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Gwen Berry recently protested the playing of the US national anthem by turning away from the flag and holding up a shirt that read “activist athlete.” The protest took place at the Olympic trials in Oregon where Berry had placed third in the hammer throw competition. Her action immediately...
On June 1, the UK defense and home secretaries announced that the local staff who worked for the British government in Afghanistan, including many interpreters for the British military, would be eligible for expedited relocation to the UK under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy...
On February 5, the Libyan Political Dialogue Forum (LPDF), a 75-member body, supervised by the United Nations, approved Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh’s list of officials to temporarily run national affairs. Their mandate will last until presidential and parliamentary elections take place on December 24....
On the domestic front, Joe Biden is flirting with transformational policies around energy, environment, and infrastructure. It’s not a revolution, but it’s considerably less timid than what Barack Obama offered in that pre-Trump, pre-pandemic era. When it comes to foreign policy, however,...
I contend that my subject matter is something of an elephant in our global room, but I should warn that it is equally a thoroughly unhappy one: religiously-inspired, revolutionary political violence. For nearly 20 years now, scarcely a day has gone by without reportage on Islamism. This type of...
In recent months, the build-up has been accelerating. In recent weeks, the media would hardly let a day go by without whetting the appetites of those who expected everyone’s favorite truthteller, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to reveal the long-awaited truth. Analyzing the...
In April, the US director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, presented an important document produced by the nation’s intelligence community, the 2021 Annual Threat Assessment. It was designed to demonstrate that the newly inaugurated president, Joe Biden, is ready to respond to any or all...
To some critics, US elections are managed affairs. According to this cynical view, the “powers that be” narrow the field of candidates, the two parties don’t represent the real range of public opinion in the country, and periodic elections are just shadow plays staged by powerbrokers behind...
The security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating dramatically. The Taliban have captured the country’s border crossing to Tajikistan. Prospects of civil war have risen. Even as the US withdrawal gains momentum, Afghan leaders are visiting Washington to meet President Joe Biden on June...
It was common knowledge that a US failure to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) before the Iranian presidential election would help conservative hard-liners to win. Indeed, on June 18, the conservative Ebrahim Raisi was elected as the new president of Iran. Raisi has a record...
US President Joe Biden used the occasion of his trip to Europe for the G7 summit to attend his first NATO meeting. His influence on the meeting appeared unambiguously when a communiqué by the NATO alliance designated China’s influence on the world stage as a military challenge. NATO...
