Fear and trepidation are slowly building up, as US President-elect, Donald Trump, is fortifying his transitional team with people capable of bringing about a nightmare scenario, not only for Americans but for the rest of the world, as well. For Palestinians, however, the signs are even more ominous. From former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, …
Continue reading “What Should Palestinians Expect – Can Trump Be Any Worse?”
Several small attacks across Baghdad left a considerable number of casualties.
As Donald Trump takes the reins and we all prepare for the next four years, the need to translate rhetoric into reality comes to the fore. Trump spent the campaign repeating a phrase that horrified the elites – especially the foreign policy Establishment – even adopting it as his official campaign theme: “America first.” The …
Continue reading “What Would an ‘America First’ Foreign Policy Look Like?”
It couldn’t be stranger when you think about it (which few here care to do). In the latter part of the twentieth century and the first years of this one, Washington did what no power in history had ever done. It garrisoned the globe with a staggering number of military bases in a remarkably blanket …
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Local medical personnel say that dozens of civilian casualties occur everyday.
“We have fallen into a self-defeating spiral of reaction and counterterror,” writes Mark Danner in his new book Spiral: Trapped in the Forever War. “Our policies, meant to extirpate our enemies, have strengthened and perpetuated them.” Danner – an award winning journalist, professor, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations who has covered war …
Continue reading “America’s Spiral Into Permanent War Seems More Foolish Than Ever”
The militias are insisting they will enter Tal Afar, which could cause Turkey to join the fight.
President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Kansas Congressman Mike Pompeo, an open aficionado of torture practices used in the “war on terror,” to be CIA director shows that Trump was serious when he said he would support “waterboarding and much worse.” Earlier, there had been a sliver of hope that that, while on the campaign trail, …
Continue reading “Installing a Torture Fan at CIA”
These two appointments underscore the contradictions at the heart of Trumpism Life is full of contradictions: that’s what ideologues of all persuasions don’t get. And politics – with its inevitable vagaries, compromises, and unforeseen events – exemplifies this reality. You can multiply that principle by at least ten when analyzing President-elect Donald J. Trump and …
Continue reading “Flynn, Pompeo, and the Paradox of the New Nationalism”
“Freedom of expression is a bedrock of American democracy,” the Washington Post‘s editorial board writes in a November 18 jeremiad, “but its irresponsible exercise can distort and destabilize our politics.” The Post‘s editors, mining the bottomless pit of mainstream media excuses for not predicting Donald Trump’s victory in November’s presidential election, think they’ve hit the …
Continue reading “The Washington Post vs. ‘Fake News’: Pot, Meet Kettle” 
