Richard Silverstein You can forget that claim you hear from Trump, Netanyahu and MBS that Iran is the greatest sponsor of state terrorism in the world. That award goes to Saudi Arabia hands down. First, it spent and wasted billions building up ISIS and arming it in order to topple the Syrian Alawite regime. It…
b. traven Traven asked an American ex-pat who lives in England to explain what is goimg on in the British Parliament, particularly on the inability of the Tory and Labour parties to come up with a viable plan for Brexit (British exit from the European Union). Leaving the EU will totally disrupt England’s trade relationship…
Richard Silverstein NOTE: This is a substantially expanded version of a piece published yesterday by Al Jazeera. It’s the first op-ed I’ve published there in ten years, so it’s an auspicious development. My KPFA Flashpoints interview discussing the subject can be heard here. For those who don’t remember their medieval history, during the Spanish Inquisition…
Peter Van Buren A guy on Facebook I don’t know wrote a version of what has become a kind of set-piece article in today’s America. Here’s a portion: Losing The War of Attrition or How To Turn Any Normal Person Into A Broken, Angry Radical You are one of the millions who are employed at…
Stuart Lyle Just how catastrophic is climate change for humans, and for all living things on Earth? There are plenty writers, like the independent journalist Dahr Jamail, who are now beginning to document the full impact of climate disruption. If you swipe away the climate-change deniers as nothing more than self-serving toadies to a generation…
Richard Silverstein Donald Trump presented his second State of the Union speech tonight and it was a phantasmagoria of Trumpian grandeur, and not in a good way. For future generations, it should be used as a model for what not to do when preparing and delivering such an address. It was significant both for what…
Stuart Lyle What if Russian interference in the US elections really is not as cunning and sophisticated as it has been portrayed in the media? And all the Facebook advertising and black ops were just blundering attempts to further the success of now-entrenched Russian kleptocracy? That’s the thesis behind Masha Gessen’s recent article in The…
Richard Silverstein 2018 was a terrible year for the Middle East. Months of massacres in Gaza, tensions between Israel and Hezbollah on its northern border, Qatar under siege from its Sunni neighbours, 85,000 children starved to death in Yemen, and a Sunni alliance rattling sabres against Iran. Though Bashar al-Assad appears to have secured his…
Intro by b. traven Bill Clinton, that paragon of marital fidelity, could not wait when he was president to rush to Richard Nixon’s funeral to pay his respect to the man who was drummed from the of Presidency for his alleged crimes and misdemeanors while in office. Clinton has now, in concert with his equally…
Richard Silverstein One of the many great tragedies of the Trump presidency is, just when you thought he couldn’t go any lower, he somehow figures out a way to do just that. Every day brings another insult to decency, democracy, the rule of law, and just plain sanity. But today marks a special new low.…
The Contrary Perspective 