was a time, though, when the FBI was all too adept at compiling files on Americans–including some […]
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Deadly Alliance
In the summer of 1986, two residents of Washington, D.C., visited Chile, a country wracked by protests against the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. One of the visitors, U.S. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, chatted amicably with Pinochet and returned to tell the American people that it was a “myth that human rights […]
