The military intervention in Afghanistan that began a month after the 9/11 attacks is the longest war in U.S. history, costing 1,750 American lives (and counting) and upward of $300 billion (and counting). And it’s becoming harder to believe Washington’s promises that the end is in sight. President Obama will, this year, withdraw …
Israel’s fallout with long-time ally Turkey is no isolated spat that will be repaired any time soon; it’s a dramatic illustration that no amount of U.S. backing can prevent the growing international isolation resulting from Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue. Indeed, the unconditional nature of Washington’s backing may, in …
Global Spin’s weekly offering of rental movie recommendations to bring you up to speed on world events, this week, gets in the spirit of the Labor Day weekend with five movies devoted to those who show up for work in blue collars…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwEMIvDEFy4
Matewan
For Global Spin’s money there is no finer …
Et tu, Ayatullah? When even Iran publicly calls on President Bashar al-Assad to respond to the legitimate political grievances of his people, you know the Syrian regime is in a corner. Even Iran’s protege and Syrian client Hizballah, in neighboring Lebanon, appears to have recognized that the status quo in Damascus is untenable, and like …
It’s easy to see how Libya offers a “new model” for American intervention abroad when comparing it with the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003, but the mission to overthrow the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has too much in common with the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan to mark it, at this stage, as the herald of a new era of …
Global Spin’s weekly list of five rental movies to bring you up to speed with the past week’s world events
Game of Thrones
Let’s start with the big picture, shall we? Things are falling apart, everywhere you look: Both the U.S. economy and Europe are crumbling, and with …
Any reader of the George R.R. Martin Songs of Ice and Fire series (whose opening book, Game of Thrones, was turned into riveting television on HBO) might see a familiar pattern in the events that threaten to plunge the Israel-Gaza border into a new escalation of violence.
In Martin’s fantasy geopolitics, as in the real world, …
The 32 terror attacks that killed 70 people across Iraq on Monday prompted a knee-jerk question in much of the media: Would or should the uptick in violence prompt a rethink of plans to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iraq by New Year’s Eve?
The short answer is no, and the longer answer is probably not.
U.S. withdrawal from Iraq …
Karl Marx was wrong about socialism, but he wasn’t always wrong about capitalism. That’s the warning from Nouriel Roubini, the NYU economics professor known on Wall Street as “Dr. Doom” — but hailed as a prophet nonetheless — for having warned that an economy expanding on giddy optimism, asset bubbles and Ponzi scheme paper was …
The good news from Libya is that the collapse of the Gaddafi regime is reportedly accelerating, with rebel forces making military advances towards Tripoli on three fronts and two key regime figures reported to have defected in as many days. But every silver lining has its cloud: The rebellion against Gaddafi has, in recent weeks, …
As the Assad regime on Sunday escalated its brutal crackdown by sending gunboats to shell the coastal city of Latakia, yet the rebellion shows no sign of abating despite at least 1,700 deaths so far, Syria’s fate may come to rest less in the hands of its own people, than in the corridors of power in neighboring and more distant …
Global Spin’s guide to five rental movies to bring you up to speed with world events. This week, a riot special. By Tony Karon and Ishaan Tharoor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLZf7_O-644
Rude Boy
The future may be unwritten, but many observers of the past week’s events in London and other British cities sensed that its …
To reduce the riots that have shaken Britain this week to nothing more than criminal wickedness, as Prime Minister David Cameron and his cohort tend to do, is a dangerous exercise in denial. And it barely survives the most cursory scrutiny: Thousands of people don’t suddenly take to the streets to manifest wickedness as if in …
