Category Archives: Aftermath

EXCLUSIVE: A Leaked View of the “Afterlife” of the U. S. Institute of Peace

March  22, 2025

From confidential Washington sources, the following excerpt is drawn from an account of the aftermath of the March 17 seizure and closing of the U. S. Institute of Peace, by armed agents of the DOGE administration. The account has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Brief Encounter at 2301

Mid-March, 2025, on the edge of the National Mall, not far from the Vietnam War Memorials.

It was almost break time, the leftover dinner pizza was hours cold, and Hennigan thought he heard something.

Standing up from the desk chair, he closed the Security Inc. employee handbook, which was making him drowsy anyway, and peered across the open atrium: first left, then right, following the protocol.

Everything seemed in order: several tiers of closed offices rose or each side. Lights were dim. Nothing moving.

Continue reading EXCLUSIVE: A Leaked View of the “Afterlife” of the U. S. Institute of Peace

Giving Thanks for Those Defying Hell & Sowing Hope — “From the River To The Sea”

A sun low in the sky can be seen among beige apartment buildings with terraces.
Credit…Photographs by Ofir Berman for The New York Times

New York Times
OPINION – THOMAS  L. FRIEDMAN

#1 – The Rescuers

Rahat, Israel, a Bedouin town in the Negev Desert.Credit…CreditPhotographs by Ofir Berman for The New York Times

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Rahat, Israel

I confess that as a longtime observer of the Arab-Israeli conflict, I aggressively avoid both the “From the river to the sea” activists on the pro-Palestinian left and the similarly partisan zealots on the “Greater Israel” Zionist right — not just because I find their exclusivist visions for the future abhorrent but also because the reporter in me finds them so blind to the complexities of the present.

Continue reading Giving Thanks for Those Defying Hell & Sowing Hope — “From the River To The Sea”

Two views: Recalling the Yom Kippur/Ramadan War- Half a Century Later

GWYNNE DYER: A short war 50 years ago in Israel

Gwynne Dyer — October 5, 2023

In 1973, 50 years ago today, Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, coincided with Ramadan, the Islamic lunar month of fasting. But nobody raised an alarm in Israel when it was reported, two days before the Arab attack, that the Egyptian army had ordered its soldiers to stop fasting.

After their overwhelming victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel smashed three Arab armies in a “pre-emptive” attack and expanded its territory fourfold, the Israelis were almost unanimous in their contempt for Arab military capabilities – indeed, for Arabs in general. Continue reading Two views: Recalling the Yom Kippur/Ramadan War- Half a Century Later

FBI Ignored Internal Warnings, Screwed Up Bigtime on Jan. 6 Insurrection Threat. Why??

NBC NEWS EXCLUSIVE — CAPITOL RIOT

Before Jan. 6, the FBI predicted extremists would be ‘very willing to take action’ over a 2020 election dispute.

An FBI “red cell” report predicted that law enforcement action and a “lack of coordination” between groups would prevent widespread violence in response to a disputed election.

WASHINGTON — One week before Election Day 2020 and just over two months before the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, an internal FBI analysis concluded that domestic violent extremists were “very willing to take action” in response to a disputed election but that “law enforcement preemption” and the “disorganization” of extremist groups “likely would hinder widespread violence.”

The so-called red cell report — the type of exercise that became widespread after the federal government’s Sept. 11 intelligence failures and are meant to challenge conventional wisdom and encourage outside-the-box thinking — was titled “Alternative Analysis: Potential Scenarios for Reactions of Domestic Violent Extremists to a Disputed 2020 US Presidential Election.” NBC News obtained a redacted copy of the report through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Continue reading FBI Ignored Internal Warnings, Screwed Up Bigtime on Jan. 6 Insurrection Threat. Why??

Two Views: Canada, India & An “Inconvenient” Assassination?

Nicholas Kristof
Nicholas Ktistof

Father’s Day this year, two heavyset men were loitering near a Sikh temple in British Columbia. Then the president of the temple, a Canadian citizen and an activist named Hardeep Singh Nijjar, stepped out and climbed into his pickup truck to drive home for dinner with his family.

The two waiting men, wearing masks, fired through Nijjar’s window about a dozen times. Temple members bravely ran after the gunmen, who escaped in a getaway car driven by a third man.

Continue reading Two Views: Canada, India & An “Inconvenient” Assassination?