(4 comments) SHARE        Thursday, June 27, 2013
Big Brother, not Snowden and Greenwald, Is the Story Snowden and Greenwald have not "aided the enemy" -- unless the American people are the government's enemy. What they have done is embarrass the Obama administration by exposing criminal activity. For the media's defenders of power against truth, that's inexcusable.

(7 comments) SHARE        Thursday, December 26, 2013
Congress Must Not Cede Its War Power to Israel Americans should refuse to let Congress give Israel the power to drag the United States into war. American and Israeli intelligence agencies say Iran has no nuclear-weapons program. Israel, remember, is itself a nuclear power. But even if Iran were a threat to Israel, that would not warrant letting any foreign government dictate when we go to war.

(2 comments) SHARE        Saturday, February 24, 2018
TGIF: The Tragicomedy of Russiagate We have a moral inequivalence on our hands. It's okay if we do it to "them" (whomever), but it's not okay if "they" do it to us. Moreover, we can do it to ourselves, but if anyone else tries it, there'll be hell to pay.

(1 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, March 4, 2015
America Must Reject Netanyahu's War Cry On Iran Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington this week to prepare the American people for war against Iran. He has no confidence in President Obama, and his objective is nothing less than to wreck the current negotiations and push America into a regime-changing war against Iran. Netanyahu's narrative is a fabric of lies and omissions.

SHARE        Tuesday, February 18, 2020
Anti-BDS Laws Violate Our Freedom Americans' free-speech and other rights are being violated by state laws aimed at stifling the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) Movement against Israel's illegal rule of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, both conquered over half a century ago.

SHARE        Sunday, February 11, 2018
TGIF: Raining on the Parade Some people have proposed that Trump's parade be postponed until all the wars the U.S. government is waging are finished and the troops are back home. That would indeed be an indefinite postponement, and I wouldn't want to see a parade even then. But if that's the price for ending those imperial wars, I'll take it.

(3 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, November 20, 2018
Art of the Smear: the Israel Lobby Busted The paid pro-Israel operatives, guided by Israeli government officials and embassy staff, have used social media and other channels in an attempt to destroy the career potential of student activists who work to raise Americans' consciousness about the Palestinians.

SHARE        Friday, March 6, 2020
TGIF: Democracy Can't Fix Socialism The difference between socialism and interventionism is not moral but economic and institutional. Whether politicians and bureaucrats direct our behavior directly though government ownership or indirectly through regulation of nominally private arrangements makes little difference morally. Either way, our rights and freedom are violated.

(2 comments) SHARE        Sunday, June 29, 2014
TGIF: Smedley Butler And The Racket That Is War Butler described who bears the costs of war -- the men who die or return home with wrecked lives, and the taxpayers -- and who profits -- the companies that sell goods and services to the military. (The term military-industrial complex would not gain prominence until 1961, when Dwight Eisenhower used it in his presidential farewell address.

(6 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, June 5, 2018
How an Anti-Semitic American Law Helped to Create the State of Israel and a Whole Lot of Trouble Without Wilson's war, no Versailles Treaty; without the Versailles Treaty, no Hitler; without Hitler, no Holocaust; without the Holocaust, no State of Israel; without the State of Israel, well, you get the idea. I'm not saying everything today would be sweetness and light in the Middle East. The Great Powers would have still wanted to control the oil, but the major source of strife and war would not have materialized.

(1 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, July 10, 2018
The Trump-Kushner Delusion on Palestine Americans who rely on the establishment news media for information would not know that the Palestine-Israel story has been carefully crafted to make the Israelis look good and the Palestinians bad. Virtually every commentary assumes it is the Palestinians who must prove they are worthy of peace, security, and self-governance. The burden of proof is entirely theirs. The Israeli have nothing to prove.

SHARE        Thursday, December 12, 2019
No US-Israel Defense Pact! The American people should resoundingly let the politicians know that the proposed collective defense arrangement with Israel should be scrapped. No blood for Israel!

SHARE        Saturday, March 3, 2018
The Grammar of Russiagate In the public prints and official pronouncements, it's not enough to say Russians tried to muck around in the American election. It's almost always the Russians. This is a subtle way to convey the idea that Vladimir Putin and his intel agencies were responsible. There's a big difference between Russians and the Russians, even if the grammar seems inconsequential.

(3 comments) SHARE        Saturday, August 10, 2013
The U.S. Empire Provokes Terrorism Unrelenting U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia, in which noncombatants are killed, don't win friends. They recruit enemies bent on revenge. It follows therefore that the best way to dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, the threat of terrorism is to dramatically change U.S. foreign policy -- from imperial intervention to strict nonintervention.

SHARE        Monday, November 20, 2017
Assertions, Facts and CNN Dissenting views should not be lightly dismissed merely by declaring that a government agency or a "consensus" has decided the case. The news media ill-serve the public when they take government or so-called experts assertions on faith without having those assertions tested in public.

SHARE        Monday, December 18, 2017
How the Government and Special Interests Thwart Economic Mobility Government intervention has far-reaching, even if unintended, bad consequences. Much of it systematically benefits the well-off at the expense of those who have not yet achieved the American Dream.

(1 comments) SHARE        Monday, July 16, 2018
Trump Turns to Gaza as Middle East Deal of the Century Collapses The administration views Gaza with blinders on. Gaza is inhabited by, among others, Palestinians driven from their villages as Israeli military forces cleared the land of Arabs for the newly proclaimed Jewish state in 1948.

