Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Articles”
What is the Syrian death toll now? 400,000? Less? More? While the aphorism “One death is a tragedy, one million deaths is a statistic”, has been attributed to many, it is likely none foresaw the inverse utility of this concept for shaping narratives in an age of humanitarian intervention. Statistics are now weapons in themselves. Raw numbers are ambiguous; as …
There is an irony that would be amusing if it was not depressing about news that Donald Trump has been courting the 92-year old foreign policy sorcerer Henry Kissinger. Of course, the irony is that earlier in the presidential campaign Hilary Clinton proudly claimed Kissinger as ‘a friend,’ and acknowledged that he “relied on his counsel” while she served as …
Currently, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has become the target of a political insurrection. The legislature is in the process of convicting Ms. Rousseff on charges of corruption, thereby permanently removing her from office. In the meantime, Vice -President Michel Temer has assumed the responsibilities of president. Ms. Rousseff’s charges include using profits form Petrobras, the Brazilian semipublic oil corporation, to …
Emails obtained by The Intercept from the State Department reveal new details of Hillary Clinton’s behind-the-scenes efforts to export fracking—a method of extracting oil and natural gas from underground shale deposits—to foreign countries during her tenure as Secretary of State. The emails, acquired through a Freedom of Information Act request, could be particularly damning in light of Clinton’s recent attempts to …
You’ve probably heard about the fierce battle [3] over school bathrooms raging across the country. It’s an important story for sure because transgender students should not be blocked from entering facilities of their gender identity. But the current fight over gender equity shouldn’t take away from another bathroom battle taking place in our nation’s public schools: whether students have access to a functioning …
This week, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, and the DNC chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, appointed professional influence peddlers with ties to weapons makers, hedge funds and Wal-Mart to the committee responsible for drafting the Democratic Party’s policy platform. Lee Fang and Zaid Jilani of The Intercept report: Wendy Sherman and Carol Browner, two of the representatives …
State Department functionaries faced a hopeless task as they tried to spin their own Inspector General’s matter-of-fact critique of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s imperial attitude toward basic security measures everyone else is required by law to follow. It turns out that she deliberately chose to use a hacker-friendly, unprotected email server, and not so much for convenience – …
The State Department’s inspector general report on Wednesday offered little absolution for Hillary Clinton or several of her top aides who refused to cooperate with the investigation into the former secretary of state’s exclusive use of a private email server. The 83-page document, which was given to lawmakers and leaked to the press, noted systemic problems with records at the …
With the announcement that hard-right Avigdor Lieberman would soon use his powerful position as Minister of Defense in the Israeli cabinet to advance additional anti-democratic legislation, members of the old Israeli political establishment could scarcely contain their apprehension. “Lieberman is the new Kahane [3],” read the title of an op-ed by a former two-time Israeli minister, a reference to the founding …
In February of 2008 under the administration of President George W. Bush, Jr., the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) was officially launched with its base in Stuttgart, Germany. The reasoning behind the creation of AFRICOM has evolved over the last eight years from being a necessary security measure to protect vital American interests on the continent to a mechanism designed to assist post-colonial African states …
