Beyoncé’s venerable lyric in the 50 Cent Thug Love classic may be about street toughs, but it applies well to our need for really good bad guys to focus our efforts in making the world safe for, er, American business. Let’s let Peter Van Buren explain… – Ed. Peter Van Buren There is a nasty…
b. traven In the run up to the Iraq war in 2002-03, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain worked so hard to get American approval that he was widely labelled as George W. Bush’s “poodle.” But who today yelps loudest when the kings of Saudi Arabia (that poor excuse for a nation) say “bark”?…
W.J. Astore News that President Obama has doubled the number of American troops (whoops — I mean advisers) in Iraq to 3100 is already a tacit admission of defeat in that troubled region. Let’s recall that the Iraqi security forces the U.S. trained and equipped to the tune of $25 billion simply melted away when…
By Richard Silverstein. Introduction by b. traven. Richard Silverstein is an insightful American-Jewish commentator on Israeli affairs. His web site, http://www.richardsilverstein.com, offers a contrarian perspective on Israeli policies and coverage of them by the American mainstream media. Read on for some refreshingly critical perspectives on U.S. cease-fire and peace initiatives, such as they are. b.…
b. traven Who is the real aggressor in Ukraine? The U.S. appears to be playing the democracy card again, this time to save Ukraine from big, bad Putin. But is there a joker in the deck? Is it possible that our President, our Vice President, and our eminent Secretary of State, emboldened by their claims of…
b. traven John Kerry, America’s Secretary of State, has spent the last four months cobbling together a new Palestinian-Israeli peace process charade. To this end, he’s appointed Martin Indyk as his “Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian (Peace) Negotiations.” Why has the U.S. media failed to assess this appointment in any critical way? If Indyk had been Muslim…
The Contrary Perspective 