SHARE        Monday, January 22, 2018
Trump Versus the World Trump has a history of trafficking in racially tinged matters, from the Central Park Five to Obama birtherism. It's a little ridiculous for him to declare he is the least racist person around. Isn't it amazing that he's the most or the least of everything, always to his advantage? That's one of the hallmarks of an insecure narcissistic blowhard bullshitter.

(4 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Petraeus Fell For The Wrong Reason David Petraeus has fallen -- but not as he should have. Before being disgraced by an extramarital affair, the retired four-star general and ex-CIA director should have been shamed out of public life for his horrendous military record in Iraq and Afghanistan.

SHARE        Friday, June 12, 2015
Abolish Special Ops Forces We are expected to trust the government that those operations of Special Ops Forces kill bad guys only. But why should we, when it has done so much to earn our distrust? It has long downplayed the civilian deaths inflicted by drones, bombers, and ground operations.

SHARE        Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Trump and Putin: How About Getting Rid of Your Nukes? The United States and Russia remained at odds, continuing military exercises along the borders of NATO, undermining the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), upgrading their nuclear arsenals, and eschewing arms control negotiations.

(1 comments) SHARE        Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Libertarian Support for Union Rights It's not widely known, but an earlier generation of libertarians condemned so-called right-to-work laws as anti-market. Milton Friedman and others of the Chicago school were on-board. In this context, the recent right-wing push to de-legitimize union is seen as a recent extremist expression, motivated not by ideology but by greed.

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, September 25, 2014
Will American Ground Troops Be Sent To Fight ISIS? Obama keeps saying that this is not just an American fight and that ground troops will not be necessary. Yet he also insists that ISIS threatens Americans in the United States. That naturally raises this question: what if the local ground troops that Obama counts on -- the Iraqi and Kurdish armies and the alleged moderate Syrian rebels -- aren't up to the job?

(2 comments) SHARE        Thursday, July 23, 2015
No "Compensation" to Israel for Iran Deal Today we have a new paradigm for chutzpah: the Israeli government's demand for "compensation" from the American taxpayers for the Iran nuclear agreement. Why does Israel deserve compensation (in addition to its $3 billion in U.S. aid every year)? If anything, Israel should compensate American taxpayers!

(4 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Understanding The Paris Violence Muslims and Arabs have legitimate grievances against the U.S. government and its allies -- even if some of their responses are illegitimate. These crimes must not be excused. But the way to end Muslim violence in the West is for the West to end its violence against Muslims.

(9 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, May 1, 2013
What If The Tsarnaevs' Motive Was Revenge for U.S. Foreign Policy? If revenge for U.S. foreign policy was the motive, what will happen next? Will such evidence prompt a national reconsideration of America's decades-old imperial foreign policy? If we wish to prevent such wanton crimes in the future, we'd better understand what motivates the criminals who commit them.

(1 comments) SHARE        Thursday, June 26, 2014
U.S.-Egyptian "Historic Partnership" Reeks With Hypocrisy The coup -- which the Obama administration was reluctant to identify as such -- served U.S. government interests. Its alliance with Egypt's military dictatorship shows the hypocrisy of Barack Obama's paeans to freedom and self-government. Americans should be embarrassed. This is the regime that Kerry and Obama wish to work with in pursuit of their "historic partnership." Do they think the world is blind and deaf?

(2 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, May 14, 2014
The Neoconservative Obsession With Iran As a result of the U.S. government's obsession with undermining Iran's regime, attempts by the Shi'ite government to cooperate with the U.S. government were repeatedly rebuffed, even when rapprochement would have been in an administration's interest, for example, in the battle against a common enemy, al-Qaeda.

SHARE        Friday, January 9, 2015
The Ominous Republican Hold On Congress The national-security state is rotten to the core, having inflicted incalculable death and misery on many foreign populations. Much hard work has to be done to free the world of this monster. In the near term, fortunately, some good things can be done at the margin -- if the new Republican majority doesn't get in the way.

(2 comments) SHARE        Wednesday, May 8, 2013
A Modest Gun-Safety Proposal All gun owners should be required to keep their guns under lock and key at the local police station. Whenever they, or members of their families, want to use a gun -- say, in self-defense against an armed home invader -- they would have to sign a declaration of intent. Guns would be issued only to those who declared they have no criminal designs.

SHARE        Friday, May 3, 2013
TGIF: Criminal Government The task force takes physicians and psychologists to task for their participation, in violation of age-old ethical standards, in the abuse of detainees, both by devising techniques that constituted torture and for failing to report abuses. It's about time a floodlight was shined on this shameful conduct by medical and so-called mental-health professionals.

(5 comments) SHARE        Monday, December 10, 2012
Washington's Budget Con Game Well, all good things must come to an end, and we've reached the point where government borrowing has finally gotten a bad name. People demand that it stop. They say they don't like the debt or the deficit. So politicians must now sing a different, "responsible" tune. They're now against all that -- or say they are. Beware: they can't be trusted.

SHARE        Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Hagel's Retreat The message that came out of the Hagel hearing is unfortunate: Deviation from the narrow range of opinion authorized by the ruling elite is forbidden. If you want respect from that elite, you'd better toe the line. (Whether one should want respect from the ruling elite is another question entirely.)

SHARE        Tuesday, February 12, 2013
Drone Trust The Government Thomas Jefferson and others of his generation understood that government was simply not something to be trusted. Rather, it was a permanent object of suspicion, because it was uniquely positioned to steal our freedoms. This of course is precisely the opposite of the attitude that government officials -- Democrat and Republican -- wish us Americans to hold.