by Tony Wyman It has never in the history of humanity been easier to know the truth of things than it is today, yet Americans chose to believe things that are easily disproved with just a few clicks of a keyboard. Have we grown lazy and stupid, too distracted by the drama of reality TV shows, too transfixed by our social media world to know much about the real world that exists off the web? Are we, as the Daily Beast put it in 2017, in a cult of ignorance,…
Read More
by Tony Wyman Perhaps I am being sexist, but I expect more from women than I do from men. Throughout my life, I have been blessed to have women around me who combined great kindness, compassion and sensitivity with equally great strength, intelligence and sound moral judgment. And, thanks to them, I have always seen women as embodying the best the human race has to offer. Maybe that is why my reaction to the cruelty demonstrated by former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen hit me as hard as…
Read More
by Tony Wyman Following what political commentators could only call the best day in his presidency, Donald Trump had the opportunity to show America that he is a man of character worthy to be the president of the United States. And he failed. Following 22 months of investigation into now discredited allegations that Mr. Trump colluded with Russian operatives seeking to influence the 2016 presidential race to prevent former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from being elected, no one could blame the president for feeling a sense of both relief…
Read More
By Janice Barlow THE PRO-LIFE/PRO-CHOICE ISSUE has been front and center in the MSM and on social media in recent months. Proposals and legislation to either end most abortions or to allow them to occur up to (and even post birth!) are showing up in almost every state in the nation. People are taking sides as strong pro-life conservatives or advocates of a woman’s right to choose and battling the issue out on Twitter and Facebook. Articles are appearing that call abortion murder, either because life begins at conception, as deemed…
Read More
by Tony Wyman “Democracy in Retreat.” That was the headline for the annual assessment of global freedom completed recently by Freedom House, the independent watchdog group founded in 1941 and headquartered in Washington, D.C. that works to expand freedom and democracy in countries around the world. The year 2018 marked the 13th consecutive decline in world freedom recorded by the group and included declines in the majority of nations the world depends upon for the defense of liberty. The report blamed populism and nationalism as the major forces reducing freedom in…
Read More
by Tony Wyman Make no mistake about it, President Trump didn’t declare a national emergency to build a wall to protect you. No, he declared a national emergency to build a wall to protect himself. If illegal border crossings of poor and desperate Latinos was really a national emergency, as President Trump claimed Friday before going off for a weekend of golf at taxpayers expense, he and the Republican-controlled Congress would have found $25 billion or more in 2016 to start throwing up barriers before the Democrats knew what hit…
Read More
by Kseniya Kirillova The Russian-speaking diaspora abroad is quite numerous in many Western countries and is made up of many different waves of emigration – from descendants of White Russian émigrés to those who are arriving today. However, all these waves are characterized by a fairly high level of support for Vladimir Putin. It’s especially surprising to see such sentiments amongst people who emigrated in Soviet times, not so much for economic reasons but rather in search of freedom. However, even among them, support is quite high for a president…
Read More
by Kseniya Kirillova In late November, 2018, Russian news agencies, like state-sponsored RIA Novosti and Mint Press News, accused the Integrity Initiative, a U.K.-based group devoted to countering Russia’s use of the media to spread propaganda, of being “…engaged in highly deceptive covert propaganda campaigns funded by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), NATO, Facebook and hardline national security institutions.” They claim in their reports, the Integrity Initiative “was used to interfere in the internal affairs of European countries and for the information war against Russia.” Citing documents stolen…
Read More
by Tony Wyman President Trump gave a speech last week that, I admit, I immediately dismissed as “a dud.” Like millions of others watching the speech, I expected Mr. Trump to announce he was declaring a state of emergency so he could make an end run around Congress and the Constitution, and redirect money from the Defense Department to build a 1954-mile-long wall between the United States and Mexico. Instead, he delivered a nine-minute-long speech that sought to reshape his message from one depicting immigrants as dangerous, malevolent and threatening…
Read More
by Kseniya Kirillova On December 28th of last year, Canadian-American Paul Whelan was detained in Moscow by police on suspicion of espionage after he was found in possession of classified information belonging to the Russian government. The FSB (Russian federal security service) claims Mr. Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, was involved in an American intelligence operation, but his friends and members of the American intelligence service say he was set up. According to Russian news agency Rosbalt, citing sources in the intelligence community, Mr. Whelan was detained after receiving a…
Read More