... and ethnic Russian divide within Ukraine, with Yanukovych allying with the ethnic Russian camp that feels strongly tied to Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin in particular has a history of trying to manipulate, strong-arm, and dominate Ukrainian politics, with Yanukovych acting as key agent for advancing Russian interests in Ukraine.
Behind the scenes and unofficially, Manafort worked as a campaign consultant for Yanukovych, already surrounded by a cloud of corruption at this time, who was ...
... Iraq/the Islamic State of Iraq ended in crushing defeat for the terrorists, for years after the group was little more than a nuisance and was basically forced underground. Hounded in Iraq, the group saw an opportunity for more fertile ground when the Syrian Civil War erupted in 2011, and under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (the current self-proclaimed "caliph"), began getting involved there. Over the course of 2012 the group began to play a major and brutalizing role in the conflict,...
This was written as the Paris attacks unfolded. I have preserved the unfolding nature of the original piece to connect the reader in a deeper sense to what I was feeling as I wrote this.
As this historic terrorist attack unfolds, France, Europe, the West, and the Middle East need to really think about what they've been doing and what they are about to do before doing it. This is a time to be smart, but it is also a time to marginalize unhelpful, myopic voices, be they those of bigots or those...