Ronald Reagan once said, “Man does not live by bread alone. We really almost diminish all the things we are when we limit the debate to money and how it is distributed in our country. We lose a sense of the mystery in men’s souls and the mystery of life.” Was he giving a guest sermon at a church? No. He was speaking to poor students in a languishing Texas town, and the subject of his speech was, nominally, his reelection campaign and his economic recovery. The president’s remarks were in response to those who noticed that the economic recovery…

  I offer here what might be called a moderate revisionist account of the September 11 terror and the origin of the U.S. ‘war on terrorism.’ The official story permeating the major media runs something like this: the U.S. war on Afghanistan was simply an ad hoc response to the horrific events of September 11, which struck as a bolt from the blue, totally unexpected by American security agencies. The Afghanistan war emerged overnight as a simple effort to punish, and thus bring to justice, the perpetrators of the abominable deeds - namely, the al Qaeda terrorist network masterminded by…

As we mark the 50th anniversary of the longest military occupation in modern history, some are celebrating. It is fully appropriate that these celebrations will include a joint session of the US Congress and the Israeli Knesset, held via video link. For Israel’s rule over East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights is only made possible by the constant support it has obtained since June 1967 from successive US administrations. This is therefore not solely an Israeli occupation: Since the very beginning, it has in fact been a joint undertaking, an Israeli-American condominium, if you…

Israel’s Kibbutz movement is looking to a burgeoning international appetite for marijuana from the holy land, particularly in the U.S., to reinvigorate their communities after decades of stagnation. The so-called “green rush” has gained momentum since February, when the Israeli government threw its weight behind legislation allowing the export of medical marijiuana. The law is expected to pass before the end of the summer with some insiders indicating a vote in August, the Times of Israel reported. With medical marijuana legal in 28 U.S. states, and the drug approved for legal recreational use in  Colorado, Alaska, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Washington,…

U.S. actress Angelina Jolie, along with Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, backed the United Nation’s global campaign to end statelessness, a situation at least 10 million people around the world suffer from, according to the Reuters Thomson Foundation.The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates that a child is born stateless every 10 minutes, and has launched the “I Belong” campaign in an effort to end the plight of those without citizenship.“Statelessness makes people feel like their very existence is a crime,” UNHCR head António Guterres said. “We have a historic opportunity to end the scourge of statelessness within 10 years, and give back hope to…