Discerning Vladimir Putin
We have left behind the Russian dolls, one inside the other as if occlusion were their very point. “A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma,” Churchill’s famous mot (invariably quoted out of context) is no longer for us….
Scholar Robert Meister on a new model: Using the financial markets to fuel historical justice
Revolutionary thinker and author of “After Evil” on how the financial markets could be leveraged toward justice Part 1 of my illuminating interview with Robert Meister, the author of “After Evil: A Politics of Human Rights,” explored some of the…
Scholar Robert Meister on America: Saying “the past is evil” doesn’t mean the evil is past
Part 1: A leading critic of “human rights discourse” on how we abandoned any sense of historical justice I first came upon Robert Meister a few years ago, when Peter Dimock, a singularly gifted novelist whose judgment I trust, urged…
A Conversation With Richard Falk, Part 2
On Israel, Palestine, and his work as a UN special rapporteur. When I met Richard Falk shortly before the turn of 2017 into 2018, I found the scholar, lawyer, activist, advocate, adviser, and writer as kinetically thoughtful and plugged-in as…
Cold War Illusions: Losing Friends
Just before the November 2016 elections, I was invited to share lunch at a place called Packer’s Corner, a tiny hamlet in southeastern Vermont. I was instantly intrigued. If “faded glory” fairly describes the place now, Packer’s Corner et ses…
John Kerry’s last hurrah: With the Syrian cease-fire, the secretary of state takes a parting swipe at Russophobia
The cease-fire ends his successful skirmish with the Pentagon, but the war will grind on long after Kerry is gone Secretary of State John Kerry now gives us another “cessation of hostilities” agreement — a not-quite-cease-fire — as signed with…
War in the media age: Hysteria over Trump’s supposed Russian ties made headlines, but the “story” is remarkably flimsy
A case study in how a co-opted press manufactures foreign policy consent From one week to the next, I note with mounting anxiety the media’s habit of using innuendo, loaded suggestion, assemblages of proximate facts, implication short of assertion and omission…
Corporate media’s Turkey spin: “Attempted coup” bears the marks of an authoritarian power grab orchestrated by Erdoğan
Last week’s events in Turkey leave astute observers with more questions than answers Recip Tayyip Erdoğan has to be the most exotic political figure to come down the pike in who can say how long. “Tinpot” is too good a…
The West escalates with Russia: Make no mistake, a second Cold War is now official NATO policy
NATO’s aggressive posture towards Russia sets a dangerous course for Obama’s successor There have been 22 NATO summits since the first convened in Paris 59 years ago. If you study the chronology, they are more frequent during those times the…
The two Obamas: An assessment of our capable, but captive president
Obama’s obscuring of the truth about his drone program tarnishes otherwise strong legacy on human rights Not long ago I had the president of our great country down as a conundrum or an enigma or a Hamlet or a hypocrite—or…
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