As the U.S. and its allies prepare for another round of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, powerful and wealthy opponents—from the halls of Congress to Middle East capitols—are maneuvering to torpedo them. At stake is the real possibility of a war with...
The Middle East is normally a depressing topic of conversation with talk of ongoing wars, repressive governments, ethnic violence, and terrorist attacks. Yet two of the region’s most troublesome challenges (Syria and Iran) are on diplomatic tracks toward peaceful...
Last weekend, Kenya’s preeminent newspaper The Nation, reported that CCTV footage showed Kenyan soldiers looting during the terrorist attack in Westgate Mall. The “Shame of Soldiers Looting Westgate,” as The Nation dubbed the footage, may be allegorical for increased...
Several months ago, even the most politically engaged Americans had probably never heard of either the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) or the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). That was no longer the case after August 21, when news broke of...
In his 2007 bestseller, The World Without Us, journalist Alan Weisman describes a planet that regenerates itself after the disappearance of human beings. Skyscrapers crumble and bridges collapse into rivers, but the primeval forests take over and the buffalo return to...
September 21 began like any other Saturday morning at the upscale Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Parents brought their excited youngsters to a children’s party; Kenyan elites patronized the gourmet restaurants; customers perused the merchandise in the mall’s...
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent fell victim to a wave of racially and religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States. In one of the most egregious cases, a Sikh man in Mesa, Arizona—who was neither Muslim nor...
In a Boston Review article titled The Sound of Terror: Phenomenology of a Drone Strike, Nasser Hussain attempts to … provide a phenomenology of drone strikes, examining both how the world appears through the lens of a drone camera and the experience of the people on...
“Omne trium perfectum” goes the Latin saying -- “everything which comes in threes is perfect.” Let’s see: the spiritual perfection of the Holy Trinity, the cinematic perfection of the Three Stooges, and … the nuclear triad. Those dubious that the Three Stooges help...
Not Enough Stock Dividends From a Peace Dividend In 2001, military spending, as a function of the over-all American economy, was, at six per cent, the lowest it had been since the Second World War. … In much the same way that the peace dividend expected with the...