What were Islamist terrorists trying to accomplish when they attacked Paris on Friday, killing over 120 French civilians? A growing number of analysts now agree with Juan Cole’s theory about the extremists’ strategy in France, which he raised after the the Charlie...
“You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. (…) You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want me on that wall, you need me on that wall. (…) I have neither the time nor the inclination to...
“Wait, what the f*** is that?” Julien Solomita finally managed to spit that out after two minutes of dumbfounded silence as he recorded an unidentified flying object from a rooftop parking lot in Van Nuys, California on Saturday night. He had been gathering footage...
“Assad must go. Assad must go.” This monotonous mantra has echoed endlessly in halls of power throughout the US-led imperium. In Washington, London, Riyadh, Doha, Ankara, and Tel Aviv, its chant has droned on for years, heedless of developments. Al Qaeda and ISIS...
When Bill Kristol watches Star Wars movies, he roots for the Galactic Empire. The leading neocon recently caused a social media disturbance in the Force when he tweeted this predilection for the Dark Side following the debut of the final trailer for Star Wars: The...
Disastrous policies often raise the question of whether the policy makers at fault are stupid or evil. The scales tips toward malevolence whenever the guilty parties evince a basic grasp of the reasons why their schemes are calamitous. For example, Washington’s Syria...
A group of peace negotiators has won the Nobel Peace Prize for its role in preserving the Tunisian Revolution. That 2011 event kicked off the wave of uprisings known as the Arab Spring. The Tunisian Revolution is widely seen as the one bright spot of the Arab Spring,...
“Make America Great Again” is the slogan for Donald Trump’s phenomenally popular presidential campaign. With it, Trump has tapped a deep well of frustration among American conservatives about the direction of the country under President Barack Obama. This longing for...
U.S. and Afghan officials have tried to justify the recent U.S./NATO bombing of a Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) hospital in Afghanistan (which killed 22 people) by claiming that it was housing Taliban fighters. Glenn Greenwald recently wrote of...
Israel lacks a national motto. If its leaders are looking for a Latin one, “carpe chaos” would be an apt and honest choice. “Seize the chaos” is half of Israeli foreign policy in a nutshell (the other half being the instigation of that chaos in the first place)....
