Tag: Spotlight

Important Implications for U.S. Foreign Policy Calling things by the wrong name adds to the affliction of the world.- Albert Camus There is the American official story regarding Srebrenica. In addition to that story, any descriptions, explanations and/or fiction have not only been allowed but encouraged. Anything but the truth! From sinister...
From 2011 to 2016, demonstrations in Syria against the Ba’athist government headed by Bashar al-Assad escalated into an armed insurgency and large-scale pitched battles, sieges and counter-sieges in and around major Syrian cities such as Aleppo and Damascus. During that time, agents of U.S. diplomacy, soft power, defense and...
Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill has passed and been signed into law. What the White House has deemed an “historic” bill is actually the biggest transfer of wealth in the history of the United States, benefiting the already-wealthy with massive tax breaks and devastating cuts to social programs...
The following story has been told and retold all over the world, except in Portugal, where it actually happened. One day, I was informed by a very helpful little bird named Hastings that, in April 1943, a group of men from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) sneaked into the Japanese Embassy in...
In late June, Syrians experienced the worst attack on a Christian church since 1860 On June 29, 2025, I attended a church service at St. Moses the Black Orthodox Church in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. St. Moses is an Antiochian church, also known as the Church of St. Peter, and harkens...
Saboteurs working for U.S. intelligence agencies created violent cult-like groups in the 1970s, such as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), which helped marginalize the political left Today’s bleak political landscape, with two essentially right-wing parties and no effective political opposition, has its roots in the McCarthy-era and Cold War...
I have made more than several trips to Iceland over the past several months. I genuinely love the place. The population is small, highly educated, friendly, and welcoming to outsiders. I have been consistently surprised at the number of Syrian, Kurdish and Ukrainian refugees that I have met, all...
What do Palantir, DoorDash, Bill Clinton and Michael Bloomberg have in common? They all joined the campaign against candidate Zohran Mamdani, the state Assembly member who exceeded expectations and effectively won the Democratic NYC mayoral primary...
In the fall, of 2024, I spent a day with the Kyvonos Detachment in the Donbas. This is a volunteer military unit made up entirely of Ukrainian troops who went over to the other side and are now fighting for Russia. Many Westerners would be surprised to learn of...
On June 6, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) returned Elise Stefanik (R-NY) to the House Intelligence Committee, and added Steve Cohen (D-TN), expanding the committee’s membership to 27 by unanimous consent. The addition of Cohen was a concession to Johnson by the House chamber for reinserting Stefanik, who had been...