Voiceover: Here’s the star of the show and your host, Steve Bannon! Applause. Steve Bannon: Thank you! It’s great to be back in the limelight. And welcome once again to the Dictator Dating Game. It’s time to meet our eligible dictators. And heeeeere they are! Dictator number one is famous for all those great photos… Continue reading The Dictator Dating Game
Donald Trump loves to tell the following story. You go to a bank and borrow $3 million. If you can’t pay it back, you have a problem. But say you go to a bank and borrow $300 million. Then, if you can’t pay it back, both you and the bank have a problem. In other words, the bank… Continue reading Trump’s Investment in North Korea
Right-wing populists are all the rage these days. Donald Trump and his spleen control the White House, while his counterparts have taken over in Italy, Hungary, Poland, Colombia, India, and elsewhere. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former Svengali, hopes to inspire a worldwide revolution of nationalism-inflected right-wing extremism. But what about left-wing populists? Bernie Sanders made an epic run… Continue reading Bernies of the World, Unite!
It’s a famous story, though perhaps not famous enough. The 1939 voyage of the MS St. Louis, a German ocean liner, was recounted in a 1974 book and a 1976 film (both titled Voyage of the Damned) as well as a 1994 opera. This history is not forgotten. Yet so many unfortunate people around the world are… Continue reading World to Refugees: Go to Hell
In the wake of the disastrous G7 meeting in Canada and the successful summit in Singapore, it’s hard to know what to call U.S. foreign policy these days. It’s not just unilateralism, where Washington acts alone and allies be damned. Nor is it merely unipolarism, in which the United States targets all hegemonic challengers in… Continue reading Trump’s Unileaderism
In 2012, Roseanne Barr ran for president. The actress/comedian received the nomination of California’s feminist-socialist Peace and Freedom Party. She chose Cindy Sheehan, the anti-war activist, as her running mate. Barr took strong positions on environmental sustainability. She wanted the United States to withdrawfrom Iraq and Afghanistan, and she opposed any war with Iran. She criticized the right-wing… Continue reading Dear White People
If the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un doesn’t happen, it’s easy to finger the culprit. National Security Advisor John Bolton, who started in his position after the U.S. president agreed to meet with the North Korean leader, has never concealed his desire to effect regime change in Pyongyang. In February, he published an… Continue reading The Real Obstacle to Peace between Pyongyang and Washington
Conmen always keep up a patter. While they’re extracting the wallet from your pocket, they maintain a nonstop monologue so that you focus on their mouth and not what they’re doing with their hands. Beware the voluble stranger. Donald Trump has always been a talker. Even before he discovered Twitter, Trump was constantly bending people’s… Continue reading The Korean Shell Game
Imagine a trio of tech-savvy and entrepreneurial souls on the prowl for the next killer app. They’re staying up late in their dorm, or perhaps they’re celebrating at a nightclub after finishing their MBA program. They want to make money. They want to change the world. They want to create something that gets snatched up… Continue reading The Disrupters-in-Chief
When, in early March, Donald Trump agreed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the Washington foreign policy elite nearly suffered a collective heart attack. For one thing, the announcement came as a complete surprise. Trump had telegraphed his other foreign policy bombshells well in advance: leaving the Paris climate accord, ripping up the Iran… Continue reading Playing Trump for Peace