About Benj Demott

Putin’s seizure of Crimea produced no agreement on the nature of a prudent response, but it did prompt a remarkable number of historical analogies and putative lessons. On the interventionist side analogies to Hitler were initially pretty common—some of the first, predictably enough, were to Munich, followed by a few to the Anschluss. These kicked … Read more

The author is a physician and priest who has been working in Haiti for a generation, running hospitals and social programs in Port au Prince as well as a Nuestros Pequenos Hermanos orphanage on the outskirts of the capital. Fr. Frechette is the author of The God of Rough Places, the Lord of Burnt Men … Read more

What follows is Francisco Goldman’s introduction to Oscar Martinez’s The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail, which was published in the USA by Verso in 2013. First thanks Verso for allowing us to reprint Goldman’s tribute to Martinez’s audacious and skillful reporting on “the terrifying lives of Central American migrants.” … Read more

  The greatest danger to Israel is not the putative Iranian nuclear bomb. The greatest danger is the stupidity of our leaders. This is not a uniquely Israeli phenomenon. A great many of the world’s leaders are plain stupid, and always have been. Enough to look at what happened in Europe in July 1914, when … Read more

Don’t play around the course he got the took the rook the crook the snook all were pasted upon him like a long vicious learning there is all of Africa all of night all the every trace of sweet hurt distilled like cobalt turned into night the distant moon a door to where no one … Read more

The geo-political condition is febrile, with ordinary people around the world demanding independence from empires, colonizers, home-grown dictators and vulture capitalists. On the other side of the power divide, vested interests hang tight with their puppets, controlling oil, minerals—the world’s natural assets. The UN watches as the US and Russia bark slogans at each other, … Read more

The government shutdown and debt ceiling mess deflected attention from the Syria crisis. But Eugene Goodheart’s careful analysis of that situation is still on time. We begin his latest dispatch on Obama’s “trimming” with a forward-looking “postscript” the author added to his original piece. As for Obama’s ambivalence about going to war and his openness … Read more