Category: News

The two US Navy riverine command boats intercepted in Iranian territorial waters yesterday were sent on their way along with the crew of 10 US sailors after brief detention on Iranian soil. According to news reports, the well-armed warships either suffered mechanical or navigational difficulties which caused them to enter Iranian territory (although it may well have been a game of cat-and-mouse to test the Iranian response). The US sailors were apparently treated well, enjoyed what appeared a decent meal in relaxed surroundings, and in the end apologized for the mistake and praised their treatment by the Iranians.

Thanks to President Obama’s policy shift on Iran toward engagement and away from isolationism, Secretary of State John Kerry was able to telephone his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Zarif and quickly defuse what just months ago would have been a far more serious situation.

This should be a good-news story about the value of diplomacy and reducing tensions with adversaries, but Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was having none of it. That Kerry expressed his appreciation to the Iranians for swiftly releasing the American sailors only showed the Obama Administration’s “craven desire to preserve the dangerous Iranian nuclear deal at all costs evidently knows no limit,” said McCain in a press release.

Continue reading “Sen. McCain Furious That Iran Treated US Sailors Well”

Government is more than a territorial monopoly on aggressive force. It’s also the heir to a centuries-old manufactured mystique, reinforced through its schools and other institutions, regarding its sanctity and sacrosanctity. The mystique is generated by and tends to manifest itself in the dogma that one’s State is uniquely virtuous and deserves to be judged by standards applicable to no one and nothing else. This is hardly less true of secular states than it was during the time of the divine right of kings. In some important ways, people have not gotten over that principle.

It long been recognized that governments cannot reign merely through brute force. There are too few rulers. So they need help in achieving popular compliance, and they find it in ideology. It is state ideology, the indispensable dogma, that creates the aura of sanctity. Where once people believed the ruler was the deity’s representative, in today’s democratic republics, they believe their rulers are their representatives. But it’s the same scam, perpetrated by rulers and their high priests in the intelligentsia, to maximize subordination and minimize resistance.

Ideology in this context means something much deeper than what is usually meant. It does not refer to the approaches known as “conservatism” and “liberalism,” or the differences between those who want “big government” and those who want “limited government.” It refers rather to the deeper view that The State with its authority to threaten and wield violence is indispensable and intrinsically virtuous, as nothing else can be. Therefore it is not to be judged as we judge other people and institutions. When someone does wrong in office – a Nixon, say – it is chalked up as an abuse of power. Power itself is beyond reproach.

Continue reading “Sheldon Richman on The Pernicious State”

In any list of Israel’s 100 most important women, Ilana Dayan would occupy a prominent position.

Dayan (no relation to the late general with the eye patch) is the host of one of the most prestigious television programs. While Israeli TV in general is slowly sinking into a morass of stupid "reality" entertainment, her program, named "Uvdah" ("Fact"), stands out as a beacon of responsible investigative journalism, of the kind my late weekly news magazine was known for.

In general, Dayan has always been considered as mildly "leftist" – since uncompromising criticism of the powers that be is generally identified with the Left.

Now she is being accused of serving the extreme, near-fascist Right. Shocking.

In the furious debate that ensued, Dayan quoted me for support. For 40 years, my magazine carried on its masthead the slogan "Without Fear, Without Prejudice". Dayan claimed that was acting according to this motto.

This compels me to get involved in the dispute – against my better judgment.

Continue reading “Uri Avnery on The Widening Gap”

It appears America’s military fear-mongers have just about run out of new ways to try to frighten us into submission. So the best they are able to come up with now is to say the boogie men are heading south, to the blue waters and delightful beaches of the very un-Muslim Caribbean.

Seriously. And the photo above is of an ISIS landing craft.

The number of ISIS devotees living in or coming from the Caribbean is on the rise, according to U.S. Southern Command chief General John Kelly, who oversees “security” (and paranoia) throughout South America.

Kelly said he has seen a shift in rhetoric by top ISIS leaders geared toward a “few very, very radical mosques” in the Caribbean, essentially directing would-be disciples to conduct attacks from their islands (a sort of “work from home” scheme) rather than trek to the Middle East and risk capture by law enforcement. Nonetheless, Kelly estimates that the number of radicals who left the region anyway to join ISIS has risen from 100 to 150 over the last year.

Continue reading “Top General Warns of New ISIS Threat… in Jamaica?”

The quick resolution of the potentially difficult situation of US sailors caught inside Iranian territorial waters should have been celebrated in Washington as a triumph of diplomacy. With the Naval personnel in Iranian custody, Secretary of State John Kerry telephoned his Iranian counterpart and was able to talk the crisis back down to a relative non-event. This, of course, infuriated the neo-cons who saw it as a sign of weakness that the US did not respond with bombs instead of words. More in today’s Liberty Report:

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.