The White House kept one seat vacant in the gallery during Obama’s State of the Union Address on Tuesday “for the victims of gun violence who no longer have a voice.” This was part of Obama’s campaign for new federal restrictions on firearms ownership. But shouldn’t there have also been chairs left empty to memorialize other casualties – including those “who no longer have a voice” thanks to Obama administration policies? While trumpeting the private death toll from guns, Obama ignored the 986...

It is standard strategy in North Korea for officials to keep the citizenry constantly on edge about the possibility of a US attack. The idea is that if people are kept afraid, they will inevitably rally to the government, ignore their desperate economic plight, and accept any loss of liberty necessary to keep them safe. To keep the citizenry afraid, North Korean officials point to pronouncements by US officials regarding the evil nature of North Korea, military exercises by US troops, and...

The execution of Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and 46 convicted al-Qaeda members by the Saudis triggered a still-unfolding crisis between the Kingdom and Iran. Protesters in Tehran set fire to the Saudi embassy, and the Iranian government threatened that the Saudis will face “divine” revenge. Riyadh responded by severing diplomatic relations and ordering Iran’s ambassador to depart the Kingdom, followed by the cutting off of all commercial ties with Iran. Saudi allies Bahrain, Sudan, and the...

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the...

Oxymoron: a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in“cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.” (Dictionary.com) The way we use words matters — a lot. When words begin to lose their meaning or get distorted, the things we say begin to mean something entirely different…perhaps even expressing a sentiment opposite to the original intent. This is not unlike the term “doublespeak” (a concept highlighted in George Orwell’s 1984, where...

The nation's attention turned to Oregon this week when a group calling itself Citizens for Constitutional Freedom seized control of part of a federal wildlife refuge. The citizens were protesting the harsh sentences given to members of the Hammond ranching family. The Hammonds were accused of allowing fires set on their property to spread onto federal land. The Hammonds were prosecuted under a federal terrorism statute. This may seem odd, but many prosecutors are stretching the definition of...

The Russian air campaign in Syria is netting some impressive gains – for Russia, Syria, and – although many of us are loath to admit it – the West: Russian air power, working closely with the Syrian Arab Army, has stymied the efforts of ISIS and other violent extremists to overthrow the secular, religiously tolerant, multi-confessional government of Syria. Gains have been made on the ground in and around Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, and Latakia. And there is evidence the Russian campaign was...

While President Obama was tearing up to support his call for gun control, the US military-industrial complex was celebrating its continued leadership in the sale of weaponry to foreign regimes. According to the New York Times, US foreign arms deals increased nearly $10 billion in 2014. Total sales went from $26.7 billion in 2013 to $36.2 billion in 2014, a 35 percent increase. Meanwhile, American statists, including those in the mainstream press, continue to scream about gun-show loopholes...

For those who still don’t get why the War of Terror continues to fail after 14+ years, here is another lesson. We all remember “Jihadi John,” who of course was never called that except in the western media. John (real name: Mohammed Emwazi) was a British citizen who became radicalized, joined ISIS and went on to do horrible things, including beheadings. The media, in hand with the White House and Downing Street, fluffed this one loser guy up into an international super villain. So, when...

A recent column by Pat Buchanan could not be more spot on. It slices through the misbegotten assumption that Saudi Arabia is our ally and that the safety and security of the citizens of Lincoln NE, Spokane WA and Springfield MA have anything to do with the religious and political machinations of Riyadh and its conflicts with Iran and the rest of the Shiite world. Nor is this only a recent development. In fact, for more than four decades Washington’s middle eastern policy has been dead wrong...

On December 16th, 2015, Federal Reserve Officials announced that after six years of 0 percent interest, they would finally raise the Federal Fund Rate. The move was seen by many as an attempt to provide markets with a boost of confidence. Although markets initially sold off on the news, they have in fact rebounded back to normal levels. Still, the question of whether or not the US economy is strong enough to maintain levels of growth has yet to be answered. Washington’s privileged position as...

Seymour Hersh’s recent revelations about an effort by the US military leadership in 2013 to bolster the Syrian army against jihadist forces in Syria shed important new light on the internal bureaucratic politics surrounding regime change in US Middle East policy. Hersh’s account makes it clear that the Obama administration’s policy of regime change in both Libya and Syria provoked pushback from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). That account and another report on a similar episode in 2011...

So while we huddled in drunken fear here in The Homeland, Germans in Das Homeland played out a similar game. You may have missed it among updates of our impending doom from terror attacks on New Year’s Eve, but in Munich two train stations were evacuated and closed after German officials had received a “very concrete” tip that suicide attacks were planned there. Everything got locked down and even the American Embassy in Germany Tweeted out an urgent bulletin to Americans. And yeah, I buried...