Category: Web

Who rises if Assad falls? That question, which has bedeviled U.S. experts on the Middle East, may need updating to read: Who rises when Assad falls? For the war is going badly for Bashar Assad, whose family has ruled Syria since Richard Nixon was president. Assad’s situation seems more imperiled than at any time in this...

So the Southern Poverty Law Center has divined that Ann Coulter is a “white nationalist.” SPLC drew this conclusion because Coulter says some things with which other “white nationalists” agree, and SPLC dutifully assembled such “racist” quotes and placed them side-by-side. Examples (the italics are SPLC’s): One may assume the new majority will not be...

“Hasn’t US belligerence toward Russia – particularly on the Ukrainian situation – given rise to closer Sino-Russian cooperation to counter the US?,” Harry Colin asked in response to my latest article. My answer is a heavily qualified “yes.” Russia and China have upgraded their strategic partnership over the past year and a half, but they...

The culture war against Christianity is picking up speed. Last week came word Saint Louis University will remove a heroic-sized statue of Fr. Pierre-Jean De Smet S.J. from the front of Fusz Hall, where it has stood for 60 years. The statue depicts Fr. De Smet holding aloft a crucifix as he ministers to two...

The South China Sea (SCS) is fast becoming one of the key geopolitical battlegrounds of our time. China’s systematic, rapid and large-scale island-building campaign has suddenly altered the strategic equation in “Asia’s Mediterranean.” It has also presented Washington with a long-term strategic dilemma in the Western Pacific. There are literally dozens of disputed islands, atolls,...

“What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. . . . We can give them training, we can give them equipment; we obviously can’t give them the will to fight.” Thus did Defense Secretary Ash Carter identify the root cause of the rout of the Iraqi army in Ramadi....

Seventy years ago today, Chapman & Hall published Brideshead Revisited, written by Evelyn Waugh while he was on leave from the British Army during World War II.  The book became Waugh’s most popular, and the 1981 British television adaptation remains perhaps the finest film adaptation of any book. One of the reasons for the novel’s...

It is hard to see how a country that hates its past can have much of a future. If that is so, the gay marriage referendum in Ireland last week suggests that Ireland has no future.  In the aftermath of the vote, Agence France-Presse ran two articles summarizing the reactions of the Irish press. The...

After 9/11, co-President Bush, co-President Dick Cheney and the others in their repulsive regime panicked. The first thing they did was destroy our liberties with the misnamed, really traitorous USA “PATRIOT” Act. It actually stands for the “Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001.” The...

“This is a Christian nation,” said the Supreme Court in 1892. “America was born a Christian nation,” echoed Woodrow Wilson. Harry Truman affirmed it: “This is a Christian nation.” But in 2009, Barack Hussein Obama begged to differ: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” Comes now a Pew Research Center survey that reveals...

The fall of Ramadi, capital of Anbar, largest province in Iraq, after a rout of the Iraqi army by a few hundred ISIS fighters using bomb-laden trucks, represents a stunning setback for U.S. policy. When President Obama declared that we shall “degrade and defeat” the Islamic State, he willed the ends, but not the means....

Michael Wessel is a Democrat and a trade negotiator who was a big backer of the NAFTA and GATT deals two decades ago. But listen to him on the supersecret Trans-Pacific Partnership; he’s one of the few people actually to have read it. Noting that President Obama has attacked those who criticized TPP for not...

As Middle America rises in rage against “fast track” and the mammoth Obamatrade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, The Wall Street Journal has located the source of the malady. Last Monday’s lead editorial began: “Here we go again. In the 1990s Pat Buchanan launched a civil war within the Republican Party on a platform...

The continuing unrest in Macedonia is a sustained regime change attempt, entirely driven and financed by some Western countries, Srdja Trifkovic told RT International in his latest interview. RT: The protesters have vowed to stay on the streets until the government resigns. Will it go that far? ST: It’s a classic regime change scenario as...

The Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS/ISIL) advances on a major Iraqi city, and Baghdad’s forces – while outnumbering and outgunning the attackers – flee in utter disarray. Last June it was Mosul. Exactly eleven months later, last Sunday, it was Ramadi. A year of sustained U.S. effort to make the Iraqi army a viable fighting...

Jeb Bush has spent the week debating with himself over whether he would have started the war his brother launched on Iraq. When he figures it out, hopefully, our would-be president will focus in on the campaign to drag us into yet another Mideast war— this time to bring down Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria....

After leading Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture for over 30 years, Dr. Thomas Fleming is retiring.  His last issue as editor is the June number.  “Dr. Fleming is an intellectual giant, and American conservatism’s unsung hero,” said Rockford Institute Board Chairman Raymond Welder.  “The proof is in his consistently excellent work: 30 years of...

