It is the duty of every Muslim to emulate the example of his prophet as recorded in the Hadith. By ordering the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has only acted in accordance with that orthodox, 14-century-old principle. It would have been eminently un-Islamic, in fact, for “MbS” to...
The teeming masses yearning to be free . . . The Caravan of Peace approaches. The massive, marching throng grows by the day. It’s an Act of Love. And another is already forming, ready to bring more peace and love our way, thousands ready to sacrifice everything and enter our racist, white supremacist country seeking...
There is something about “column” that alerts the mind. It is not the same as “crowd,” and is active, purposive. My Chambers dictionary gives for column “a body of troops forming a long, narrow procession,” reminding us that the word is quasi-military. Napoleon’s infantry always attacked in columns. The Honduras column now commanding the news...
The people who voted for Trump weren’t motivated by the allure of tax cuts. They were motivated by a desire to, at long last, secure the southern border. The organized mob now being allowed to march through Mexico is an all too vivid reminder that the wall has not yet been built. These marchers aren’t...
Was the assassination of JFK by Lee Harvey Oswald still getting as much media coverage three weeks after his death as it did that first week after Nov. 22, 1963? Not as I recall. Yet, three weeks after his murder, Jamal Khashoggi, who was not a U.S. citizen, was not killed by an American, and...
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me” was Richard II’s lament. It could be echoed by Theresa May, but she doesn’t echo any wording other than the drab officialese of “We are working to ensure there will be no hard border.” She can keep this stuff going all day, and indeed does. Theresa...
In his latest interview with Radio Sputnik International, Srdja Trifkovic discusses President Donald Trump’s recent statement on CBS that the EU was formed to take advantage of the United States and that’s what it has been doing to this day. The first question was whether Trump’s assertion about the EU’s early days was accurate. [Audio]...
Our mainstream media remain consumed with the grisly killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and how President Donald Trump will deal with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Understandably so, for this is the most riveting murder story since O.J. Simpson and has strategic implications across the Middle East....
In the aftermath of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, the question has been raised whether the U.S.-Saudi alliance can or should be saved. It is based on false premises: there is no such alliance. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is neither a friend nor an ally of America. It...
From the July 1990 issue of Chronicles. This temperate and thorough book commences with a detailed description of President Nixon’s activities on May 8 and 9, 1970, when thousands of young people had poured into Washington to protest the American expedition into Cambodia. This was the most dramatic of the several crises in Richard Nixon’s...
Over the weekend Donald Trump warned of “severe punishment” if an investigation concludes that a Saudi hit team murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Riyadh then counter-threatened, reminding us that, as the world’s largest oil exporter, Saudi Arabia “plays an impactful and active role in the global economy.” Message:...
In a panel discussion broadcast live by the top-rated Serbian TV channel on October 9, Srdja Trifkovic discussed the problem of ISIS veterans returning to Europe from the fronts in Syria. The first question was whether this problem was quite as serious as presented by some security experts. [Video (Trifkovic segment starts at 8 minutes 40...
Was Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and then his body cut up with a bone saw and flown to Riyadh in Gulfstream jets owned by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman? So contend the Turks, who have video from the consulate, photos of 15 Saudi agents who flew into...
The migrant crisis is principally a deep concern for Europe, with the United States increasingly affected. Canada now joins the list of nations involved in migration issues. The province of Quebec has just held elections, and the Parti Quebecois has been swept out of sight. The winner is the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ), a populist...
Over the past few weeks we have witnessed a rapid and (for the past half-century) unprecedented worsening of relations between the United States and China. It is uncertain, for now, whether this is the result of a deliberate shift in strategy by Washington or the cumulative effect of a series of incremental moves and counter-moves...
From the August 1992 issue of Chronicles. Robert Frost published 11 books of poetry, won four Pulitzer Prizes, established himself as the unofficial poet laureate of the United States, and acquired a national and international literary reputation. Despite his fame as a poet and public speaker, and because of his friendship with such liberal Democrats...
After a 50-year siege, the great strategic fortress of liberalism has fallen. With the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court seems secure for constitutionalism—perhaps for decades. The shrieks from the gallery of the Senate chamber as the vote came in on Saturday, and the sight of that bawling mob clawing at the doors...
