Deena Stryker

When you consider the Constitutionally mandated American ‘government shutdown’ it’s hard to critique other governments for being authoritarian. Illustrating the key role played by money in the notion of ‘freedom’, as opposed to ‘democracy’ in the creation of a federal form of government…

I’ve been predicting for months that Trump would resign, but today something happened that can only be called mutiny: the president’s secretary of defense has resigned over military policy, in the traditional form of mutiny. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, who, like Robert Mueller…

Theresa May is no Maggie Thatcher! Though just as dogged, the current British Prime Minister, lacking Thatcher’s true grit, is paying for centuries of British disdain for ‘the continent’. Although it carries the prestigious Eurostar train, the ‘Chunnel’ came too late to inculcate…

President Donald Trump is probably the most vilified White House tenant, yet in their desperate search for ways to evict him, the Justice Department and the media have passed over his encouragement of Neo-Nazi violence, his racial ‘dog whistling’, his widely publicized affairs — and…

After less than two years, France’s youngest President, Emanuel Macron, is on his way to becoming the de facto leader of Europe, while being rejected at home. In an effort to set an example for the rest of the world in his campaign to combat climate change, Macron decided to raise the tax on petrol as a way…

You can’t make this stuff up: When the president of the most powerful nation in the world, nuclear armed to the teeth, announces that he will save the world from obliteration by partnering with the heads of the two nuclear countries that America sees as enemies, the media rakes him over the coals…

The father of former president George Bush, former President George H.W. Bush, lived to the ripe old age of ninety-four, and is eulogized as an (untypical) gentleman, a beloved father and grandfather and a sterling patriot, who was a pilot in World War II and headed the CIA before…

A phenomenon that is proving fatal to the American Republic harks back to the ubiquitous presence of ‘soap operas’ — long, drawn-out sob stories that first appeared on radio in the 1930’s, and now, on television, tend to be detective stories. As the world rushes toward both nuclear and climate Armageddon…

As the caravan of Central Americans seeking a decent life recently approached the US-Mexican border’s main crossing points, President Trump sent troops with orders to shoot trespassers. When the caravan headed to other parts of the border, women and children were met with tear-gas…

The uber-liberal Brookings Institute has just put forward a series of rationals for US world leadership which, in all logic, would force it to review its condemnation of domestic authoritarianism. Brookings claims that: “The world needs a leader to undergird its security and its economic…

Nothing more ironically illustrates the end of the ‘American Century’ than the abject failure of the American President to fully participate in the ceremonies marking the hundredth anniversary of what is still recognized as the most deadly war the world has ever seen. President Trump flew…

Unlike with other allies, periodically, the US relationship with France sours. Even people only half-interested in international affairs are aware of that. What is disturbing this time is that two parts of that relationship are in trouble: the nuts and bolts of defense, and fundamental geo-political concepts. When French…