Years ago, I had a friendly discussion with Ariel Sharon. I told him: “I am first of all an Israeli. After that I am a Jew.” He responded heatedly: “I am first of all a Jew, and only after that an Israeli!” That may look like an abstract debate. But in reality, this is the…
Western policymakers brazenly advocate that to be taken seriously, nations must emulate the Western democratic tradition. But peel back the veneer of these so-called democracies, and there lurks something sinister and rotten. Just about 2,500 years ago, democracy took its first breath in that fertile hotbed of philosophical thought known as Athens, one of the…
US counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan not only failed to reduce the notorious opium production, but also contributed to increased poppy cultivation due to Washington’s funding of irrigation projects, a new report said. The US spent some $8.62 billion on counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan in 2002-2017, a report from Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR),…
