Yesterday CNN was the sole source of an article accusing Iran's Revolutionary Guard of trying to seize a UK tanker in the Persian Gulf. Though CNN claimed there was video of the attempt, none has surfaced. Iran strongly denies any such attempt. Is this another psy-op to drum up support for a US attack on Iran? Bonus topic: A new Pew Poll shows that US military members do not believe recent wars have been "worth it." Maybe we should listen to them. Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
It is discouraging to note just how the United States has been taking on the attributes of a police state since 9/11. Stories of police raids on people’s homes gone wrong are frequently in the news. In one recent incident, a heavily armed SWAT team was sent to a St. Louis county home. The armed officers entered the building without knocking, shot the family dog and forced the family members to kneel on the floor where they were able to watch their pet struggle and then die. The policemen then informed the family that they were there over failure to pay the gas bill. Animal rights groups report that the shooting of pets by police has become routine in many jurisdictions because the officers claim that they feel threatened. read on...
President Trump has threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2020 if Congress adopts the House version of the bill, which increases military spending by $16 billion but does not come close to the $33 billion increase the Administration demands. When it comes to military spending...how much is enough? Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
This week, Taliban and Afghan government officials met for the first time at talks hosted in Qatar and organized by Germany. The modest early agreement may pave the way to the end of the 18 year war. Meanwhile today the US resumes talks with the Taliban also in Qatar. Will the Trump Administration find a way to pull out of Afghanistan? Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
The 2019 Socialism Conference, sponsored by American leftist juggernauts the DSA, Jacobin magazine, and ISO’s Haymarket Books, features regime-change activists from multiple US government-funded NGOs. read on...
The wave of wishful thinking articles, including some by friends of mine whose judgment I usually respect was entirely wrong. President Donald Trump has not fired John Bolton for the failed fiasco of his latest inept attempt to topple the legitimate democratically-elected government of Venezuela: At least not yet.
Bolton remains National Security Advisor of the United States with his fingerprints all over the latest “incident” of limpet mine attacks on the two oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
That is not to see that daylight has perceptibly opened up between Trump and Bolton, first on Venezuela and now on Iran. It most clearly has.
Had Trump still been fully in Bolton’s pocket, he would by now have ordered the ferocious air strikes against Iran that Bolton desperately craved. It is greatly to the president’s credit that he did not. read on...
I recently appeared on RT to talk about how the United States weaponizes the dollar and wields it like a billy club to advance US foreign policy objectives. I specifically mentioned how the US can use the dollar-denominated SWIFT payment system as a tool and the threat that this kind of economic warfare poses to the US domestic economy.
A couple of days after the interview, I got a somewhat contentious email from Voice of America asking for my comment because they are “fact-checking” the web story RT published based on my interview. VoA is a US government-funded and operated media outlet.
The fact-checking arm of VoA (polygraph.info), asked if RT quoted me accurately. (They did.) The Polygraph reporter then stated, “We suspected there might be some inaccuracy because any expert on SWIFT would surely know that while the US has sought to influence it, it is primarily a European and European-based institution, which would of course limit the US’ ability to ‘use’ it as a weapon as the article states.”
SWIFT stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The system enables financial institutions to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized environment. Since the dollar serves as the world reserve currency, SWIFT facilitates the international dollar system. read on...
Days after the UK - at US request - seized a tanker filled with Iranian oil near Gibraltar, a UK tanker in the Persian Gulf has made an abrupt u-turn and abandoned its mission to transport Iraqi oil to Europe. Now sheltering in Saudi waters, the tanker fears a tit-for-tat Iranian retaliation. Is this a case of "unintended consequences" for the US-engineered July 4th Iran tanker seizure? How far will this escalate? Watch today's Liberty Report... read on...
President Trump is being criticized for surrounding himself with tanks, armored vehicles, flyovers, and generals and admirals during his Fourth of July celebration at the Lincoln Memorial. Critics say that it was unseemly for the president to be showing off the federal government’s military process on Independence Day. Some said it conjured up images of the Soviet Union, when that communist regime would showcase its tanks and military hardware in parades in Moscow’s Red Square.
But the fact is that America is a military nation. As Trump pointed out in his Independence Day address, the United States has the most powerful military in history, one that can pulverize any other nation on earth. His critics don’t have any problem with that. They just don’t want Trump to highlight it.
Of course, it wasn’t always that way. In extolling America’s position as a military nation, Trump left out something important in his talk: America did not start out as a military nation. In fact, quite the contrary. America was founded as a limited-government republic, not a military nation. read on...
Hypocrisy seems to have become a defining characteristic of US foreign policy, especially when it comes to Iran. After breaking the Iran deal last year and, de facto, forcing the Europeans to violate the deal in May, the US Administration is now complaining that Iran is no longer abiding by its obligations under the deal! read on...
