According to Transparency International’s 2019 Corruption Perception's Index, the US is the world’s 23rd least swindling state. A bit better than Bhutan, but not quite as honest as Uruguay or the United Arab Emirates. So much for "We’re number one! We’re number...
Dream with me. Imagine an America where even marginal accountability reigned. A land of appropriate consequences for war-criminal cheerleaders. A country where going 0 for 4 on "freedom" wars – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – got pundits and policymakers...
This is the fourth segment in the author’s backstory series – "Lebanon: Bellwether, Battleground, and Bastard Child" – in the wake of the August 4, 2020 Beirut port explosion. Check out parts one, two, and three, plus stay tuned for upcoming segments at...
This is the third segment in the author’s backstory series – "Lebanon: Bellwether, Battleground, and Bastard Child" – in the wake of the August 4, 2020 Beirut port explosion. Check out part one and two, plus stay tuned for upcoming segments in Antiwar.com...
This is the second segment in the author’s backstory series – "Lebanon: Bellwether, Battleground, and Bastard Child" – in the wake of the August 4, 2020 Beirut port explosion. Read part one here. Stay tuned for upcoming segments in Antiwar.com "Lebanon...
When I was a kid, "Beirut" became a cultural shorthand for any chaotic and violent urban setting. In the 1990s, my hometown rappers – the Wu Tang Clan – repeatedly shouted out the Lebanese city (plus one of its civil war antagonists, the P.L.O. – Palestinian...
Sometime during my "brief" spell as an imperial-accomplice, zombie-flicks became all the rage. So did tweeting and texting, by the way – which I learned the hard way when a phone bill ran to several hundred bucks after returning from my first failed...
In America’s Emerald City these days, if there’s even a hint of a war-wind-down, imperial-deescalation, or military budget-cuts, Washington’s (non-dribbling) Wizards have a ready response: Russia! Indeed, these military's magicians have a far-simpler and more...
Planet Earth circa 2020: this is Orwell’s world; we’re just living in it. Who better to resurrect in this pandemic-protest moment than a leftist so lefty he ditched a life of relative English privilege to fight Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War – only to turn...
File it in the rapidly-brimming "biggest-stories-of-2020-you-haven’t-heard-about" folder. Amidst the madness merger of pandemic and protests – both of which Trump’s minions have blamed on China – there’s been scant attention paid to a brewing conflict...
