When Argentina defaulted on its national debt in 2001, US hedge funds swooped in to buy the nation’s bonds at pennies on the dollar, confident they would eventually prevail in the US legal system and force the country to pay out in full. That battle is set to...
Spinning Yarns in the Mainstream Media
The Washington Post editorial page under Fred Hiatt has long been a neoconservative bastion rivaling the Wall Street Journal, supporting every war to come down the pike while justifying every intrusion on personal rights as long as it might plausibly be justified on...
Liberty’s Backlash
Last week, Justin Amash, the two-term libertarian Republican congressman from Michigan, joined with John Conyers, the 25-term liberal Democratic congressman from the same state, to offer an amendment to legislation funding the National Security Agency (NSA). If...
More Iraq Bloodshed: 49 Killed, 83 Wounded
Positive Signals Between Iran and U.S. Intensifying
Within days of the inauguration of Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s new president, both Tehran and Washington appear to be sending positive signals to each other. The latest came Monday in a flurry of reports from Iran that its former ambassador to the United Nations,...
Kill Wasteful Missile Defense Efforts
In the 30 years, since President Ronald Reagan created his expensive pie-in-the-sky Strategic Defense Initiative – quickly and appropriately named "Star Wars" by critics and journalists alike – the United States has spent a whopping $250 billion on trying to...
Ex-Envoy’s Account Clarifies Iran’s 2003 Nuclear Decision
Newly published recollections by the former French ambassador to Iran suggest that Iran was not running a covert nuclear weapons programme that it then decided to halt in late 2003, as concluded by U.S. intelligence in 2007. Ambassador Francois Nicoullaud recounted...
‘King of Bacon’ Attacks Libertarians
Asked about the national debate unleashed by the Snowden revelations, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie declared war on libertarians: "As a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, I just want us to be really cautious,...
The Moral Verdict on Bradley Manning: A Conviction of Love in Action
The sun rose with a moral verdict on Bradley Manning well before the military judge could proclaim his guilt. The human verdict would necessarily clash with the proclamation from the judicial bench. In lockstep with administrators of the nation’s war services,...