In the Daily Beast, Senior Congressional Correspondent Tim Mak is Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs over Marco Rubio’s speech Wednesday before the Council on Foreign Relations: “The student has now become the teacher. “Sen. Marco Rubio, once viewed as a protege of presidential competitor Jeb Bush, schooled the former Florida governor Wednesday evening in the first...

A reader had written in to reproach me for “punching down” in a recent post, and on reflection I can find no reason to disagree. I like fruit that hangs low, the kind that weighs down the branches until it is within grasping distance; in fact, from childhood I remember that apples on the ground...

David Cameron is the most successful Tory Party leader since Margaret Thatcher. Yet history may also record that his success led to the crackup of his country, and Great Britain’s secession from the European Union. How did Cameron’s Tories capture their majority? First, they compiled a strong record to run on. More critically, they attacked...

You might have another notion entirely. I prefer to see the fruits of Raul Castro’s semi-conversion to Catholicism before reaching conclusions as to his sincerity. “I read all the speeches of the pope, his commentaries,” said Raul on Sunday, following a meeting at the Vatican with the hugely popular Pope Francis, “and if the pope...

Srdja Trifkovic’s latest RT interview The Republic of Macedonia has become important to the U.S. policymakers in recent months, as it could be the only way for Russia’s proposed Turkish Stream pipeline to reach Central Europe. Washington does not want that to happen, as Srdja Trifkovic told RT in the latest live interview, and this...

The war in Europe ended 70 years ago today. It was the most destructive conflict in human history, but it was not the most important. In metahistorical terms it was but the second round of Europe’s extended suicide which started at the height of the Old Continent’s economic, scientific and civilizational achievement in July 1914....

In the first quarter of 2015, in the sixth year of the historic Obama recovery, the U.S. economy grew by two-tenths of 1 percent. And that probably sugarcoats it. For trade deficits subtract from the growth of GDP, and the U.S. trade deficit that just came in was a monster. As the AP’s Martin Crutsinger...

One of the basic political problems of today is the increasing tendency of political leaders to ignore the views of those who elected them. Across the board, political leaders advance the interests of the wealthy elites who bankroll their campaigns and feather their nests after they leave politics, rather than the interests of the people...

One of the more absurd, not to mention offensive, aspects of political correctness is the increasing tendency to treat the Confederacy as the equivalent of Nazi Germany. An ad currently running on TV shows the now middle-aged actors from The Dukes of Hazzard driving a car very similar to the one they drove on the...

A singer by the name of Masha Rasputina, who, when a good deal younger and not quite as surgically enhanced, used to thrill nascent Moscow bourgeoisie by appearing on stage in latex lingerie, has just recorded a new song. A few minutes’ research shows that the words, or “lyrics” as these banalities are known the...

Whatever the wisdom of Pamela Geller’s Mohammed cartoon event in Garland, Texas — and there’s much not to like about it, as Chronicles executive editor, Scott Richert, wrote of Charlie Hebdo’s repulsive fare after the massacre at the magazine’s office — one thing ought not be forgotten: No matter what kind of event Geller had...

The U.S. Constitution is clear: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises… To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations….” But here are the headlines from the DrudgeReport: Extreme secrecy erodes support for Obama’s trade pact… Lawmakers forced to surrender notes… Forbidden from discussing details with public… USA runs more...

Who killed Freddie Gray? According to Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, Freddie was murdered in a conspiracy of six cops who imprisoned him in a police van and there assaulted and killed him. The killer was African-American officer Caesar Goodson, driver of the van, who, with a “depraved heart,” murdered Freddie. This is a summation of...

Here’s how it stands with Western civilization—what’s left of it, I mean—insofar as various Westerners are concerned. You keep your lip buttoned whenever foes, internal as well as external, jump up and down on you, kick you around, make known their fondest wish is to do you in, ideals and all. You hope for the...

Had Freddie Gray been robbed, beaten and left to die in the streets of his Baltimore neighborhood, no one would be mourning him today. No one would be marching for Freddie. No one would be using Freddie as the new poster child of “Black Lives Matter!” No one would care, three weeks later, but his...

The desert kingdom fundamentally depends on continued theocratic oppression at home – kept manageable by carefully crafted redistributive schemes – and on U.S. support abroad. Its survival is helped by the deep divide between different would-be heirs to the kleptocratic regime. To put it succinctly, there are some Islamists opposed to the royal thieves in...

