Platform and Politics: The Change We Made

by James J. Zogby The quadrennial process of party platform writing is more of a political exercise than a policy deliberation. When party leaders sit down to debate what will or will not go into their platform, their eyes are… Continue Reading

Foreign Policy in Trumpville

by Phyllis Bennis For a foreign policy speech that was supposed to make Republican candidate Donald Trump look presidential, it took an awful lot of digging through a basketful of bumper-sticker slogans to get to a substantive point. And when… Continue Reading

Obama in Germany: Step Up to the Mark on Refugees

by Robert E. Hunter President Obama this Sunday and Monday makes perhaps his last visit as president to Germany. His taking part with Chancellor Angela Merkel in the annual Hannover Messe (trade fair) was originally designed to underline the president’s support… Continue Reading

Today’s Syrian Refugees Are Yesterday’s Irish

by Zaher Sahloul Four months after I arrived to Chicago in 1989, my colleague at the hospital, Dr. Nancy Nora, invited me to her family’s Thanksgiving dinner. I was homesick in a new country after graduating from medical school in Damascus.… Continue Reading

American Nativism and the Newest Surge in Xenophobia

by Paul R. Pillar A couple of days ago President Obama made an appropriate refinement to how he describes the discriminatory and xenophobic tendencies that have become all too obvious in debate and posturing in the United States on issues… Continue Reading