With its relentless focus on corruption in Russia and Ukraine, the Atlantic Council has distinguished itself from other top-flight think tanks in Washington. Over the past several years, it has held innumerable conferences and panel discussions, issued a string of reports, and published literally hundreds of essays on Russia’s “kleptocracy” and the scourge of Kremlin disinformation. At the same time, this institution has posed as a faithful partner to Ukraine’s imperiled democracy, organizing...

Can the increasing politicization of life in America be stopped, or even slowed? To be sure, average Americans do not want this. Most people prefer not to lead overly political lives, beyond perhaps voting once in a while and grumbling about taxes or potholes. Most people prefer to focus on work, family, hobbies, sports, or a million other pursuits instead of politics. We watch the game instead of attending the Tuesday night city council meeting. But increasingly we all feel the pressure,...

“‘Am I going to get shot again.’”—2-year-old survivor of a police shooting that left his three siblings, ages 1, 4 and 5, with a bullet in the brain, a fractured skull and gun wounds to the face Children learn what they live. As family counselor Dorothy Law Nolte wisely observed, “If children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with fear, they learn to be apprehensive.” And if children live with terror, trauma and...

When Twitter Safety announced that it was taking actions against “information operations” directed at Hong Kong, informed observers could have immediately assumed that Twitter was not actually serious about stopping anything of the sort but rather ensuring the information operation they are a part of was protected and those attempting to take action against it were purged from their platform. And of course, those informed observers would be correct. The official statement published on...

This morning, Russian military officials announced they are now patrolling the region surrounding Syria’s northern town of Manbij, specifically in the areas which separate Turkish troops and the Syrian Arab Army soldiers. According to a Russian Defense Ministry statement issued Tuesday, Russian military police are being positioned as a ‘buffer’ around the area northwest of Manbij, “along the line of contact between the Syrian Arab Republic and Turkey.” Officials also indicated that they are in...

When President Trump Tweeted last week that “it is time for us to get out of these ridiculous endless wars,” adding that the US would be withdrawing from Syria, Washington went into a panic. Suddenly Republicans, Democrats, the media, the think tanks, and the war industry all discovered and quickly became experts on “the Kurds,” who we were told were an “ally” being sent to their slaughter by an ignorant President Trump.But it was all just another bipartisan ploy to keep the “forever war”...

Last night, Kurdish officials in northeastern Syria issued a statement that an agreement has been reached with the government in Damascus allowing the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to takeover key strategic positions along the Syria’s northern border with Turkey. Not surprisingly, cheers can he heard from Damascus to Moscow, and Tehran too, while leaving Washington’s foreign policy blob visibly moaning in agony. The reality of the situation is that Turkey sprung a trap set by Damascus and its allies....

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.Once intelligent people are talking about actual civil war in America. This began after Trump retweeted a pastor saying impeachment would cause a “civil war-like fracture in this Nation.” Never mind that it was a retweet, and never mind that the original statement used “like” to make a comparison. The next headline was set: Trump Threatens Civil War If He’s Impeached. Newsweek quoted a Harvard Law professor saying that the “threat” alone made Trump impeachable....

More war in wretched Syria. Half the population is now refugees; entire cities lie shattered by bombing; bands of crazed gunmen run rampant; US, French, Israeli and Russian warplanes bomb widely. Now, adding to the chaos, President Donald Trump has finally given Turkey, NATO’s second military power, the green light to invade parts of northeastern Syria after he apparently ordered a token force of US troops there to withdraw. This, of course, puts the Turks in a growing confrontation with the...

The Russian and Turkish leadership attended a summit in Ankara on September 16th, 2019, where the two leaders agreed to cooperate in Syria. Besides such cooperation, Mr Erdogan and Mr Putin also committed to the future of the Turkstream pipeline. And at the MAKs air show, Mr Erdogan expressed his great interest in the potential purchase of SU-35 fighter jets, and perhaps the SU-57 when it becomes operational. Consider too, the additional element of NATO member Turkey’s S400 defensive missile...

Looks like President Trump finally realizes that he is working in a snake pit. When he took office on January 20, 2017, he left an enormous cadre of Obama/Hillary sycophants in place. He could have (and should have) moved them out and reassigned them to the bureaucratic equivalent of Siberia. But he did not. Take the case of Tina Kaidanow, who headed up the Bureau of Counter Terrorism when Trump took over. Rather than asking for her resignation she was put in as the number two person in the...

I retired from the NYPD and moved to Florida like many NYC policemen and firemen do- there is no state income tax here and it doesn’t snow. I decided I needed a job so I worked for a local Sheriff’s office for three years. Policemen always have their hands full when they deal with emotionally disturbed persons (EDP’s in NYPD parlance). It was no different in south Florida. While working in Florida I had seen many incidents where an EDP was wrestled into handcuffs, pepper sprayed, or even shot...

The issue of the United States waging what seems to be a global war by way of sanctions rarely surfaces in the western media. The argument being made by the White House is that sanctions are capable of putting maximum pressure on a rogue regime without the necessity of having to go to war and actually kill people, but the reality is that while economic warfare may seem to be more benign than bombing and shooting the reality is that thousands of people die anyway, whether through starvation or...

A new report from recent Fox News hire John Solomon tosses gasoline on the dumpster-fire narrative at the heart of an impeachment inquiry launched after a CIA officer filed a whistleblower complaint, alleging President Trump abused his office by "pressuring" the president of Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter for corruption. According to Solomon, a new document "shows that Ukrainian officials had opened a new probe into the firm linked to Hunter Biden months before President...

An explosion of criticism had erupted in Congress and the news media in response to President Trump’s decision to withdraw a small contingent of US troops stationed in northern Syria. Those forces served as a (mostly symbolic) barrier to Turkey’s ambitions to conduct a military offensive against Syrian Kurdish forces there. Ankara has now initiated that offensive. Republican hawks and Trump’s automatic adversaries among congressional Democrats are united in excoriating his decision. Much of...