On May 16, Russia and Ukraine held their first direct talks since the first months of the war. Despite the pessimistic evaluation by Ukrainian and European leaders, the return to diplomacy is itself a major achievement and step forward. The talks lasted an hour and...
Former FBI director James Comey has provoked a First Amendment firestorm with a display of sea shells that included the sequence: “86 47.” Many supporters of President Donald Trump note that in popular culture “86” frequently is used as slang for eliminating...
Deal-making is said to be President Trump’s specialty, yet after five rounds of indirect talks with Iran – most recently just days ago – we seem as far away from an agreement as ever. The fifth round ended last Friday with no breakthrough, but at least no breakdown....
Try this sometime: say that NATO bombed civilians in Serbia, and Russia did the same in Ukraine. Don’t take a side, don’t justify it – just note the symmetry and watch the room explode. You’ll be accused of whataboutism, as though you’d just farted in church during a...
There was a time when Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to have all the cards. The Palestinian Authority was largely passive, the occupied West Bank was relatively calm, Israel's diplomatic reach was expanding, and the United States seemed ready to bend international law to...
The brief freeze and rapid partial reinstatement of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding in early 2025 helped expose it as a US regime-change tool. Created to rebrand CIA covert operations as “democracy promotion,” the NED channels government funds to...
Who could have imagined 19 months ago that it would take more than a year and a half of Israel slaughtering and starving Gaza’s children for the first cracks to appear in what has been a rock-solid wall of support for Israel from western establishments. Finally,...
The hatred of some in Israel for the people of Gaza – even for little children – is just astounding. If they have even a tiny bit of belief in God, they should pray for forgiveness. Unfortunately, NPR reported last Thursday (May 15) on “deadly airstrikes, killing more...
Reprinted with permission from The Realist Review. To hear an American President, the supposed leader of the self-styled free world, no matter how disingenuously, declare that the age of nation building is over, and deliver a thunderous denunciation of the nation...
This week the United States House of Representatives passed the ridiculously titled “Mobilizing and Enhancing Georgia’s Options for Building Accountability, Resilience, and Independence Act (MEGOBARI Act) by a vote of 349 to 42. The latter “nay” vote consisted of 34...
