The Ryanair Boeing 737 that was hijacked on May 23, seen in 2019 in Poland. Photograph by Andrzej Otrębski.
Though we should never court tragedy, we know our true selves really only in it. Catastrophe, adversity of any kind, reveals character. So what does the Belarusian hijacking of a Ryanair jet tell us about ourselves?
It tells us what we have known all along in our fractured age, what we have seen with the pandemic, which is that we can’t come together in a crisis, because we can’t think clearly about it.
Read MoreJohn R. Bolton (fourth from right) joins Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (second from right) in negotiating with the Russians, Nov. 3, 2001. Photograph by R.D. Ward/Department of Defense
Why impeach President Donald J. Trump only to have the Senate acquit him? What’s the point?
You can’t help but be nagged by this question as the trial churns on, despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s politically savvy and Representative Adam Schiff’s sharp prosecutorial skills. But just when you’re about to despair, a light or two. There are the tapes by Lev Parnas, the Rudolph Giuliani goon who was in on muscling Ukraine for dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and son Hunter, who worked for a Ukrainian energy company while his father was in office.
And now there is the leaked unpublished manuscript of former National Security Adviser and perpetual loose canon John R. Bolton, which establishes a link, once again, between the withholding of $391 million in American aid to Ukraine and the quest for damning information on the Bidens, thus undercutting Trump’s argument that there was no quid pro quo….
Read MoreThe ruins of the Gates of All Nations in Persepolis, Iran. As the ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, Persepolis was burned to the ground by the conquering Alexander the Great accidentally or as an act of revenge for the destruction of the Acropolis in Athens and/or the mutilation of Greek captives. Now President Donald J. Trump is threatening Iranian cultural sites like this one, which is illegal under international law.
So President Donald J. Trump, a man who’s always tilting at “cancer-causing” windmills, finally has something to rail against for real. From the beginning, he’s been against Iran and all Muslims and anything he imagined President Barack Obama espoused, whether he actually did (like the Iran nuclear deal) or not (the Muslim Brotherhood).
Read MorePresident Donald J. Trump talks with President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the leaders lounge at the G20 Japan Summit on June 28 in Osaka. Photograph by Shealah Craighead/White House.
Like the man who divorces his wife but keeps showing up for dinner night after night, President Donald J. Trump just can’t quit his opponents. No sooner had he announced that he was forsaking New York as his primary domicile for Florida than he was back in the Big Apple, not once but twice. The second time was for the 100th anniversary of New York’s Veterans Day Parade, at which he talked about New York’s daring and defiance, which the city demonstrated by protesting him. LOL, you just can’t make this stuff up.
Read MoreA president in thrall to a foreign power. A disenchanted first lady. A White House moving toward crisis.
No, not that White House. But sometimes life imitates art, as it does in Georgette Gouveia’s new psychological thriller, “Burying the Dead” (JMS Books, Oct. 30). It’s a high stakes game of love and death, set on the power courts of Washington, D.C. and other glittering world capitals, that represents a departure for Gouveia, whose previous novels were in the trending category of male/male romance.
Read MorePYD militiaman manning a checkpoint in Afrin, Syria, during the 2012 Syrian Kurdistan rebellion. Photograph by Scott Bobb/Voice of America
when you think you’re free to blog about something fun like the new tennis pavilion Melania Trump is building at the White House for her, Novak Djokovic-like husband — not— or the new movie “The King,” starring Timothée Chalumet as a real leader, Henry V , President Donald J. Trump does something else stupid on the road to IM, impeachment meltdown. If it’s not Rick Perry being thrown under the bus one day, it’s the Syrian Kurds watching the bus filled with American soldiers pulling out the next, leaving these staunch American allies in the fight against ISIS to fend for themselves against their longtime enemies, the Turks, in what has already become a humanitarian crisis.
Read MoreStuck in the middle with you: President Donald J. Trump greets Finnish President Sauli Nanistö in happier times, Aug. 28, 2017. Photograph by Natig Sharifov.
Well, that went well. We’re talking about President Donald J. Trump’s press conference with the latest hapless foreign leader caught in the crosshairs of his love-hate relationship with the press. Really, it almost doesn’t matter who it is. That it happened to be the president of Finland — land of the properly raked forests — held a certain irony, particularly after Sauli Ninistö turned out to be the sly one, telling Trump to keep America’s “great democracy” going.
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