I am losing confidence in Vladimir Putin. Time was when I had naive respect for the operations of the KGB or whatever the descendants of the Cheka and Ogpu call themselves these days. Whatever one thought of their moral pond life, these people were serious. Had they not turned any number of British and Americans?...
Four days after he described Christine Blasey Ford, the accuser of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, as a “very credible witness,” President Donald Trump could no longer contain his feelings or constrain his instincts. With the fate of his Supreme Court nominee in the balance, Trump let his “Make America Great Again” rally attendees in Mississippi know...
Theresa May is on death row but files legal appeals that extend her life. She might have taken a mortal hit at the Conservative Party Conference, but Boris Johnson, the Young Pretender (he is actually eight years short of her 64) did not strike the assassin’s blow that many expected. He gave a barnstorming speech...
As Chief of the Pentagon’s Criminal Law Division, I tried or supervised hundreds of rape cases, and my aggressive prosecutions earned me a place on the Army General Staff. I demanded that my JAG lawyers prosecute the toughest sex crime cases, regardless of evidentiary challenges. But I also insisted that they firmly believe that each...
Blowback From U.S. Policy in the Greater Middle East He was shot in the back, the ultimate act of treachery. On September 3rd, a U.S Army sergeant major was killed by two Afghan police officers—the very people his unit, the new Security Force Assistance Brigade, was there to train. It was the second fatal “insider...
Republican leaders are “a bunch of wimps,” said Jerry Falwell Jr. Conservatives and Christians need to stop electing “nice guys.” “The US needs street fighters like Donald Trump at every level of government because the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps.” So tweeted the son and namesake of the founder of the Moral Majority,...
While we await the FBI’s seventh investigation into Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s background, some considerations: All four of Christine Blasey Ford’s witnesses to a party where he allegedly attacked her deny the party ever happened. The first narrative having run its course, the Democratic War Room spun out another dubious claim of sexual assault. The second...
There’s a sucker born every minute. For just $99.00 and a used ticket stub for Wonder Woman, if you order by midnight tonight, you can enroll in a course on Healing Toxic Whiteness. It is taught by a young woman named Sandra Kim, a person of “multiple marginalized identities,” as she describes herself; with what...
“You can observe a lot just by watching.” —Yogi Berra I call 2016 the Chronicles Election. The issues discussed in this magazine, often a lonely voice in the wilderness, for more than 30 years finally caught up with the national political discourse and got a president elected. They are bum trade deals, an eroding industrial...
Two questions immediately suggest themselves regarding this work: Who was (or is) Pandora (and her box), and do we really need yet another book on World War I, detailing its causes, alliances, generals, battles—replete with maps, photos, charts and so forth? Yes, 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the war’s end (November 11, at 11:00...
We need a word for the forces that govern our lives. Establishment, a term popularized by Henry Fairlie in the 1950’s, is common currency. He meant by it “the whole matrix of official and social relationships within which power is exercised.” Ralph Waldo Emerson is held to be the first to use the word in...
Failure of a Mission was the title of Nevile Henderson’s book. He had been British Ambassador to Germany (1937-39), and hoped to the end that he could bring peace. He had some heartening talk with Germans in high places, but their rulers had other plans. Last week Theresa May’s visit to Salzburg merited the same...
Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court was approved on an 11-10 party-line vote Friday in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet his confirmation is not assured. Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, has demanded and gotten as the price of his vote on the floor, a weeklong delay. And the GOP Senate has agreed...
Starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was a smash success when it was released in 1969. Surprisingly, the movie generally follows the actual events of Butch Cassidy’s outlaw life. It’s a fun romp from beginning to end. Most of the casting is not bad for Hollywood: Believe it or...
Leon Redbone left the scene in 2015—I don’t mean that he expired, but simply that he retired. There was mention at the time of health concerns, but he was through with television appearances and concerts and touring, and with recording as well. There has been almost nothing about him on the national scene since then,...
The most remarkable aspect of Bruce Springsteen’s performance at the 2018 Tony Awards wasn’t what he said or that he said it, but the unanimous acclaim with which it was greeted by both the assembled audience and those who viewed it at home. As I noted in my August column, the story of faith, family,...
Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to fight . . . —Psalm 144:1 According to the Washington Post, McAllen, Texas is an “all-American city,” albeit one “that speaks Spanish.” So it’s small wonder that “immigration isn’t a problem for this Texas town—it’s a way of life.” ...
The collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa on the motorway that links Italy to Monte Carlo and the French Riviera reminds me of one of the great American novels: The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Here’s my attempt to modify the memorable first sentence of Thornton Wilder’s 1927 masterpiece about the role of God...
As of the start of September, it seemed no week was complete without another scandal breaking within the Church of Rome, considered by Her members to be the Mystical Body of Christ. These scandals, as even the Congolese pygmies know by now (assuming any of them remain), have to do with the abuse, pedophilic and...
Aquaculture—farming water for food as opposed to fishing it—is as old as civilization. The Romans did it; so did Mrs. Martin Luther. But catfish farming is an American industry, something of a native-born wonder. As I mentioned previously, catfish farms revitalized a vast area of the Deep South and provided Americans coast to coast with...
There are many ways to commit suicide in academia today. Bret Weinstein, a biology professor at Evergreen State College, opted not to take part in the school’s annual “Day of Absence” celebration. Participation in the racially motivated festivity required white students and faculty to absent themselves from campus for 24 hours in order to reflect...
At the end of Garet Garrett’s Rise of Empire, the grizzled old prophet of the dystopia we’re living in held out hope to his conservative comrades and their intellectual descendants. Although pessimistic by nature (at least so it seems to me), the Old Right journalist, novelist, and peerless polemicist ended his philippic against empire this...
Chronicles has lost a longtime writer and friend, Egon Richard Tausch, who passed away on July 27. In Egon was found both brilliance and humility, a rare combination reflecting his Christian faith. He was also a man of fierce loyalty, unmoved by the patricidal demands of the politically correct and faithful to his inheritance as...
“Democracy Dies in Darkness,” declares the Washington Post. With apologies to Alexis de Tocqueville, I reply: Doesn’t something have to live first before it can die? There is one great advantage to the ongoing, interminable, and farcical “Russia investigation” that grips the Establishment and those who choose to be entertained daily by America’s mass media. ...
The author is chief executive of Humanists UK, president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and a former director of the European Humanist Foundation. He describes his book as “not intended as an argument for secularism but as an introduction to it, in the hope that secularism will become better known as a concept...
Of all the epithets Donald Trump has delivered over the last 24 months (“Mexican immigrant thieves and rapists,” “shithole countries,” the “Mueller Witch Hunt,” etc.), none has provoked greater outrage on the part of liberals than his characterization of the media as “enemies of the people”—the media themselves included. But just as Trump never characterized...
It used to be said of the Anglican Church that it was “the Tory Party at prayer.” On the occasion of Sen. John McCain’s funeral service in Washington National Cathedral last September 1, the United States and the world were given another opportunity to observe the American Establishment at prayer. For a couple of hours,...
A long and distinguished literary career ended on June 23, 2018, with the death of New England poet Donald Hall. A versatile and prolific author, he served in 2006-07 as poet laureate of the United States. Like Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, and Richard Wilbur, fellow poets who settled in the region (though very different from...
BlacKkKlansman Produced by Forty Acres and a Mule Filmworks Directed by Spike Lee Screenplay by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, and Spike Lee Distributed by Focus Features Crazy Rich Asians Produced and distributed by Warner Brothers Directed by John M. Chu Screenplay by Peter Chiarelli and Adele Lim from Kevin Kwan’s novel Mission: Impossible—Fallout Produced...
Some of you oldsters will never believe this, but London is no longer the place where The Blue Lamp and other black-and-white golden oldies were made. During the postwar years, with rationing still on and the empire unraveling, England made some of the best movies ever. They were intelligently scripted, underplayed, and beautifully acted by...
Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) was one of the most important philosophers and authors of the 20th century. Camus called him, “after Nietzsche, . . . perhaps the greatest ‘European writer.’” Yet he is virtually unknown today, and scarcely ever read, or even referred to or quoted. One needn’t read far in any of his many...
Imagine an economic system in which government pays the wages of workers, but the businesses where they work remain privately owned, and profits accrue to the owners. Could this fairly be called free-market capitalism? It sounds more like socialism, even Soviet-style communism: Workers are maintained at public expense, while the commissars line their own pockets. ...