The World of Warcraft movie flopped in the States. That’s no great injustice. The movie isn’t exactly high fantasy. It compares miserably to “sword and sorcery” classics like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. But there is one failing in Tolkien’s tales that Warcraft...
Maybe half a million dead, half a country – 10 million people – displaced from their homes, jettisoned onto the mercy of the world. Welcome to war. Welcome to Syria. This is a conflict apparently too complex to understand. The U.S. brokered a ceasefire...
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...
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...
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...
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...
“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...
