We won our independence from the British in a hard-fought revolutionary battle. Today, no hard feelings: the Anglo-American alliance is strong, we all love Downton Abbey, and our skirmishes are largely confined to disputes over which version of The Office is funnier and how to spell and pronounce the word “aluminum.” We fought the ...
Open Mike
Blogger Profile: John Feffer
John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.
He is the author of several books and numerous articles. He has been a Writing Fellow at Provisions Library in Washington, DC and a PanTech fellow in Korean Studies at Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of World Policy Journal. He has worked as an international affairs representative in Eastern Europe and East Asia for the American Friends Service Committee. He has studied in England and Russia, lived in Poland and Japan, and traveled widely throughout Europe and Asia. He has taught a graduate level course on international conflict at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul in July 2001 and delivered lectures at a variety of academic institutions including New York University, Hofstra, Union College, Cornell University, and Sofia University (Tokyo).
John has been widely interviewed in print and on radio. He serves on the advisory committees of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea. He is a recipient of the Herbert W. Scoville fellowship and has been a writer in residence at Blue Mountain Center and the Wurlitzer Foundation.
His website is: JohnFeffer.com.
John Feffer's Blogs
We pay a lot of money for health care in the United States, more per capita than anywhere else in the industrialized world. If you point out this inescapable fact to opponents of socialized medicine, they invariably respond that we get high-quality care in return. Exasperated, you might go further ...
An Alternative Commencement Speech
Get out of town. Go on, scram! That’s what a graduation ceremony is all about: the big boot. Thanks for those thousands of dollars, here’s a receipt in the form of a diploma, and now hurry up and make room for the next class. Oh, and don’t forget to write: ...
Everybody loves Dexter. He’s handsome. He’s helpful. He works at the Miami Metro Police Department, and he’s very good at his job as a blood-splatter analyst. Oh, did I mention that he moonlights as a serial killer? Don’t worry: he only kills bad guys. That’s part of the code that ...
The Slow Death of Neoliberalism
It's happening in Buenos Aires. It’s happening in Paris and in Athens. It’s even happening at the World Bank headquarters. The global economy is finally shifting away from the model that prevailed for the last three decades. Europeans are rejecting austerity. Latin Americans are nationalizing enterprises. The next head of ...
Institutions rarely vote themselves out of existence. Not if they still have money in their budgets. Large institutions in particular have an almost genetic propensity to cling to life even after their reasons for being have vanished. That’s why I don’t expect NATO, which will gather in Chicago later this ...
Every year, in the last two weeks of their final semester, a group of seniors in the 20th-century world history class at my high school played a mysterious game. They were honor-bound not to tell anyone what they were doing. All we knew was that, while their fellow seniors goofed ...
Creating the Muslim Manchurian Candidate
Crossposted from TomDispatchThose who fervently believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim generally practice their furtive religion in obscure recesses of the Internet. Once in a while, they’ll surface in public to remind the news media that no amount of evidence can undermine their convictions. In October 2008, at a ...
The note left next to the bloodied body of Shaima Alawadi read “go back to your country, you terrorist.” Alawadi, who died on Saturday after being taken off life support, was an Iraqi-born mother of five living outside of San Diego. Someone had delivered a similar note to the family ...
Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story. This aphorism, often attributed to humorist Mark Twain, seems to apply equally well to both theater and politics. Story, in these worlds of bright lights and monologues, is everything. Whether it's a political campaign (Romney is a flip-flopper) ...
The bully came to Washington. The American president told him in no uncertain terms that the United States would not support a military attack on Iran at this moment. The bully met with 13,000 of his U.S. supporters in an effort to pressure the White House. It didn’t work. The ...
Afghanistan and America's Image Problem
The United States definitely sends mixed messages to the Muslim world. Early in his presidency, Barack Obama went to Cairo to “seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America ...
When Hu Jintao took over as the leader of China in 2002, U.S. companies welcomed his accession as a “good sign for American business.” Political analysts described Hu as a fourth-generation member of the Communist party leadership who might very well turn out to be a “closet liberal.” Playing it ...
Dear Mom: I haven’t written much from Okinawa. I’m sorry about that. I guess maybe you were expecting lots of exciting war stories from your son the Marine. But honestly, the most exciting thing we’ve done is put in a sea wall over by the Torii Beach shoreline and then ...
Iran and the Not-So-Great Game
Stop the Russians from spreading south. This was a primary objective of the Great Game of the 19th century that centered on Central Asia and particularly Afghanistan. The empires of the time – British, Russian, French, Chinese, Ottoman – expended much wealth and endured considerable human suffering during the course ...
Lenin graces the cover of a recent issue of The Economist. The Financial Times is running an entire series on the “crisis in capitalism.” Francis Fukuyama, a recovering neoconservative, makes a plea in Foreign Affairs for the left to get its intellectual act together. And that noted class warrior Newt ...
