The colorful term “headchoppers” has been recently used to describe a barbaric national movement that relies on literally chopping off heads to quell dissent and intimidate the population. Like the recent terms “show runner” (for TV producer) or “shot caller” (for...
The sudden interest of Western media and diplomats in the Syrian city of Madaya has very little to do with the thousands of purportedly starving civilians — and everything to do with propaganda in a war that is not going the way Western capitals wanted. For the past...
Even considering that no one is fit to be president – in that no one should be able to command a state, which rules by threatening and committing violence against innocents – Hillary Clinton is especially unfit. No one who has done what she has done as a...
The new season of the podcast Serial is now in its fourth week, telling the story of Bowe Bergdahl’s capture by the Haqqani, his five year imprisonment in Pakistan, and eventual release in a prisoner exchange. But as the host, Sarah Koenig, explains in the first...
The headlines are filled with the latest alleged threat posed by ISIS – a band of savages thousands of miles away that, at most, has the capacity to inspire the crazies in our midst to acts of relatively smalltime violence. Relative, that is, to the real threat of...
Geopolitics makes strange bedfellows. Take Israel and Saudi Arabia for instance. The two Middle Eastern powers might be expected to have zero common ground. Israel is the arch-colonizer of Arabs and Muslims, while Saudi Arabia governs the motherland of the Arabs and...
North Korea announced recently that it had successfully detonated its first hydrogen bomb. “This test is a measure for self-defense,” state media announced, “to firmly protect the sovereignty of the country and the vital right of the nation from the...
In America, the public, some politicians, and even President Obama have a vague awareness that U.S. government policies affect the recruitment of terrorists by radical groups. However, going too far with such self-awareness leads to excessively unsettling conclusions...
