AD-DANA, Idlib Province, Syria, Sept. 24 2013 (IPS) – Scorching flames from a makeshift oil refinery sting eyes and the fumes choke throats near the top of a hill in northwestern Syria, where Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters gather for fuel, coffee and phone calls...
Obama’s New Victory in War on Freedom of the Press
There’s something profoundly despicable about a Justice Department that would brazenly violate the First and Fourth Amendments while spying on journalists, then claim to be reassessing such policies after an avalanche of criticism – and then proceed, as it did...
Russia Bashing Is a Dead End
What did Vladimir Putin get from the United States for saving President Obama from himself during the Syrian chemical weapons "crisis"? Only criticism and ridicule from a reflexive anti-Russian American news media. For example, Fox News Channel, often a...
Is Iran Just Fooling Us?
Are we just being fooled by Iran? Are we being seduced by a Persian snake charmer only to later be stung by his nuclear bite? According to Israel we are. Israel’s Minister of Intelligence, International Relations and Strategic Affairs, Yuval Steinitz says that newly...
Dozens of Militants Attack West Iraq Towns; 35 Killed
The ‘Terror’ of Mental Illness
When the television alerts began to signal that one shooter – and then possibly more – had attacked the Navy Yard in Washington DC last week, it was pretty natural that anyone’s first thought went to "terrorism." Hadn’t we been conditioned for these very...
Is Iran the Fourth Reich?
In the fall of 1956, Nikita Khrushchev threatened to rain rockets down on London for the British invasion of Suez and sent his tanks into Budapest to drown the Hungarian Revolution in blood. He blew up the Paris summit in 1960, banged his shoe at the U.N., and warned...
Another Funeral, Another Bombing In Baghdad; 38 Killed
China On Trial
While the Western media focuses on turmoil in the Middle East, America’s annual ritual of formalizing its insolvency, and whatever other ginned up "crisis" has our attention for the moment, a moment of truth in the world's most populous country is being...
Destroying the Right To Be Left Alone
For at least the last six years, government agents have been exploiting an AT&T database filled with the records of billions of American phone calls from as far back as 1987. The rationale behind this dragnet intrusion, codenamed Hemisphere, is to find suspicious...