A man and his son are pushing a shopping cart with their belongings across a devastated American landscape. There has been a global catastrophe, and the few survivors cling to a meager existence. Ruthless gangs roam the ruined cities in search of food. Nothing grows, the animals have all died, ...
Assad and the Cult of Personality
He is, in the words of Barbara Walters, a “mild-mannered ophthalmologist.” Indeed, the rather squeamish leader-to-be chose eye surgery because it didn’t involve much blood. He speaks fluent English and can get by in French as well as his native Arabic. His wife is a knock-out, a “rose in the ...
Republican Heavy Metal Band: The Apocalyptics
They’re like a heavy metal band. Dress them up in black, put some Goth makeup on them, give them a name like The Apocalyptics, and they’d fit right in with the head-banger crowd. After all, it’s mostly doom and gloom with the Republican candidates, particularly when they start in on ...
Chicken Little and the Arab Spring Elections
I decided to wait a couple weeks just to make sure. So far, so good. Citizens went to the polls in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt. A plurality of voters threw their support behind Islamist parties. I take a look outside. The sky is still intact. Still, there is no shortage ...
Burma: Engagement or Appeasement?
Several years ago, I wrote an article about Burmese cooking. My editor at the magazine inserted a sentence at the end of the piece that read something like this: “And there has never been a better time to visit Burma and sample its delicious cuisine.” I immediately called up the ...
It's not the topic of George Packer’s latest essay that's particularly surprising. Inequality, he writes, is undermining democracy. Progressives have been hammering home this message for years if not decades. Nor is the choice of publication necessarily a shocker. Foreign Affairs is the flagship publication of the elite that runs American foreign ...
Drones and the Democratization of Destruction
Someday soon, you'll be checking your new Clear Skies app as a routine part of your preparations to go out for the evening. First, you'll look at your smart gizmo to read your latest email to make sure there hasn't been any change in plans. A quick glance at Facebook ...
Europe has always been a rather tenuous concept. A rump continent, Europe represented the barbarous hinterlands for the Greeks and Romans. The first use of the term "European" occurred in a chronicle describing the forces of Charles the Hammer that turned back the northward advance of Islam at the battle ...
His name was on the lips of everyone I talked with in South Korea last week. As an underdog with little name recognition but a long history of progressive organizing, he came from behind late last month to become the new mayor of Seoul. Remember his name. Park Won Soon ...
Click here to suggest an article
Open Mike
-
June 13th, 2012
We won our independence from the British in a hard-fought revolutionary battle. Today, no hard feelings: the Anglo-American alliance is strong, we all love Downton Abbey, and ...
-
June 5th, 2012
We pay a lot of money for health care in the United States, more per capita than anywhere else in the industrialized world. If you ...
-
May 25th, 2012
An Alternative Commencement Speech
Get out of town. Go on, scram! That’s what a graduation ceremony is all about: the big boot. Thanks for those thousands of dollars, here’s ...
-
May 16th, 2012
Everybody loves Dexter. He’s handsome. He’s helpful. He works at the Miami Metro Police Department, and he’s very good at his job as a blood-splatter ...
-
May 9th, 2012
The Slow Death of Neoliberalism
It's happening in Buenos Aires. It’s happening in Paris and in Athens. It’s even happening at the World Bank headquarters. The global economy is finally ...
-
May 1st, 2012
Institutions rarely vote themselves out of existence. Not if they still have money in their budgets. Large institutions in particular have an almost genetic propensity ...
-
April 10th, 2012
Every year, in the last two weeks of their final semester, a group of seniors in the 20th-century world history class at my high school ...
-
January 11th, 2012
Republican Heavy Metal Band: The Apocalyptics
They’re like a heavy metal band. Dress them up in black, put some Goth makeup on them, give them a name like The Apocalyptics, and ...
-
January 26th, 2012
A man and his son are pushing a shopping cart with their belongings across a devastated American landscape. There has been a global catastrophe, and ...
-
November 16th, 2011
Europe has always been a rather tenuous concept. A rump continent, Europe represented the barbarous hinterlands for the Greeks and Romans. The first use of ...
-
February 28th, 2012
Afghanistan and America's Image Problem
The United States definitely sends mixed messages to the Muslim world. Early in his presidency, Barack Obama went to Cairo to “seek a new beginning ...
-
April 10th, 2012
Every year, in the last two weeks of their final semester, a group of seniors in the 20th-century world history class at my high school ...
-
May 9th, 2012
The Slow Death of Neoliberalism
It's happening in Buenos Aires. It’s happening in Paris and in Athens. It’s even happening at the World Bank headquarters. The global economy is finally ...
-
February 7th, 2012
Iran and the Not-So-Great Game
Stop the Russians from spreading south. This was a primary objective of the Great Game of the 19th century that centered on Central Asia and ...
