March 3, 2017

Trump's Senate saboteurs

The Republican-controlled Senate is to blame for only 17 Trump confirmations so far.  Trump has 1,242 more needing Senate approval, or the number may be as low as 500 – it's hard to pin down.  Republicans are to blame because they...

October 16, 2016

Another coup brewing in Turkey?

Murmurs are growing louder that Turkish president Recep Tayyip ErdoДџan may be a dead man walking. According to scholars Michael Rubin, MetinGurcan, and others,  there are whispers that a third coup is coming.  It would be brought on by ...

May 1, 2016

Turkey Seizes More Christian Churches

Father Joseph (Yusuf) Akbulut is one brave man.  He is a soft spoken, highly intelligent, Syrian Orthodox Priest I had the honor to meet in November 2013 at his parish, the 1700 year old Church of the Virgin Mary in the Sur district of Diyarbaki...

January 8, 2016

Gaddafi and Obama: One of them was fighting Islamist terrorists in Libya

Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi warned the West about the Islamic extremists in the months before his murder by a mob.  In a series of phone calls, Gaddafi told Britain’s ex-prime minister, Tony Blair, that the Libyan unrest was becau...

December 24, 2015

The <em>Other</em> Migrant Crisis on the US Southern Border: Cubans

The Americas are experiencing a migrant crisis similar to Europe’s. 29,100 Cubans crossed into Texas in the fiscal year ending in September according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures. More than 28,370 Cubans arrived at the Lared...

November 23, 2015

Trump on campus: South Carolina shows the way

The Donald showed up on campus.  There was no big, active protest, no shout-down, no juvenile antics, just a free exchange of ideas.  Yes, this took place at a college in the United States of America last week.  You many...

October 20, 2015

Assassination and revenge in Turkey

Turkish media are reporting that the suicide bombings of peaceful pro-Kurdish rallies, which have killed at least 138 people and injured approximately 700 people, are attempts to assassinate Kurdish leader Selhattin Demirtas.  This, reportedly, ...

October 18, 2015

Turkey's ISIS Trigger-Men

The Islam Tea House was a well-known Islamic State hang-out in Turkey.  Well known to the police, the media, and the parents who tried to shut it down.  Despite the omniscient hawk-eyes of the Turkish intelligence service the owners were ab...

October 14, 2015

Kurds Defiant After Brutal Ankara Bombing

Opposition rhetoric is getting harsher, following the latest deadly bombing in Turkey.  The Kurds’ political leader is challenging the Prime Minister and the President saying, “To hell with your ballot box, your seats in Parliament, ...

August 15, 2015

Battered Congress Syndrome

Shortly after reading yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Op Ed piece by Sohrab Ahmari,  “Selling Policy With the Voice of America”,  I received the below the Battered Congress Syndrome by Christina Jeffrey, Ph.D. The two seem...

July 28, 2015

Kurds get the shaft, U.S. gets an airbase, NATO gets used (updated)

My friends in Istanbul tell me, “It isn’t perfidy.  It’s the classic power plan of a political savant.” The “political savant” is Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erodogan.  The plan is to rid the...

October 30, 2014

Have Kurds Moved US Leadership to Action on ISIS?

Amid heavy clashes in the besieged town of Kobani, Syria just across the Turkish border, there are encouraging words.  Specifically two words that together have been hiding for years, United States and Leadership. Former US ambassador in Turk...

October 9, 2014

Betrayed Kurds' Angry Reaction

Kurds are holding anti-Islamic State demonstrations worldwide. Some are violent.  In Hamburg, Germany 40 ISIS supporters attacked several hundred Kurdish demonstrators.  Four people were treated for knife wounds. Kurds stormed the EU Par...

October 7, 2014

Is ISIS Beheading Kurdish Women?

It is hard to know what is truth and what is propaganda coming from online posts out of the Mideast.  The most disturbing picture I have seen concerning the ISIS horrors comes from The Shia Post.   A friend did a great deal of prodding...

October 6, 2014

ISIS, the Kurds and a Western Blind Spot

As heavy fighting rages with savagery all around, the fastest refugee exodus of the 3-year Syrian war has Kurdish families (and most probably Christian families) scrambling across the Turkish border just miles from their hometown of Kobane and 300 su...

October 1, 2014

Among the Kurds

My Kurdish friends tell me the situation right now is grim along the Turkish border.  The Kurdish fighters have escorted their families across the border from Kobani and are being prevented from returning to continue the fight against ISIS....