Another day, another crisis. North Korea, despite the international community’s cautious optimism following the Trump-Kim summit, appears to be moving full steam ahead with its missile program, all while the last vestige of the Iranian Nuclear Deal is swept away by hawkish White House advisors calling for regime change. It has become alarmingly clear that, […]
Recently, the Trump Administration decided against nominating Victor D. Cha as Ambassador to South Korea due to his opposition to the “bloody nose” strategy against North Korea advocated by the White House. On the heels of this report, U.S. disarmament ambassador Robert Wood declared that North Korea stands only months away from the ability to […]
Chicago is the murder capital of America. Why? Because in Chicago, drugs rule. Which is the same thing as saying Joachim “El Chapo” Guzman rules. Is this news? NPR seems to think so — in a recent interview, NPR’s Steve Inskeep asks Bloomberg reporter John Lippert if “El Chapo” Guzman, the leader of Mexico’s Sinaloa […]
That perfect moment of the triumph of the people happened again in Syria. The rebels captured another border crossing between Syria and Turkey, lowering the Syrian flag and raising their own banner. It is a symbolic moment of victory – and in a bloody civil war abundant with various factions and no real positive […]
Born in the U.S. to Iranian parents and based in Washington D.C., Elahe Izadi is an emerging figure on the American journalism scene, whose work and firm belief in diversity have won her wide recognition in the industry. She has covered such issues as demographics, immigration, government, crime, and development. Until recently at DCentric, where she covered race and […]
Over at the Huffington Post (via AP), Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Brian Murphy raise an interesting point regarding the political crisis currently gripping Iraq’s fragile parliamentary patchwork. They note leadership in Iran is desperately clinging to their power proxy in Baghdad – Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, and his factional allies in the Iraqi National Alliance. Their […]
Davar Ardalan, Senior Producer NPR News Davar is responsible for producing the live daily news broadcast for NPR’s Tell Me More (TMM) with Michel Martin. From the opinions of global newsmakers to listeners, to the wisdom of renowned thinkers, activists and spiritual leaders, NPR’s TMM brings fresh voices and perspectives to public radio. Prior to […]
Underwear bomber number 2 (still unnamed) isn’t the only one with his shorts in a twist over the latest attempt to bring terror to the sky over the Atlantic. The CIA, FBI, and MI6 are all scrambling to explain (or unexplain) their accounts of who did what when to take-down the would-be bomber and save a planeload of unwary infidels from mid-air incineration. US intelligence is blaming the administration for ‘leaks’ they say compromise a secret intelligence partnership, while other, perhaps less sanctioned leakers from each agency continue to spin the story in ways designed to claim victory for their team. Word is that someone at the White House leaked ‘the story’ to a national security advisor or some intel czar who then passed it on to three major networks.
The result? Alerts about the nefarious ‘underwear bomber’ have dominated the news for days, the mainstream media (getting it wrong again) rushing to attribute the just-in-time preemptive strike to the talents and skill of US intelligence. First reports indicated that the individal in charge of the entire operation was employed by the CIA, a ‘double agent’ in control of the whole operation from start to finish…
In the end, Terry, Diaz and Meyer found themselves on the sharp end of the stick for their efforts: the US Department of Justice, agencies like DHS and the Department of State, and the usual entourage of corporate and political underwriters, including the government of Mexico, all had a hand in creating scenarios designed to transform good guys into villains, narratives that ended in Terry’s death at the hands of a cartel gunman, Diaz’s imprisonment for ‘exercising excessive force’ during the arrest of a suspected drug trafficker, and in Meyer’s case, the loss of a high-paying job with a multinational defense contractor, and blowback that now has this decorated young veteran on the ropes in the court of public opinion. Let me tell you something. The only ‘mental problem’ from which Meyer suffers is a chronic case of integrity, an inability to distort the truth to accommodate political reality.
Consider–if Terry, Diaz and Meyer had ‘occupied Wall Street’ instead of the killing zones along our SW border and in Afghanistan, they might have been poster boys for the March of History, and on top of it all, alive, free, and gainfully employed.
The fact that government outrage continues to provide the international media with grist for its insatiable mill is one of the great ironies in this scenario: perturbed at the site’s revelation of embarrassing diplomatic discussions and fumblings–tales only mildly interesting to the average reader–government officials are now in the process of creating a better, and far more spectacular story over First Amendment rights and the ‘treasonable’ activities of a Dutch citizen accused of committing “sex by surprise” (in Sweden?).
Even worse, the official call from some quarters for draconian regulation of the internet has given Russia (which suggests nominating Assange for the Nobel Peace Prize) and China, a human-rights violator of mammoth proportion, opportunities to ‘prove’ to an already hostile world that when Washington suddenly finds itself looking out through wall-to-wall glass, this nation of stone-throwers is no better than anyplace else.
The strangely bizarre and comical launch of Musharraf’s so called Muslim League (or whatever name he is using) forced me to examine Pakistan. And, believe me, this time; I really looked hard not only at today’s Pakistan but also at its short, but awfully tumultuous history. And, it is extremely distressing to realize that nothing, […]
According to the New York Times, Pakistan’s military is maneuvering to remove the current government. This, according to the paper, is because of corruption and lack of proper response to the flood. What is missing from the report is that once this government is gone, angels and superheroes are going to takeover and they will […]
It is true Pakistan has been dealing with awful scenarios one after another since 1947, but at some point, the masses must take charge and work toward changing their destiny. Crisis or no crisis, people in Pakistan by now should have perfected, and if not perfected, at least gotten a good grip on how to […]
“It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.” Saint Augustine According to a report in Dawn, once again, Pakistanis have embarrassed themselves, and ironically enough, their struggling country the other day at Washington Dulles Airport by acting awfully. Bravo. It is unfortunate to note that there has […]
We know that the global banking system is riddled with corruption (‘vulnerable’ to corruption may be more polite), some authored by its own principals, some embraced opportunistically by financial insiders to snatch sudden profits, a great deal ushered into the world’s financial system by bankers in search of the commissions and corporate profits that ‘high net-worth customers’ (in many cases, money launderers) bring in. And sometimes the bad guys exploit legitimate financial service providers. But the question remains, and it turns on the distinction between deregulation and irregularity, between fair play and laissez-faire, between the right of the ‘haves’ to have still more, and the right of the people to real economic protection under the law.
At what point does financial entrepreneurship turn criminal, and how blind an eye is the US prepared to turn toward banking practices that clearly prosper the powerful and imperil the growing ranks of the poor, in the United States and across the world?