John Glaser

John Glaser is a freelance writer in Washington, D.C.

The Ism That Won’t Go Away

Recent anthropological studies of the Turkana people, “a nomadic society in east Africa that lacks a centralized government,” find that they can “regularly muster armies of several hundred warriors, most of whom have never met before” by relying on fear of punishment or marginalization as the price of dissent and by exploiting kinship loyalties expected to “benefit the ethnolinguistic group.” A … Continue reading “The Ism That Won’t Go Away”

Secret War on Iran May Hurt Reform Movement

For years now, a concerted covert U.S. campaign of cyber-terrorism, commercial sabotage, targeted assassinations, and proxy wars has apparently been under way in Iran. From June 2009 to May 2010 a computer virus called Stuxnet was unleashed on Iran’s nuclear facilities. The widely publicized cyber-attack aimed at obstructing Iran’s nuclear enrichment was “precisely calibrated” to … Continue reading “Secret War on Iran May Hurt Reform Movement”