Saudi Arabia (along with its partners in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain) is not the only party in the region to exploit an anti-Iran theme as a basis for retaining U.S. support, and it certainly is not the most influential one in shaping U.S. policy.
Like it or not, the president of the United States embodies America itself. The individual inhabiting the White House has become the preeminent symbol of who we are and what we represent as a nation and a people. In a fundamental sense, he is us. It was not always so.
FOR ONCE, Donald Trump has a point. “We can’t let a madman with nuclear weapons let on the loose like that,” he told Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte.
Conservative media outlets have been salivating the past several months over the twists and turns of a situation involving former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and her former IT employee Imran Awan, who was arrested while trying to leave the country last week. [snip] Here is our best effort at ferreting out which allegations in this ongoing saga are plausible, which are baseless, and what’s left to figure out.
LobeLog is posting excerpts from the Legislative Round-up published weekly when Congress is in session by the inimitable Lara Friedman, previously of Americans for Peace Now and now the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace. These weekly round-ups cover what Congress is up to and what individual members are saying, particularly about Israel-Palestine and Iran.
The U.S.-government-supported Public Broadcasting System (PBS) recently ran a five-part series dubbed “Inside Putin’s Russia”. With a different theme each night, it purports to give a realistic look at Russia today. The image conveyed is of a Russia that is undemocratic with widespread state repression, violence and propaganda. Following are significant distortions and falsehoods in the five-part documentary.
Once upon a time, long, long ago, I testified before the great assembly of our land.
When I describe this event to children today, it really does sound to them like a fairy tale. Once upon a time — a time before the world splintered into a million pieces and America became its current disunited states — this old woman was a young idealist who tried to persuade our mighty Congress that a monster was stalking the land.
Is it about wrestling or is it about politics or maybe about Trump and the art of reality maintenance? Or, is it about Hillary? It's not so much about Sanders, but Warren makes a cameo.
Pushed by Israel and Saudi Arabia, President Trump is edging toward war with Iran, possibly beginning with “mission creep” in Syria, a reversal of Trump’s campaign rhetoric objecting to military adventures, writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.
It was curious to observe how much of Jeremy Corbyn’s successful campaign to rebuild the Labour Party was about foreign policy. Wars, he said, make us less safe, not more. Agreeing with him were: the obvious facts of the matter, voters in opinion polls, and apparently voters in their votes.
Last week, Lee Camp, an acerbic left-wing comic, dedicated six minutes of his topical TV show, “Redacted Tonight,” to the discredited conspiracy theory that it wasn’t Russian hackers who leaked emails during the presidential election but Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staff member killed in a botched robbery.
Along with targeting civilians in a city long considered to be safe from terrorism, the Islamic State’s first attack in Iran seemed designed to further aggravate tensions in the Persian Gulf region.
The mainstream U.S. media sells the mythical integrity of fired FBI Director Comey and special Russia-gate prosecutor Mueller, but the truth is they have long histories as pliable political operatives, writes ex-FBI official Coleen Rowley.
Last night I got to thinking about days long past when I had plunged into the “pirate” life and moved aboard a sailboat which was my home in the Caribbean for seven years. My previous sailing had been on a twenty-four foot boat on a lake in Texas and a lot of vicarious trips with the likes of Joshua Slocum and Bernard Moitessier.
