Today I am a somewhat overweight, bearded suburban dad entering a comfortable middle age, but it was not always thus. Seven short years ago I was a lean, clean-shaven, heavily armored combat medic in Iraq, and today, November 11th, everyone is apparently required by...
Entangling alliances lead to war, and nothing underscores this axiom more dramatically than the recent failure to come to some sort of agreement with Iran on limiting its nuclear program. The United States long ago concluded "with high certainty" that Iran...
OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM , Nov. 7 2013 (IPS) – As Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and nuclear talks on Iran’s disputed nuclear program continue, a unique international conference, “A Middle East without Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)”, was held in Jerusalem....
Ever since Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s President on 14 June 2013 and promised that he will lead a government of "hope and prudence," the United States’ most important allies in the Middle East – Saudi Arabia and Israel – and their lobbies here have...
Is democracy just civil war, only with ballots instead of bullets? Like chess, or football, politics is a stand-in for war, designed to ritualize conflict so as to prevent bloodshed. As long as everyone abides by the rules, and accepts the restrictions of the system,...
After a drone strike had reportedly killed Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud Nov. 1, the spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council declared that, if true, it would be “a serious loss” for the terrorist organization. That reaction accurately...
The investigation into the death of Yaser Arafat took a giant step forward the other day when Al Jazeera posted the report of a team of Swiss doctors that pretty conclusively shows he was poisoned. The big news, however, is that this was no ordinary poisoning: the...