There’s a young lad who has been called the Barack Obama of Britain, and this may be indictment enough for many of my enlightened readers, but it is his actual name, rather than what he has been called, that fascinates me. As my readers may remember, I’m obsessed with onomatomancy; of the 163 known forms...

Srdja Trifkovic’s latest live interview on Sputnik Radio International PRESENTER: Dr. Trifkovic, what do you think of the latest poll suggesting that most West Europeans think that the U.S. contributed more to the defeat of Nazism during World War II than the Soviet Army? ST: The current generation of Europeans, especially those under 50, is...

Almost all of the declared and undeclared Republican candidates for 2016 could be found this weekend at one of two events, or both. The first was organized by the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition, and held in Point of Grace Church in Waukee. Dominated by Evangelical Christians, who were 60 percent of Republican caucus-goers in...

Well. I really can’t believe I am saying this. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to tell us what marriage means. Not speculate; not explain. Tell: as in, “Wipe that smile off your face and listen to what I’m telling you.” We are at a remarkable moment in human affairs: one we would hardly have...

The Saudi military intervention in Yemen was launched, according to Riyadh, to “restore the legitimate government” and protect the “Yemeni constitution and elections.” This sudden desire to fight for constitutions and elections sounds odd, coming from an absolute monarchy which is consistently combating efforts at democratization at home or in its neighborhood. As Ali Alahmed,...

For a month now, the Saudi air force has been bombing Yemen to reverse a takeover of that nation of 25 million by Houthi rebels, and reinstall a president who fled his country and is residing in Riyadh. The Saudis have hit airfields, armor and arms depots, and caused a humanitarian catastrophe. Nearly 1,000 dead,...

Item 1: According to U.S. News, a survey found less than 8 percent of America’s “major” universities required English majors to take a Shakespeare course. He’s a DWM (Dead White Male) and all. Given how P.C. those courses are, that’s a blessing. It also allows me to use a line of Moe Howard from one...

A tooth I had been neglecting lashed out at me last week like a woman scorned, and through clenched teeth I can report that only renal colic hath more fury. I remembered the time they gave me morphine in a London hospital, after an evening’s attempt at drinking two cases of champagne in the company...

Saudi Arabia has been dominating the Middle Eastern news recently. Its bombing of the Shia Houthis in Yemen, supported by Washington, and its ambivalent stand on ISIS, concealed in Washington, should raise questions about the nature and long-term ambitions of the desert kingdom. On those key issues there is an apparent conspiracy of silence in...

Andrew Jackson was sort of a rough-and-tumble president, undoubtedly, but the United States, in the 1820s and ’30s, was sort of a rough-and-tumble country. Notice how refined and civilized we’ve gotten since then, to the point that a coalition of lady activists is ready to pull President Jackson’s mug off the $20 bill, substituting—well, that’s...

The GOP swept to victory in November by declaring that this imperial presidency must be brought to heel, and President Obama’s illicit seizures of Congressional power must end. That was then. Now is now. This week, Congress takes up legislation to cede His Majesty full authority to negotiate the largest trade deal in history, the...

Today brings the news that 15 Moslem migrants seeking to enter Europe illegally are under arrest by Italian police for throwing 12 Christian migrants to their deaths in the Mediterranean. No doubt this incident will be downplayed or ignored by those who want Europe to welcome any illegal immigrant who can make it across the...

“Could a U.S. response to Russia’s action in Ukraine provoke a confrontation that leads to a U.S.-Russia War?” This jolting question is raised by Graham Allison and Dimitri Simes in the cover article of The National Interest. The answer the authors give, in Countdown to War: The Coming U.S. Russia Conflict, is that the odds...

When she announced her fourth candidacy for president, I signed up for Hillary’s mailing list. (In case you forgot, she won two terms as co-president with Bill, in 1992 and 1996, before losing her co-president race in 2008.) “Friend – ,” she writes. Hill and I are on such close terms. “I was raised with...

With less than a month before Britain’s general election, a squib on the subject is apposite. As a sometime betting man, I can share the news that the Conservatives are presently at 4/9 and Labour is on 13/8, with the bookmaker Betfair putting the chances of a Conservative coalition government, such as their present arrangement...

It is idle to pretend: Hillary R. Clinton will be the next president. A nation capable of electing, and then re-electing, Barack Hussein Obama is perfectly ready to make the most influential woman in the world the most powerful person on this planet. The math is on her side (and let us not imagine that...

I’m. Just. So. Excited. That. Hillary. Clinton. Is. Ready. To. Be. My. Champion. I mean, she says she’s ready, what with “the deck . . . still stacked in favor of those at the top.” Oh, ma’am, we “everyday Americans,” I can tell you, have had it up to here with the “top” people running...