On November 30th, voters in Switzerland will head to the polls to vote in a referendum on gold. On the ballot is a measure to prohibit the Swiss National Bank (SNB) from further gold sales, to repatriate Swiss-owned gold to Switzerland, and to mandate that gold make up at least 20 percent of the SNB's assets. Arising from popular sentiment similar to movements in the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands, this referendum is an attempt to bring more oversight and accountability to the...

Official Washington’s ever-influential neoconservatives and their “liberal interventionist” allies see President Barack Obama’s decision to extend U.S. airstrikes against Islamic State terrorists into Syria as a new chance to achieve the long-treasured neocon goal of “regime change” in Damascus. On the surface, Obama’s extraordinary plan to ignore Syrian sovereignty and attack across the border has been viewed as a unilateral U.S. action to strike at the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and...

President Barack Obama, in his speech Wednesday to make the case for a United States war on ISIS, suggested merely talking with some Congress members is enough to legitimate the war and invoked the Founders as supporters of worldwide US domination. In contrast to Obama’s assertions, the US Constitution places in Congress the war declaration power and the Founders largely prescribed a foreign policy centered on nonintervention. Many people hoped in the early days of the United States that calls...

Five Truths Truth #1: “We have not yet detected specific plotting against our homeland.” This is an extremely important admission to understand. If there is no specific plot against America then America must by definition be acting pre-emptively to wage war on the organization known as the “Islamic State.” Whether you think that is a good thing or a bad thing, it is by definition, the truth. Truth #2: “ISIL poses a threat to the people of Iraq and Syria and the broader Middle East.” This is...

President Obama, Wednesday night, provided further details on his plans to meet the challenge of ISIS, relying on a broad coalition of partners to degrade and destroy the Islamic State. He said he would rely on US airstrikes, not combat troops, and would work with other nations to cut off ISIS funding. He warned there would be no safe haven for any organization that threatened America, implying that military operations in Iraq could spread to Syria and perhaps to neighboring countries,...

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo, hurroo With your drums and guns and guns and drums The enemy nearly slew ye Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer Johnny I hardly knew ye….. This memorable stanza from the classic anti-war song could not be more apt with respect to Barack Obama. He became President because he campaigned across the land draped in the garlands of peace. Yet he has now promised to spend his final three...

U.S. politicians are exploiting the gruesome beheadings of two American journalists to whip up war fever against ISIS, the “criminal gang” masquerading as an organization of devout Sunni Muslims that controls large parts of Syria and Iraq. The American propaganda campaign seems to be working if recent polls are accurate. No decent person is anything but appalled by those executions. But are they grounds for the United States to go to war? No, they are not. Barack Obama says his job is to...

President Obama is again asserting his right to act unilaterally and without congressional approval in going to war. In what has become a mantra for this Administration, Obama reportedly told members of Congress that he does not need congressional approval to unleash a comprehensive military campaign against the Islamic State. The President informed a few members at a dinner — a striking image of how low congressional authority has become in our tripartite system of government. We have been...

“Police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent.”—Kristian Williams, activist and author If you don’t want to get probed, poked, pinched, tasered, tackled, searched, seized, stripped, manhandled, arrested, shot, or killed, don’t say, do or...

A New York Times investigation into the influence of foreign money on American thinktanks is causing a Twitter-storm as I write this, and with good reason. In one particularly egregious example, the report details an explicit agreement, signed by the principals, between the Center for Global Development (CGD) and the government of Norway for the former to propagandize on behalf of doubling a foreign aid program to Norway in exchange for a $5 million donation. Aside from the brazen corruption...

Let me put in a word for Anthony Blair. I despise the Blair creature so much that words long ago failed me, and I have even run out of scornful facial expressions and rude noises to use when his name is mentioned. I long for the day when the mystery of his rise to the highest office in British politics can be documented and explained, with all the culprits exposed. But this week I must rally to his defence. It has now become fashionable to deride him (which it certainly wasn’t in the old days)...

Forty years ago many Americans celebrated the demise of the imperial presidency with the resignation of Richard Nixon. Today it is clear they celebrated too soon. Nixon’s view of presidential powers, summed up in his infamous statement that, “when the president does it that means it is not illegal,” is embraced by the majority of the political class. In fact, the last two presidents have abused their power in ways that would have made Nixon blush. For example, Nixon’s abuse of the Internal...

While local and state governments continue moving forward with reducing and eliminating restrictions and penalties regarding marijuana, drug war beneficiaries are desperately responding by spreading disinformation. One such effort is the Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Traffic Area August report “The Legalization of Marijuana in Colorado: The Impact.” The report purports to be a balanced analysis of the effects of marijuana legalization in Colorado. In fact, the report is over 150 pages of...