The headline in the UK newspaper the Daily Mail on August 7 encapsulated much that is paranoid in sad modern Britain. It read “Russian warships pass through English Channel as Putin’s armed forces ratchet up pressure on the Royal Navy.” Certainly, the United Kingdom is in a state of crisis; but it isn’t because of any sort of military…
As a new military confrontation over Syria is impending, thought out by Israel, prepared by the British and executed by the US, the West’s future depends greatly upon two mavericks, the US President Donald Trump and the UK Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn. These two men are as different as you can make. One is for…
In a move that was entirely predictable, the US administration is once again threatening to bomb Syria if there is a “chemical weapons attack”. This was entirely predictable because that chemical attack script has been read out, with salty crocodile tears, fake concern, and mocked indignation by US talking heads over the years – since…
One thing already seems clear in the Trump era: the world will not turn out to be the American president’s playground. His ultra-unilateralist, rejectionist policies on trade, the Iran denuclearization agreement, the costs of defense, and climate change are already creating an incipient anti-Trump movement globally (and in the United States as well). To a…
When Russian President Vladimir Putin, fresh from his star turn at the wedding of Austrian Prime Minister Karin Kneissl, showed up at the 18th century Meseberg Palace north of Berlin on Saturday afternoon for a face-to-face with German chancellor Angela Merkel, that was a surprise of sorts; the meeting had been announced only a few…
At the time it happened and shortly after its conclusion, the brief war between Georgia, the breakaway republics, and Russia, has had relatively limited international political consequences, commensurate with the conflict’s brevity and comparatively low level of violence which can hardly be compared with the prolonged and far bloodier wars in Libya, Syria, or even…
