I watched a documentary about North Korea which explained how the government there assigns a score to each citizen, based on how large a threat to the regime s/he is perceived to be. When I lived in Taiwan under a military government years ago, such a number was...
Oxymoron: a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.” (Dictionary.com) The way we use words matters – a lot. When words begin to lose their meaning or get...
Why did the US fly a B-52 over South Korea yesterday? Was it a sign of superiority...or insecurity? North Korea tested some sort of nuclear device last week and the fly-over was part of a multi-pronged US response to the test. Today on the House Floor a bill...
The execution of Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr and 46 convicted al-Qaeda members by the Saudis triggered a still-unfolding crisis between the Kingdom and Iran. Protesters in Tehran set fire to the Saudi embassy, and the Iranian government threatened that the...
President Obama should be given props for the progress made in thawing US-Cuban relations, but there’s a piece of unfinished business that he could – and should – still attend to: returning the US Naval Base in Guantanamo to the Cuban people. In doing so, he could...
Cries of glee must have emanated from the military-industrial complex and the Beltway think tanks as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made another of his periodic pleas for global attention. The nuclear detonation is looking less likely as powerful and thus significant...
When pondering the intellectual decline of political movements, it is hard not to call to mind the former flagship publication of the Buckleyite wing of conservatism called National Review. Where once learned men (and women) made their case from the heights of...
For those who still don’t get why the War of Terror continues to fail after 14+ years, here is another lesson.We all remember “Jihadi John,” who of course was never called that except in the western media. John (real name: Mohammed Emwazi) was a...
Is House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce purposely deceiving the American public, or is he just that badly informed? As the Saudis beheaded 47 prisoners, including a prominent Shiite cleric, Royce went on CNN to blame the whole thing on the Iranians! The...
For 25 percent of your grade this term, compare and contrast the following two true descriptions of the same thing.The opening to the New York Times story: A 25-year-old man in Rochester has been arrested and charged with preparing to stage a New Year’s Eve machete...
