"Commentators from all sides of politics have expressed concerns about the effect of inequality on the fabric of society in the United States, where the share of wealth held by the richest 1 percent rose from a quarter to two-fifths between 1990 and 2012. But if you think that’s bad, look what’s happened to the world as a whole: in just the decade after 2000, the richest 1 percent of the world’s population increased its wealth from one-third of everything to a half. The top three and a half dozen people now own as much as the bottom three and a half billion. How is democracy possible with that kind of gulf in wealth and power between citizens?"
By Malik Mukhtar There is a peculiar confidence that comes with being wrong for decades and still being invited back to explain the world. Yossi Alpher—former Mossad official, veteran intelligence analyst, and institutional voice of Israeli “realism”—offers us precisely that confidence in his January 12, 2026 reflections on Iran. His message, distilled, is simple: things are complicated, revolutions are unpredictable, and humility is required . This is sound advice. It just arrives from the wrong mouth, at the wrong time, over the wrong bodies. Because while Alpher warns us—correctly—not to “attack a revolution, ” Israel has spent the last two years doing something far more obscene : attacking a trapped civilian population with no revolution , no army , no air force, no escape —and calling it self-defense . Intelligence: A Sacred Failure, Repeated Faithfully Alpher recalls, with admirable candor, the catastrophic ignorance of Western and Israeli intelligence during...
Comments