The San Bernardino massacre, in which a seemingly harmless county worker and his wife murdered 14 people in cold blood and wounded 21 others, marks a new phase in the cycle of war and repression that characterizes the post-9/11 era. The authorities recognize this, and they are moving swiftly to take advantage of their opportunity. As Rahm Emmanuel famously put it: You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do...

A little-noticed provision in the highway funding bill Congress passed this week threatens a right most Americans take for granted: the right to travel abroad. The provision in question gives the Internal Revenue Service the authority to revoke the passport of anyone the IRS claims owes more than $50,000 in back taxes.Congress is giving the IRS this new power because a decline in gas tax receipts has bankrupted the federal highway trust fund. Of course, Congress would rather squeeze more money...

The Soup Nazi character in the Seinfeld television show sells, at his take-out restaurant, soup that some people consider the best in New York City. But, there is a catch. Customers placing their orders at the restaurant’s counter are in fear that one mistake in phrasing or some other minor misstep will draw the ire of the Soup Nazi along with his decree “No soup for you!” In a CBS television interview the day of the killings in San Bernardino, California, President Barack Obama effectively...

Watch Dr. Paul give the speech here.The credibility of all American politicians now requires acknowledging that America is engaged in a great war for survival – “the war against Islam.” Fear of “radical Islamic terrorists” requires our undivided attention. We’re to believe that the ugly and vicious violence of a very small percentage of the 1.7 billion Muslims around the world, without an army, navy, or air force, is on the verge of engulfing America and Western civilization. The claim is that...

According to the Nation magazine and many others, there are two options available to the US government. One is increased hostility perhaps leading to nuclear war with Russia. The other is a joint US-Russia-and-others war on ISIS. Many in the United States who generally oppose war and who look for information outside the US corporate media manage to recognize the US focus on overthrowing the Syrian government, with Iran next on the list. They notice the lack of US concern over Saudi and Turkish...

Concentration of forces is the most basic law of military science. Victory on the battlefield is won by amassing as many troops as possible at the key point of attack, or ‘schwerpunkt,’ as it’s known in German. Unfortunately, the amateur strategists in the White House seem to have been studying social anthropology and women’s issues instead of basic military science. What they want is, to use the term coined by Russian poet Yevtuschenko, a half war. This week, Pentagon chief Ash Carter,...

Mustafa Abd-al-Qawi Abd-al-Aziz al-Shamiri was captured in 2002 and believed then to be a major al Qaeda facilitator or courier, or maybe a trainer, according to the Department of Defense. He was interrogated “vigorously” and when he did not admit to those activities and did not supply detailed, high level information on al Qaeda, was thrown away, without charge, into America’s offshore penal colony at Guantanamo Bay. For 13 years. Now, desiring after 13 years to reduce the prison population...

If you use hand sanitizer when traveling, the Transportation Security Administration can badger you as if you were a terrorist suspect. TSA is one of the biggest hassles many Americans will encounter this holiday season. I learned that firsthand while flying home from Portland, Ore., on Thanksgiving morning. I arrived at the airport two hours before my flight. As usual, I opted out of going through TSA’s Whole Body Scanners. The agency’s prize possessions are incompetent at detecting terrorist...

On Tuesday evening, we took a look at how Iran’s Shiite proxy arms fighting ISIS in Iraq responded to Ash Carter’s contention that the US would soon send an “expeditionary targeting force” to assist Iraqi and Kurdish Peshmerga forces in the battle against Islamic State. From Kata'ib Hezbollah: "We will chase and fight any American force deployed in Iraq. Any such American force will become a primary target for our group. We fought them before and we are ready to resume fighting." From the Badr...

Blackadder: You see, Baldrick, in order to prevent war in Europe, two superblocs developed: us, the French and the Russians on one side, and the Germans and Austro-Hungary on the other. The idea was to have two vast opposing armies, each acting as the other’s deterrent. That way there could never be a war. Baldrick: But, this is a sort of a war, isn’t it, sir? Blackadder: Yes, that’s right. You see, there was a tiny flaw in the plan. Baldrick: What was that, sir? Blackadder: It was bollocks. —...

“Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like.” ― William O. Douglas, Supreme Court Justice Bottle up the champagne, pack away the noisemakers, and toss out the party hats. There is no cause for celebration. We have secured no major victories against tyranny. We have achieved no great feat in pushing back...

Following Russia's official retaliation to the Turkish downing of its jet a week ago, in which Putin issued an executive order limiting employment for Turkish workers, restricting Turkish organizations, and reducing the amount of bilateral trade with Ankara, perhaps a far more notable development took place earlier today when the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office issued a statement in which it recognized George Soros’s Open Society Institute and another affiliated organization as...

The interventionists will do anything to prevent Americans from seeing that their foreign policies are perpetuating terrorism and inspiring others to seek to harm us. The neocons know that when it is understood that blowback is real – that people seek to attack us not because we are good and free but because we bomb and occupy their countries – their stranglehold over foreign policy will begin to slip. That is why each time there is an event like the killings in Paris earlier this month, they...

If we want to get to a world where terrorism isn’t such a regular tragedy, governments need to start recognizing the fact that the so-called “War on Terror” is a self-fulfilling prophecy destined to foment one thing and one thing only: more terrorism. The Big Picture: The problem arising in the wake of the recent mass-murder event in Paris and the subsequent French bombing of the Islamic State (also a mass-murder event) is that the two acts (and hundreds like them) serve as justification for...