10 Oct 2015   ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN – “We need a new name,” a senior official in Kazakhstan  told me.  “People keep confusing us with all the other crazy “stans.”  We are not like them. Quite right.  Compared to neighboring Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan is an island of […]

4 Oct 2015    Frankfurt, Germany –Could anyone in the Obama administration have been so slow-witted to imagine that Russia wouldn’t move hard to counter US efforts to overthrow Moscow’s  ally, Syria?     The Syrian war began almost five years ago by the US, France, Britain and Saudi Arabia  to overthrow […]