The allegory is one in which a scorpion depends on the frog for its passage across a flooded river, by hitching a lift on the frog’s back. The frog distrusts the scorpion; but reluctantly agrees. During the crossing the scorpion fatally stings the frog swimming the river, under the scorpion. They both die. It is a tale from antiquity intended to illustrate the nature of tragedy. A Greek tragedy is one in which the crisis at the heart of any ‘tragedy’ does not arise by sheer mischance. The...

A massive US naval deployment in a wide arc of the so-called Greater Middle East is under way — stretching from Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, into the Red Sea and  the Bab el Mandeb and into the Gulf of Aden and all the way into the Gulf of Oman. This deterrent display may transform as large scale offensive operations and aims to rework the geopolitical alignments and bring them back to the traditional grooves of intra-regional rivalries in the Gulf region.  Ship spotters...

New US House Speaker Mike Johnson struck a blow for liberty and justice last week when he finally authorized the release of all the tapes from the January 6, 2021 “insurrection.” We were told by no less than President Biden himself that this was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.” The FBI was unleashed by the Biden Administration to hunt down hundreds of participants in this “insurrection” and lock them up in the gulag where they awaited trial in torturous conditions –...

“Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.”  -- First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution Here is a pop quiz: If the states ratified an amendment to the Constitution repealing the First Amendment, would we still enjoy the freedom of speech? That depends on which value prevails: Are our rights only what lawmakers have written down, or are they personal attributes immune from governmental reach? When James Madison was crafting the First Amendment, he insisted that the...

The movie “Dr. Strangelove,” a Cold War comedy satire, warns about the potential of a thermonuclear war. The film is still pertinent today with the renewed Cold War and political hacks lacking geopolitical understanding and strategic thinking. One of the most reckless presidential candidates who lacks geopolitical awareness is Nikki Haley. A career politician, Halley is the 4th Estate’s (AKA MSM) pick for the Republican presidential candidate. She checks all the neocon boxes. The Wall Street...

Paris – The great Voltaire wrote ‘show me whom you cannot criticize, and I will show you who rules you.’So true. Anyone who dares criticize Israel’s Biblical punishment of Palestinians in the Gaza outdoor prison is immediately subject to a storm of calumny and threats.No matter that this mass punishment violates the 4th Geneva Convention and other international law, nor that it violates the US’s own arms export act, and has bred deep disgust around the globe for the United States and...

Free speech is in a free fall as millions embrace censorship as a political cause, including some now running for federal office on a pledge to silence others. One of the most alarming aspects of this period has been the emergence of a type of triumvirate of censorship, an alliance of government, academic, and media corporations. Together they have established the most comprehensive censorship system in the history of this country. That system is being forced out into the public by the...

The Biden administration is killing people, openly in Ukraine and Gaza and secretly around the world. It has continued to use the killing machinery crafted by President George W. Bush, expanded by President Barack Obama and employed by President Donald Trump. These presidents have used drones and other unmanned projectiles to target persons in foreign countries with which the United States is not at war. They have done this notwithstanding the prohibition against taking life, liberty or...

The forthcoming first visit by Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi to Saudi Arabia on November 13 marks a milestone in the rapprochement between the two countries mediated by China in March. The relationship is fast acquiring a qualitatively new level of solidarity in the context of the Palestine-Israel conflict. This marks a shift in the tectonic plates in regional politics, which has long been dominated by the United States but no longer so. The latest China-UAE initiative on Monday to promote a...

Dominique De Villepin, former Prime Minister of France, who famously led France’s opposition to the Iraq war, recently described the term “Occidentalism” (currently the prevalent sentiment in much of Europe) as being the notion that “the West, which for five centuries managed the world’s affairs, will be able to quietly continue to do so.” He continues: There is this idea that, faced with what is currently happening in the Middle East, we must continue the fight even more, towards what might...

Faced with growing American frustration over more than $100 billion spent on a failed proxy war in Ukraine, President Biden’s handlers have hit on a gimmick to convince us that this foreign aid is actually an investment in our own economy! In his recent television address, Biden explained that as we transfer more weapons to Ukraine we then will build new weapons at home to replace them. That, explained Biden, means more American jobs and a stronger American economy.So “Project Ukraine” is not...

A trial balloon has gone up on the NBCnews website. It is testing the public reaction to the upcoming US and NATO acknowledgment of their defeat in Ukraine: US, European officials broach topic of peace negotiations with Ukraine, sources say - NBCnews - Nov 03 2023 WASHINGTON — US and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior US official and one former...

When you are faced with an existential threat to your very national survival, this is what you do. You mobilize your economy for all-out struggle and impose heavy-duty “War Taxes” to pay for a dramatic build-up of military capabilities. For instance, between 1939 and 1945 Federal government receipts rose nearly seven-fold—from $6 billion to $42 billion per year, owing to across-the-board tax increases that took the average income tax rate from 4 percent to 24 percent and the top rate to...

It’s simple: If you know in advance that your actions will cause the death of thousands of civilians; attached to your criminal actions (actus reus) is a guilty mind (mens rea), which means malice aforethought, also known as intent, in Western jurisprudence and judicial philosophy. The razing of Gaza and the ongoing murder of thousands of civilians by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), with western imprimatur, is a war crime. Strafing civilian populations and pulverizing entire neighborhoods to...

Wounded Palestinians arrive to al-Shifa hospital, following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, central Gaza Strip, Monday, Oct. 16, 2023.  On Tuesday, October 31, 2023, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bombed a Palestinian refugee camp with 100,000 inhabitants, producing a hellscape of casualties, 50 dead, 150 injured, with buildings in collapse at the periphery of  massive bomb crater. The stated public intention was to kill a single Hamas commander.There are two...

When the Trump administration obtained an indictment of Edward Snowden for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, many of us who believe that the Fourth Amendment means what it says were deeply critical of the government, and we remain so today. Snowden is the former CIA and National Security Agency operative -- he was a CIA agent and was later employed by a contractor for the NSA -- who blew the whistle on NSA and FBI mass undifferentiated warrantless spying on all persons in America. The...