The level of political rhetoric ripping through the US has hit such a fever pitch that even the world of comedy has been weaponized for political gain. As a result, comedy is no longer a laughing matter for many Americans. If ever the United States of Anger needed an industrial-size dose of comic relief injected…
One of the reasons that countries fail is that collective memory is continually destroyed as older generations pass away and are replaced by new ones who are disconnected from what came before. Initially, the disconnect was handled by history and by discussions around family tables. For example, when I was a kid there were still…
Don’t look for the Trump administration to pull out of Afghanistan any time soon. In fact, expect just the opposite, as ill-advised as it is to continue pursuing a military solution to protect a US-installed corrupt government that is teetering on the brink of its own destruction. The US has entered its 17th year in…
These days, our global political alliances seem to shift with remarkable rapidity, as if we were actually living in George Orwell’s 1984. Are we at war this month with Oceania? Or is it Eastasia? In that novel, the Party is able to erase history, sending old newspaper articles down the Ministry of Truth’s “memory hole”…
Nothing less than the future of politics across the West – and across the Global South – is being played out in Brazil. Stripped to its essence, the Brazilian presidential elections represent a direct clash between democracy and an early 21st Century, neofascism, indeed between civilization and barbarism. Geopolitical and global economic reverberations will be…
The macabre case of a missing Saudi journalist is prompting speculation within the US political establishment about a historic parting of ways between Washington and Saudi Arabia. It’s not clear yet what actually happened Jamal Khashoggi, a 59-year-old prominent commentator who worked for the Washington Post, among other major news outlets. He has been missing for almost a…
