Hope and Resolve

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In chaotic times like ours, it behooves us to practice proactive optimism, which is far more than infantile hope or pious faith. Conscious, vigorous optimism is visionary and builds on our awareness of our human identity and dignity. It expresses our faith in humanity, our resolve to be morally and...
By now you have probably been told innumerable times by friends, colleagues and progressive commentators why holding your nose and voting for Joe Biden is absolutely necessary to save America from four more destructive years of Donald Trump. I agree with all those voices. And I endorse all their reasons—which...
More and More Are Seeing Through the Lies As Amnesty International confirms the inconvenient truths, which many independent journalists and political observers already knew, about the Ukrainian army’s behavior in Donbass, it's worth examining how manipulating the truth has become—not only an everyday occurrence but a central element of the West's proxy...
Some people on the left have been confused about what to do in November. So much so, that former members of Students for a Democratic Society felt compelled to write an open letter urging a vote for Biden against Trump. We agree. A Trump victory would further exacerbate inequality, sexism...
Even when the U.S. and Israel fired missiles and dropped bombs on the home of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his wife and other members of his family, killing more than 40 members of the leadership of Iran, senior Iranian officials had maintained that Iran would never develop...

The Gambler

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The tale of a Vegas gambler, failed politician, and professional Nazi groupie The war in Ukraine has been a bonanza for grifters. From mercenaries and gun runners to OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) and journalists, a bottomless well of western financing combined with a firehose stream of information both true and...
I’ve been doing a lot of research lately for a new book I’m writing that has nothing whatsoever to do with intelligence or the CIA, and I stumbled upon the biography of Frank Mankiewicz, the former Robert F. Kennedy speechwriter, who apparently had been a “secret backchannel” between President...
I had the great fortune recently of addressing a gathering of Greek parliamentarians in Athens and with meeting members of the European Parliament to discuss national security whistleblowing. The European Union has drafted, and will soon release, a new whistleblower protection law that would be the finest and most comprehensive...
On January 29th, The Washington Post published an op-ed by the well-known Yale historian Timothy Snyder, titled “Putin’s case for invading Ukraine rests on phony grievances and ancient myths.” In a key passage, the article reads: Last July, Vladimir Putin supplied the mythical basis for Russian war propaganda in an essay titled “On the Historical Unity...
CIA detracts from national security by purporting to know what it doesn’t In a recent feature article in The New Yorker magazine, writer Amy Davidson Sorkin recalls the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1995 bill, the Abolition of the Central Intelligence Agency Act. One of the original neoconservatives, Moynihan had...