"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting."– Sun Tzu On March 12, 2006 five U.S. soldiers violated, then murdered, 14-year-old Abeer Hamza in her home at...
Foreign Policy
How to Eliminate the Threat of Nuclear War: A Strategy of Non-Intervention
by Bas Spliet | Jan 10, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
Around this time last year, nuclear weapons became illegal. Well, sort of. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, an international agreement adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2017 after a majority of countries voted in its favor, entered...
TGIF: National or Enlightenment Liberal Identity?
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 7, 2022 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
I find much to admire about Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born Dutch-American scholar, author, and one-time politician who has drawn international attention to the violence against women and girls not only in Muslim-majority countries but also in the West at the hands...
Salafis Throwing Bombs: How American and British Planners Partnered With Al-Qaeda Affiliated Groups At the Start of the Syrian Civil War
by William Van Wagenen | Dec 28, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
Introduction In the mainstream view, al-Qaeda did not play a role in the Syria conflict until Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dispatched his deputy, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, to Syria in August 2011 to establish a wing of the group there, called...
Lunatic With a Plan: Erdogan and Turkey’s Economic Woes
by Tom Luongo | Dec 28, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
Since the first assault on Turkey’s finances in 2018, which I wrote about multiple times (here, here, and here), I’ve been the lone voice telling everyone that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a lunatic but he’s a lunatic with a plan. That plan is to de-dollarize the...
For One Day, Protestors Stopped the War Machine
by Jim Bovard | Dec 27, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
I’ve attended most of the major antiwar protests in Washington since 9/11. At a 2005 protest, a cop tried to whack me on the head with a wooden pole. At a 2007 protest, I snapped a picture showing George W. Bush hanging next to the U.S. Capitol. But my favorite...
TGIF: Double-Rigging of the Auto Market
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 17, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
U.S. government interference with our lives often resembles a Russian matryoshka doll: regulation is nested in more regulation. Take the provision of Biden's pending Build Back Better bill that would create a big tax credit for people who buy U.S.-built electric...
The Costs of War on Your Wallet
by Michael Maharrey | Dec 16, 2021 | Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
James Madison warned us about the costs of war. War comes with an extremely high price tag. According to the Cost of War Project by the Watson Institute at Brown University, the U.S. spent $2.26 trillion on the war in Afghanistan alone. That comes to over $300 million...