Democracy Desperately Need a Reboot

Posted by on Aug 27, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Human Rights, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments If you’re a supporter of Donald Trump — or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil or Matteo Salvini in Italy — you probably think that democracy has never been in better health. Recent elections in these countries didn’t just serve to rotate the elite from the conventional parties. Voters went to the polls and elected outsiders who promised to transform their political systems. That demonstrates that...
read more

Russia and the Future of Europe

Posted by on Aug 27, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments Europe is gearing up for much-anticipated elections this week to the European parliament. Austria, however, now has to deal with a very unexpected snap election — thanks to a drunk politician, a Russian honeypot, and a leaked video. This scandal currently rocking Austria may ultimately play a decisive role in the European elections as well. Heinz-Christian Strache was once the ambitious,...
read more

Mueller, RussiaGate, and the 2020 Elections

Posted by on Apr 13, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments In horror movies, the monster can usually be dispatched in only one way. A werewolf requires a silver bullet. A vampire will only stay dead with a stake through the heart. The Blob shrivels in contact with the icy cold. For many opponents of Donald Trump, the report by special counsel Robert Mueller was supposed to be the magic method of taking down the president. After all, like a movie monster,...
read more

It’s a Borderful World

Posted by on Jan 7, 2019 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe, US Foreign Policy | 0 comments Nation-states: what a quaint notion. As a means of organizing territory, they seem to be a brief transition period between large empires and an even larger, borderless world. Sure, nation-states might live on in the form of anthems and flags and independence days, but the idea of fixed borders just doesn’t make sense in a world of cell phones, the Internet, and global assembly lines. Borders...
read more

What RussiaGate Skeptics Get Wrong

Posted by on Dec 20, 2018 in Articles, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments Imagine if the rightwing government of Shinzo Abe in Japan had interfered in the 2016 election in support of Donald Trump. Following which, Trump held a summit with Abe to endorse Japanese territorial claims in Asia as well as Abe’s efforts to remilitarize his country. The American Left would never countenance a rightwing Japanese nationalist interfering in American politics. But, of course,...
read more

Trump’s Dirty Money

Posted by on Aug 12, 2018 in Articles, Featured, Russia and Eastern Europe | 0 comments Marty Byrde has a problem. His partner at the financial services firm has been skimming off the top of the money-laundering service they’re providing a Mexican narcotrafficker. The drug dealer responds by killing Marty’s partner. He’s just about to put a bullet into Marty as well when, in desperation, the financial planner comes up with a cockamamie idea to move the money-laundering...
read more