Pirates don’t have to look like Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. They can fly the Union Jack rather than the skull and crossbones. They can be called the Bank of England rather than the Jolly Roger. The ‘Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’ is a port in a stormy world for all kinds of…
The Latin American nation of Venezuela faces dangerous destabilization with the United States and its allies having recognized opposition figure Juan Guaido as “president” and declaring actual Venezuelan president – Nicolas Maduro – no longer recognized. In response, President Maduro has demanded US diplomatic personnel to leave the country. Protests and counter-protests have reportedly taken to…
The way personnel spin through Washington’s infamous revolving door between the Pentagon and the arms industry is nothing new. That door, however, is moving ever faster with the appointment of Patrick Shanahan, who spent 30 years at Boeing, the Pentagon’s second largest contractor, as the Trump administration’s acting secretary of defense. Shanahan had previously been…
Things just keep getting worse for the poor, embattled disinformation-busting warriors at the Integrity Initiative. New leaks have revealed more embarrassing tidbits confirming yet again the shady nature of the busted operation. This time, the spotlight is on the II’s targeting of anti-fracking activists, its ties to HSBC bank, its obsessive (near-fetishizing) focus on nuclear…
Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace is widely considered to be the best war novel ever written. Spatially, in its more than 1,800 pages it offers a vast panorama of Russia during the Napoleonic wars, both on the battlefield and on the home front. Temporally, Tolstoy shifts our attention back and forth between the big picture in time-lapse…
The leader of Hezbollah Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah challenged world intelligence services, notably the Israelis, who track him by the hour, during a three hour live broadcast interview with al-Mayadeen TV on Saturday. Nasrallah showed he has the technical ability to broadcast live for this length of time without fear of being located. Even more important,…
