In the vast and ever expanding firmament of Western Human Rights NGO’s, PEN, America Center, the writers’ organization, is far from the most luminous and ordinarily barely visible. But a dark side of PEN came clearly into view with the hiring of Suzanne Nossel as its...
What do Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan have in common? Although it’s true that the United States has conducted recent military interventions in all of them, the more fundamental answer is that they are all artificial countries. That is, they are...
Poor Carla del Ponte – as soon as she let the cat out of the bag on the Syria "sarin gas" hoax a flurry of articles appeared in the mainstream media reporting panicked denials by UN officials and reminding us all of her past sins. John Hudson, writing in Foreign...
In Mosul, a sticky bomb planed on a provincial councilor's car killed her driver. A policeman was gunned down. A roadside bomb wounded two policemen. Security forces killed two gunmen. A roadside bomb killed a man and wounded a woman. Gunmen attacked a Tikrit...
Last week, several polls came out assessing U.S. public opinion on intervention in Syria. According to the Huffington Post poll, Americans oppose U.S. air strikes on Syria by 3-to-1. They oppose sending arms to the rebels by 4-to-1. They oppose putting U.S. ground...
WASHINGTON -- In a burst of springtime whimsy, the principle of a private Christian school in Seattle last week looked at the bright, warm forecast and decided to call off school for a ‘Sun Day.” Principal Bob Sampson said he wanted to give students some time to...
One of President Obama’s greatest “accomplishments” has been creating fissures within the antiwar/progressive community in the United States by talking like a progressive politician, but acting in most cases as a conservative one. Consider, for example, his domestic...
An ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country, a British statesman famously wrote some 400 years ago. That is true, of course, for all diplomats. The question is whether the diplomat lies only to others, or also to himself. I am asking...
For well over a year, the US has pursued a policy of regime change in Syria. This policy is rooted in Washington’s broader regional interest: maintaining obedient client states and eliminating states that challenge US hegemony. More specifically, the US is interested...
