Since January 1, the great gas price war has rocked Mexico. The turmoil involves the four core problems Mexico confronts in the 21st century: economic adjustment, systemic political change, crime and national distrust. The ostensible match that lit this conflagration was the Mexican government’s December 27 announcement that gasoline and diesel prices would increase from […]
Austin Bay
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U.S. needs deterrent to North Korea missiles
In March 2013, when Austin, Texas, appeared on a map displaying a North Korean missile strike plan, dictator Kim Jong Un’s ballistic missiles couldn’t reach the Lone Star State. For the record, Honolulu, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., appeared on the same map. Hello, 2017. Almost four years have passed — four years filled with […]
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Christmas was terror’s iconic target
It should come as no surprise that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has claimed credit for the Dec. 19 Berlin terror attack that killed 12 people and left another 48 injured, many critically. The attack was brutally simple and hideously effective. It also bears the classic signs of sectarian calculation. The terrorist, armed […]
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Lack of action limits Mexico’s war for reform
Mexico was battling well-financed criminal organizations long before December 2006. But that’s the month, 10 years ago, when former President Felipe Calderon decided to use military forces to fight the well-armed and well-financed drug cartels that had begun to threaten Mexico’s internal stability. Mexico’s Cartel War began on December 11, 2006 , when Calderon ordered […]
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Trump executes his own ‘pivot to Asia’
A month after the presidential election, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has executed his own political “pivot to Asia.” Trump’s pivot consisted of two phone calls, one with Taiwan’s president and the other with the president of the Philippines. The explicit topics discussed matter, but the critical fact is that Trump spoke with the Asian leaders. […]
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Russia’s cyclic war in Ukraine continues
Intense combat suddenly erupts in eastern Ukraine. Russian-backed rebels — using Kremlin-supplied heavy artillery, mortars and machine guns — launch a series of attacks on Ukrainian military positions. Other rebels raid neighborhoods or probe Ukrainian defenses around the Black Sea port of Mariupol. Then the violence stops. All appears to be quiet on Europe’s eastern […]
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Islamic State may look to Afghanistan
On November 21, an Islamist terrorist entered the Shia Muslim Baqir ul-Uloom mosque in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul. He detonated his explosive-laden suicide vest, killing 30 people and wounding more than 70. Afghanistan’s Taliban militant organization denied responsibility for the attack. However, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria claimed credit for the slaughter, touting it […]
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Bangladesh battles Islamist terrorists
Impoverished, predominantly Muslim and below-media-radar Bangladesh continues to wage a careful war on militant Islamist terrorists. This is good news. Bangladesh is the world’s eighth most populous country, with around 168 million people. Unfortunately, the latest news begins with an act of calculated Islamist terror that also had a greed-driven criminal angle. Beginning October 30, […]
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Iraqis discover more ISIS war crimes
At one time ISIS made videos extolling its grotesque executions. ISIS commanders used these YouTube horrors as recruiting advertisements. In their sick minds, the executions demonstrated that ISIS had God’s divine sanction. YouTube still runs clips from these videos. Each one documents premeditated crime, like the one where masked ISIS executioners march Christian men to […]
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Congo’s president risks a new civil war
Congo is on the verge of another brutal civil war. That’s bad news. Its last civil war, which had two phases and lasted seven years, killed between two and three million people. Some responsible sources say the death toll was five million. In comparison, Syria’s civil war (an acknowledged tragedy) has lasted five and a […]