When a still-bewildered General Earl Charles Cornwallis surrendered his entire army to George Washington and to the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown in 1781, according to legend, a British military band heightened the humiliation by playing a ballad called, “The World Turned Upside Down.” The composer Lin Manuel Miranda later reimagined the song as a…
When Russian President Vladimir Putin lands in Riyadh this week for the second time in 12 years, his call for endorsement of his proposal to replace the US defense umbrella in the Gulf with a multilateral security architecture is likely to rank high on his agenda. So is Mr. Putin’s push for Saudi Arabia to…
It turns out that President Donald Trump has a “top religion advisor.” This is surprising because there is no evidence that President Trump has a “top religion,” or any religion at all. The only regular activities to occupy this president’s church-going Sundays are rounds of golf and the composing of malicious Twitter messages. To understand just…
“If we burn, you burn with us.” “Self-destruct together.” (Lam chao.) The new slogans of Hong Kong’s black bloc – a mob on a rampage connected to the black shirt protestors – made their first appearance on a rainy Sunday afternoon, scrawled on walls in Kowloon. Decoding the slogans is essential to understand the mindless…
“Most who watched the Chinese military parade on October 1 saw what looked to be some interesting missiles. For the informed observer, however, they were witnessing the end of an era” For decades, the United States has taken China’s ballistic missile capability for granted, assessing it as a low-capability force with limited regional impact and…
When the West’s leading media organizations attempt to convince audiences they know nothing about where Mohammed Aly – a Spanish-based Egyptian protest leader – came from, the first thing one can be sure of is they are being lied to. Protests have begun to spread again in Egypt after nearly a decade of frustration in Washington…
