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 as darkness falls. The population of the nearby town Al-Dana …
Continue reading “Cracks Widen Among Syrian Rebels”
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 this week, to gloat that those policies made possible a long prison sentence for a …
Continue reading “Obama’s New Victory in War on Freedom of the Press”
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 proponent of high-testosterone American responses to almost any international crisis, kept poking fun at Putin’s personal …
Continue reading “Russia Bashing Is a Dead End”
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 elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani "has launched a charm offensive on …
Continue reading “Is Iran Just Fooling Us?”
At least 35 people were killed and 48 more were wounded in new attacks. No major bombings took place, but dozens of militants attacked two towns in western Anbar province.
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 moments, waiting for the other shoe to drop after the 9/11 …
Continue reading “The ‘Terror’ of Mental Illness”
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 Americans, “We will bury you!” He …
Continue reading “Is Iran the Fourth Reich?”
For the third day in a row, suicide bombers targeted a funeral in the Baghdad area. Baghdadis saw two other bombings. One of them was at a cafe, which is another favorite target for bombers. A number of smaller attacks took place elsewhere. Overall, at least 38 people were killed and 65 wounded.
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 steadfastly ignored by all the Very Serious People in Washington, D.C. That’s because …
Continue reading “China On Trial”
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 links between people with "burner" phones (prepaid mobile phones easy to buy, …
Continue reading “Destroying the Right To Be Left Alone” 
