John Feffer
John Feffer is the author of the dystopian novel "Splinterlands" (2016) and the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His new novel, "Frostlands" (2018) is book two of his Splinterlands trilogy. Splinterlands book three "Songlands" will be published in 2021. His podcast is available here.
Articles by this author
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Views Monday, March 26, 2018 Trump to the International Community: Drop Dead Donald Trump has a plan to solve America’s drug crisis: kill the drug dealers. "We have pushers and drugs dealers, they are killing hundreds and hundreds of people," Trump said at a recent White House summit on opioid abuse. "Some countries have a very, very tough penalty — the ultimate penalty —... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 22, 2018 Trump, Terrorism, and the Politics of Witch Hunts Five hundred years ago, a popular test to flush out witches was called “ordeal by water.” Dunk an alleged witch into a lake. If she sinks, she’s innocent. If she floats, her guilt is plain for all to see and she can be safely burned at the stake. By this ancient form of waterboarding, witch hunters... Read more |
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Views Friday, March 02, 2018 Oh Magog! Apocalyptic Christianity Returns to U.S. Foreign Policy Welcome back, Gog and Magog. I can’t say that I’ve missed you. You might remember the Gog and Magog story from 2003, when George W. Bush was making plans to invade Iraq and assembling a “coalition of the willing.” French President Jacques Chirac was quite unwilling, so Bush went to great lengths to... Read more |
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Views Thursday, January 25, 2018 Trump Isn’t Just Incompetent and His Agenda Isn’t Just Bad. It’s Evil. Evil is a popular topic in Hollywood, from The Evil Dead franchise to Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies. But evil makes only the occasional cameo in the U.S. policy realm. In the early 1990s, the topic of evil became buzz-worthy in the wake of the Cold War’s collapse as pundits and policymakers... Read more |
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Views Friday, January 19, 2018 The U.S. Has Treated Poor Countries Like Shitholes for Decades The United States has never invaded Norway. It has never bombed Oslo. It has never rounded up Norwegians and thrown them in Guantanamo. Perhaps some U.S. diplomats have referred to the country as “shithole” — because the food’s rather bland and the nightlife rather staid — but the important thing... Read more |
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Views Thursday, January 04, 2018 Trump and the Neocons Are Exploiting an Iran Protest Movement They Know Nothing About The last time Iranians went out onto the streets in large numbers, they were protesting what they thought was a stolen election. It was 2009, and hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had convincingly won the presidency with roughly 63 percent to reformer Mir-Hossein Mousavi’s approximately 34 percent... Read more |
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Views Thursday, December 14, 2017 North Korea: The Costs of War, Calculated Donald Trump is contemplating wars that would dwarf anything that his immediate predecessors ever considered. He has dropped the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan, and he’s considering the mother of all wars in the Middle East. He is abetting Saudi Arabia’s devastating war in Yemen. Many... Read more |
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Views Saturday, December 09, 2017 If the Trump Revolution Is Possible, So Is a Progressive One Don’t kid yourself: 2016 was a revolutionary year in the United States. Yes, I know, the United States is a deeply conservative country. Americans don’t engage in periodic attempts to overthrow the system. There is no viable political party that threatens the status quo. When protesters gather in... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 05, 2017 What’s the Matter with Eastern Europe? He was a rich businessman, an outspoken outsider with a love of conspiracy theories. And he was a populist running for president. In 1990, when Donald Trump was still beyond the furthest outskirts of American politics, Stanislaw Tyminski was trying to become the new president of post-communist... Read more |
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Views Thursday, November 16, 2017 Trump’s New Blame Game As a candidate, Donald Trump rallied voters against a variety of enemies. He vilified Mexicans. He stereotyped Muslims. And he went after the Chinese for “raping” the United States. President Trump still wants to build that wall along the border with Mexico. He’s still trying to keep out Muslim... Read more |