Somebody wants the Saudis and their Arab neighbors to believe that Russia is intensifying its presence in Syria. That possibly explains a hysterical propaganda overload this weekend. They seek them here, they seek them there. According to certain elements of the US media, Russian soldiers are everywhere. At this stage, the moon is probably the only place you are safe. Then again, maybe they are readying copy which 'proves' that the Russians are hiding on the dark side. Or perhaps even they...

This Monday, September 7, seven Syrian citizens go to court in Paris to pursue their civil suit against French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius. The five men and two women all lost family members and close friends in massacres by armed rebels supported by Fabius in word and deed. They are asking for one euro of symbolic damages. In the end the suit will almost surely be thrown out. The September 7 hearing is on an appeal against an earlier ruling that the courts cannot judge acts of the...

“Spontaneous.” “Genuine.” Defiant.” The US State Department’s marketeers have used these labels in attempts to differentiate its latest wave of global “color revolutions” from the now tired, ineffective, and familiar formulas used everywhere from the US-engineered “Arab Spring,” to the Euromaidan in Ukraine, to Bersih 4.0 in Malaysia. The latest target is Lebanon where protests have begun in the streets of the capital, Beirut. Branded the “YouStink!” marches, the alleged provocation was...

Last week Europe saw one of its worst crises in decades. Tens of thousands of migrants entered the European Union via Hungary, demanding passage to their hoped-for final destination, Germany. While the media focuses on the human tragedy of so many people uprooted and traveling in dangerous circumstances, there is very little attention given to the events that led them to leave their countries. Certainly we all feel for the displaced people, especially the children, but let’s not forget that...

Watching live footage of the "refugees" arriving in Munich, it is difficult not to be struck by how non refugee-like they look. Many are well shod in expensive-looking western sneakers, wearing Adidas and other western name-brand clothing, fingering their smart phones. Mostly men of, as they say, fighting age. What few women we do see appear mostly fashionably dressed with healthy and happy looking babies. It is de rigueur at the moment to express unconditional sympathy for those currently...

In the past week, the flood of undocumented and unregistered Middle Eastern and African migrants into the EU has become an inundation. The high water mark of the human tide is located in Hungary, which is not a logical outcome despite the country’s geographical position at the center of Europe. Understanding why is the key to understanding what is happening not in but to Europe. After allowing unregistered migrants to board eastbound trains to Vienna and Munich, Hungary suddenly closed...

Former US Rep. Ron Paul lays out a national security strategy for the United States in his book, Swords into Plowshares, which Carl von Clausewitz , the author of On War, would have approved. Clausewitz, a Prussian general in the early Nineteenth Century, is considered perhaps the West’s most insightful strategist, and On War is his classic work on the inter-relationship between politics and war. A close reading of On War reveals a book far more on the strategy of statecraft, that is Grand...

Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick issued a statement Wednesday that says that, to counter “America’s negative attitude toward our law enforcement officers,” people should all-but grovel at the feet of any police they come across. Patrick even suggests that “financially able” individuals (who presumably are already paying cops’ salaries via taxes) pay for the lunches of any cops they may see in a restaurant. Here is Patrick’s complete list of groveling suggestions: Join me in changing this...

Images are a powerful tool in the hands of propagandists. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes. If a powerful image can be manipulated to tell a tale even if false, it can persuade more viscerally than can a thousand reasoned arguments.So it is with the tragic photograph making the mainstream media rounds yesterday of a lone Syrian child drowned on a Turkish shore. Reams of articles can be written about the current refugee crisis but particularly in the US they will go...

“If the freedom of speech be taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”—George Washington The architects of the American police state must think we’re idiots. With every passing day, we’re being moved further down the road towards a totalitarian society characterized by government censorship, violence, corruption, hypocrisy and intolerance, all packaged for our supposed benefit in the Orwellian doublespeak of national security, tolerance and so-called...

A well-done article in the New York Times reminds us that four years after the United States assassinated American citizen and Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (and his teenage son) in a drone strike, his influence on jihadists is greater than ever. At the same time, the UK’s Guardian tells us about William Bradford, an assistant law professor at West Point, who argued in a peer-reviewed paper that attacks on Muslim scholars’ homes and offices, Middle Eastern media outlets and Islamic holy sites...

In the midst of a war-fueled water crisis, the Saudi Arabia-led coalition reportedly bombed a water bottling plant in northern Yemen on Sunday, adding to mounting civilian casualties as the military onslaught enters its sixth month. "The corpses of 36 workers, many of them burnt or in pieces, were pulled out after an air strike hit the plant this morning," resident Issa Ahmed told Reuters of Sunday's bombing in the province of Hajjah. The Yemeni Defense Ministry put the number of civilians...

Following Monday’s historic stock market downturn, many politicians and so-called economic experts rushed to the microphones to explain why the market crashed and to propose "solutions” to our economic woes. Not surprisingly, most of those commenting not only failed to give the right answers, they failed to ask the right questions. Many blamed the crash on China’s recent currency devaluation. It is true that the crash was caused by a flawed monetary policy. However, the fault lies not with...

My father, a New York financier, used to call dubious stocks or bonds, “Chinese paper.” Last week, we saw a blizzard of Chinese paper, both in China and around the world. As manager of a sizeable investment portfolio (an unwelcome second job from my main work, journalism), I watched last week’s near death experience on world markets with a mixture of cynicism and alarm. First of all, remember when Americans – and particularly Republicans – demonized Mao’s China and endlessly warned about the...

The old adage, “follow the money,” is still not a bad way to suss out wrongdoing. Originated during the Watergate era, the term says if you follow the trail of money through an organization or a caper, you’ll find the guilty people at the end. With the State Department and Hillary Clinton, the advice should read: “Follow Pat Kennedy.” Meet Pat Kennedy The name of long-time State Department Under Secretary for Management, Patrick Kennedy, pictured, is unknown to most journalists and nearly all...