Fear is contagious: Fear is more contagious than any virus could ever be, and the media has really fed the fear factor when it comes to the coronavirus. I am by no means playing down the deadly Covid-19 coronavirus. It is a killer. Depending on the reporting nation, it appears that on average 3.4 percent of every 100 who catch the coronavirus die. Those are not good odds. Adding to the problem, the Center for Disease Control allowed the virus to spread in the United States out of an act of...

“Fear is a primitive impulse, brainless as hunger, and because the aim of horror fiction is the production of the deepest kinds of fears, the genre tends to reinforce some remarkably uncivilized ideas about self-protection. In the current crop of zombie stories, the prevailing value for the beleaguered survivors is a sort of siege mentality, a vigilance so constant and unremitting that it’s indistinguishable from the purest paranoia.”— Terrence Rafferty, New York Times What do zombies have to...

People are understandably upset about the coronavirus epidemic, but if we’re not careful, an even greater danger lies ahead. Sinister forces in American political life are using the crisis to incite war with China and to stir up bad feelings towards the Chinese people. The Chinese people are in fact heroic. They are our friends, not our enemies. But the forces of evil want you to think otherwise. Concerning the coronavirus, the key fact to remember is that we know very little about it. The...

How much longer can the troubled OPCW organisation continue to operate with any credibility after the doctoring of its investigations to suit a western narrative in Syria continues to be exposed and shows it is far from an independent chemical weapons watchdog? Readers may remember that previously, towards the end of 2019, leaked emails from two key OPCW investigators who were dispatched to Douma in Syria in 2018, revealed that their original remarks – which indicated that the Assad regime...

Governments love crises because when the people are fearful they are more willing to give up freedoms for promises that the government will take care of them. After 9/11, for example, Americans accepted the near-total destruction of their civil liberties in the PATRIOT Act’s hollow promises of security.It is ironic to see the same Democrats who tried to impeach President Trump last month for abuse of power demanding that the Administration grab more power and authority in the name of fighting...

Yesterday the US attacked five sites in Iraq and killed 3 Iraqi soldiers of the 19th Division, two policeman and a civilian. The strikes came after some 10+ rockets, fired by unknown people, had hit the joint base Camp Tali and had killed 2 US and one British soldiers. Today the US received the revenge for its strikes. The US Central Command had argued that the "defensive precision strike" against the five sites created deterrence i.e. they would prevent other attacks: We believe that this is...

The spread of the coronavirus has meant that much of the other news about developments around the world has disappeared from the normal news cycle. The situation in Syria, which involves not only the government in Damascus but also Turkey, Russia, Iran and a remaining American force in part of the country has been proving increasingly unstable. Russian President Vladimir Putin has met face-to-face with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to come up with a de-escalation plan that would avoid...

The airwaves and the internet are filled with warnings about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19). There is more panic in the air than virus itself. The panic is a non-stop viral news dump. But lost in the hysteria concerning the virus is the fundamental fact that humans rank choices every day, all the time. Government edicts to deal with the virus are simply various methods to trample over human individual choices. This is economics 101. Consider, it seems pretty clear that if someone under the...

Two more US soldiers have been killed in Iraq. Yes, that Iraq — the Iraq that never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so — the Iraq that the US government invaded and has occupied for umpteen years under the rubric of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” What did those two soldiers die for? They died for the same thing that 58,000 US soldiers died for in Vietnam — nothing. They certainly didn’t die for freedom. Just as the North Vietnamese were never threatening the freedom of the...

I have previously objected to how the Justice Department uses grand juries to punish certain individuals who refuse to cooperate with federal investigations. This concern was heightened during my representation of Dr. Sami Al-Arian who signed a plea bargain with the understanding that, after serving his time, he would be allowed to leave the country. Instead, he was forced before a grand jury and remained in jail for years as a matter of contempt. The Justice Department often prolongs the...

The State Department’s special envoy for Syria has just admitted that the US aims to defend jihadist militants in Idlib against ‘Russian aggression,’ proving once again that the swamp in Foggy Bottom is alive and well. Russia and the Syrian government “are out to get a military victory in all of Syria,” Ambassador James Jeffrey told reporters on a conference call out of Brussels on Tuesday. Our goal is to make it very difficult for them to do that by a variety of diplomatic, military, and...

Volodymyr Zelensky used to play a school teacher on a hit Ukrainian TV show called "Servant of the People." The premise was simple: a video goes viral of the teacher sounding off about corruption and, before you know it, he’s elected president. The program did so well that Zelensky formed a political party called "Servant of the People," ran for president against incumbent Petro Poroshenka, and won election by a margin of three to one – not on TV, but for real. Evidently, life imitates art so...

It is perhaps unusual to have a government that has as much disregard for what most would consider to be the truth as does the current group of rascals running the United States of America. To be sure, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is as shameless a liar as has ever been seen on any public platform while the president himself appears to make things up as he goes along, particularly if a certain embellishment makes him look good. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that lying and...

This is a test. This is not a test of our commitment to basic hygiene or disaster preparedness or our ability to come together as a nation in times of crisis, although we’re not doing so well on any of those fronts. No, what is about to unfold over the next few weeks is a test to see how well we have assimilated the government’s lessons in compliance, fear, and police state tactics; a test to see how quickly we’ll march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, no questions asked; and a test...

Two whistleblowers that have been speaking out about a scandal within the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have responded to the organization’s attempts to discredit them. The OPCW has been doing some serious damage control over its investigation into a chemical attack that allegedly took place in Douma, Syria on April 7th 2018. New revelations from The Grayzone and journalist Peter Hitchens severely undermine the OPCW’s attack on the brave whistleblowers. Leaked...