A recent BBC News article asked the quite pertinent question of whether U.S. politics is “beyond repair”. The points that the writer Nick Bryant makes regarding political “hyperpartisanship”, what he terms “the degradation of debate” and the corruption of both major political parties on the electoral front are quite valid, but fail to get to…
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Friday visit to Ukraine was so uncomfortable he may as well have arrived in Kiev to the tune of Bob Dylan’s ‘Positively 4th Street’. You’ve got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend/ When I was down you just stood there grinning/ You got a lotta nerve…
From the Peace of Westphalia to the Law of the Jungle The January 2nd American assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani of Iran was an event of enormous moment. Gen. Soleimani had been the highest-ranking military figure in his nation of 80 million, and with a storied career of 30 years, one of the most universally…
On January 20, Donald J. Trump completed his third year in office. I predicted in 2016, in a blog post that received considerable traction on social media, that Trump would lose his bid for America’s highest office. I was spectacularly wrong but not alone. Even the Las Vegas bookies thought Clinton was a shoo-in with…
In March 1906, on the heels of the U.S. Army’s massacre of some 1,000 men, women, and children in the crater of a volcano in the American-occupied Philippines, humorist Mark Twain took his criticism public. A long-time anti-imperialist, he flippantly suggested that Old Glory should be redesigned “with the white stripes painted black and the…
The Trump administration is threatening to destroy Iraq’s economy by withholding a critical source of money that is controlled by the Federal Reserve. The threat is a response to the Iraqi parliament’s unanimous decision to end Washington’s 17 year-long military occupation. The Iraqi people and their representatives in parliament are incensed by the recent assassination…
