Busy weekend for terrorism. Nine people stabbed in a shopping mall in Minnesota (meh), and the big one in New Jersey/New York. It was there Afghan American Ahmad Rahami made up a bunch of pipe bombs and pressure cooker IEDs, distributed them in four separate locations, and set off two explosions. The one detonation in …
Continue reading “Department of Homeless Security”
Shimon Peres is a genius. A genius of impersonation. All his life he has worked on his public persona. The image replaced the man. Almost all the articles written about him since he fell ill are about the imagined person, not the real one. As the Americans like to say: He is so phony he …
Continue reading “The Saga of Sisyphus”
The reason put forward by the Obama administration for the war against the Bashar al-Assad regime – saving the Syrian people from suffering and death at the hands of Assad – has no credibility with anyone familiar with the record of US interventions for regime change around the world. As has been the case with …
Continue reading “The War Against the Assad Regime Is Not a ‘Pipeline War’”
What, precisely, is the US military for, and what, precisely, can it do? In practical terms, how powerful is it? On paper, it is formidable, huge, with carrier battle groups, advanced technology, remarkable submarines, satellites, and so on. What does this translate to? Military power does not exist independently, but only in relation to specific …
Continue reading “Bombing Everything, Gaining Nothing”
The United Kingdom has ramped up its air operations on Islamic State targets.
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.” While I’m …
Continue reading “The Crazy Years”
Recently, sorting through a pile of old children’s books, I came across a volume, That Makes Me Mad!, which brought back memories. Written by Steve Kroll, a long-dead friend, it focused on the eternally frustrating everyday adventures of Nina, a little girl whose life regularly meets commonplace roadblocks, at which point she always says… well, …
Continue reading “War, Peace, and Absurdity”
Benjamin Netanyahu has been perhaps the most anti-Palestinian Israeli prime minister in a large rogue’s gallery dedicated to driving the aggrieved Palestinians out of the land they and their ancestors have lived in and worked for millennia. This oppression – which has included ethnic cleansing, savage war on the people of the Gaza Strip, routine …
Continue reading “US Rewards Israel’s Bad Behavior”
Cruel executions continue in Mosul.
“A photograph, no matter how emotionally wrenching, can only do so much,” wrote Paul Slovic and Nicole Smith Dahmen in QZ.com. The photograph referenced in their comment was that of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, whose body was washed ashore on some Turkish beach in September 2015. It has been over a year since that tragic photograph …
Continue reading “Honoring Aylan Kurdi by Ending the War in Syria” 
