Month: September 2014

A Helot Society

The notion that only the rich should be allowed to have any enjoyment in life is deeply offensive. It is fine for the Bullingdon Club to get plastered on Krug and cocaine and smash up restaurants. That is all jolly japes and high spirits. For a desperate man to seek solace in four cans of Tennant’s strongest or a bottle of Buckfast is however a dreadful sin and sign of social irresponsibility.

Turn the Tables: Stopping Western Aggression in Syria

Now the US claims it must raise another army of “moderate” ground troops to augment its aerial bombardment of “ISIS.” But in reality, attacks on phantom enemies in the desert serve the singular purpose of creating a no-fly zone and no-drive zone for Syria’s military, preventing the final annihilation of the West’s terrorist mercenaries in Syrian territory and in fact giving them a second chance to finally march on the gates of Damascus with US airpower in tow.

Cradle to Grave: Student Debt Now Bankrupting Seniors

The price of an education is quickly becoming too heavy a burden for far too many people, and it’s a burden that’s staying with them forever. College debt looms large as the most difficult debt to get rid of, and these numbers paint a startling picture of exactly how big a toll it’s taking on people as they age. For many, student debt is following them from the cradle to the grave – they’re condemned to a lifetime of payments that stagnant wages and mounting economic insecurity make it nearly impossible to manage.

Washington’s Secret Agendas

The casualties of Washington’s bombings are invariably civilians, and the deaths will produce more recruits for ISIS. Already there are calls for Washington to reintroduce “boots on the ground” in Iraq. Otherwise, Western civilization is doomed, and our heads will be cut off. The newly created propaganda of a “Russian threat” requires more NATO spending and more military bases on Russia’s borders. A “quick reaction force” is being created to respond to a nonexistent threat of a Russian invasion of the Baltics, Poland, and Europe.

Ray McGovern Triumphs over State Department

Ray McGovern was put on the State Department’s Diplomatic Security BOLO list– Be On the Look Out– one of a series of proliferating government watch lists. What McGovern did to end up on Diplomatic Security’s dangerous persons list and how he got off the list are a tale of our era, Post-Constitutional America.

Forget napalm – President Wimp loves the smell of coffee in the morning

This week’s attacks on Islamic State positions in Syria mean that Obama has bombed no less than seven different countries in six years. All this comes from a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009. There’s been a new Cold War too, to go with the hot ones. The man who promised a “reset” in relations with Russia has taken his country and other western nations into a new economic trade war with Moscow after the US engineered, along with the EU, a highly provocative regime change in a country bordering Russia.

ISIS Mission Amendment Plainly Advances Regime Change in Syria

That the president wants the authority to intervene in the Syrian civil war is not a sufficient reason to give him that power. Under the Constitution, it is Congress’s independent responsibility to commence war.

We are the representatives of the American people. The government is proposing to take their resources and to put their children’s lives at risk. I encourage all my colleagues to give the decision the weight it is due.

Violation of International Law: Where is Obama’s “Authorization to Use Force” in Iraq

From a historical point of view, it is ironic that a young senator from Illinois who campaigned in large part agains the Iraq War and who showcased his credentials as a constitutional scholar would be the handmaiden of the permanent “state of exception” described by the National Socialist philosopher Carl Schmitt, who argued that sovereigns should have the right to suspend the legal and juridical constraints of their societies so that they may act outside of law. This is the opposite of the legal constitutionalism that forms the philosophical basis of the American legal order, which can be summarized with the words of Edward Coke: “The King himself should be under no man, but under God and the Law.”

Hollywood’s Gary Webb Movie and the Message that Big Media Couldn’t Kill

Gary Webb’s reports were that powerful that they made careerist journalists tremble and lash out and dutifully show that era’s media bosses that they had done their bidding. And then there were others who tried to be fairer to Webb but still feared the big media lords so much that they colored their defenses of the essential truth of the Dark Alliance series with sprinkled disclaimers that he had made errors or wasn’t a saint. You know, the false dichotomy of “telling both sides” of a story that does not have two sides that is formula for corporate media.

‘It Never Happened’ – US Intervention in Syria

By refusing to inform their readers that the US has been arming the rebels in Syria since 2012 the mainstream liberal media have done exactly what best suits the US and UK governments. And by so closely following the US and UK Governments’ preferred narrative, the media continues to minimise the US’s responsibility for the on-going carnage in Syria and the rise of Islamic State.