I had the privilege of traveling to Venezuela and witnessing the country’s presidential Oct. 7 elections and the South American country’s extraordinarily active and engaged citizenry. An impressive 81 percent of the electorate participated in a transparent and secure electoral process that former president Jimmy Carter recently referred to as the best in the world.
Locals say there are two types of camps for Syrians in Southeast Turkey—those for the refugees and those for the so-called opposition fighters. My Turkish colleagues and I drove to both kinds of camps, each located near the ancient polyglot province of Hatay, a small sliver of land squeezed between Syria and the deep blue Mediterranean Sea. We also drove to several border crossings to gain a clearer understanding of the situation in this restive area.
It is eerily fitting that George McGovern‘s passing occurred in the final heat of a furious election campaign, precariously balanced between Republocrats and Democlicans, two corporately owned political parties.
A new Syrian opposition group is trying to resurrect the nonviolent tactics that the opposition used during the first few months of the rebellion last year, when demonstrations and calls for civic activism filled the squares of towns across Syria. But more important is who formed the group: Syrian Alawites.
The U.S. right wing appears to have a lock on conspiracy theories in the Obama era. But historically, such paranoid theorizing has been a bipartisan pastime. Has our dispossession from democracy blunted our ability to see reason?
The Party of God will not disappear even if the Assad regime does. Nonetheless, if the Ba’athist order in Syria falls, Hezbollah will be compelled to operate in a more challenging environment, both domestically and regionally.
The main geostrategic challenge facing Asia—as well as the U.S. presence there—has been the extraordinary rise of China in the past decade. In Obama and China’s Rise, Jeffrey Bader, a veteran diplomat of over 30 years, recounts his experiences working for Obama’s presidential campaign and serving as the senior director for East Asian affairs on Obama’s National Security Council from January 2009 to April 2011.
When the guerrillas were around, I fought for what was mine. When the paras came, I fought for what was mine. A guerilla commander once said to me, “Brother, you have to pick sides.” And I said, “No, I choose no side.” I was neither a para nor a guerrilla.
When the first contingent of 250 U.S. Marines flew into Darwin last April, they were greeted on the tarmac with a personal handshake by Australian Defense Minister Stephen Smith and welcomed to the city by the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory (NT), Paul Henderson. When they left, there were no politicians to be seen.
“Blood and destruction,” “dreadful objects,” and “pity choked” was the Bard’s searing characterization of what war visits upon the living. It is a description that increasingly parallels the ongoing war in Syria, which is likely to worsen unless the protagonists step back and search for a diplomatic solution to the 17-month-old civil war.