Sunil Dutta, who has worked 17 years in the Los Angeles Police Department, has some advice for anyone encountering him on the job: do whatever I say and don’t complain, or I will hurt or kill you. read on...
Another round of attempts to solve Ukraine crisis without US participation will be launched next week, as more thousands of civilians killed in eastern Ukraine. There is no reporting on the massacre in east Ukraine, no State Department briefings demanding a stop to the violence. Also what is the latest in Iraq, where mission creep is the order of the day? This and more as RPI's Daniel McAdams joins Jay Taylor for a discussion. read on...
Much American public attention is focused on the US military escalation in Iraq and, to some extent, the rivalry for leadership in that nation where Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has worn out his US government welcome. Among other offenses, Maliki failed to ensure Iraq agreed in 2011 to a status of forces agreement that would have enabled the continued presence of thousands of US troops by protecting them from liability for violations of Iraqi laws.
Americans seem to be paying much less attention to the continuing, drawn-out Afghanistan national election. International reporter and columnist Eric Margolis suggests the election is being orchestrated by the US government to establish a new status of forces agreement with Afghanistan. read on...
I share Paul Craig Roberts’ disgust for the behavior of Western media in their coverage of the war in Ukraine. Not only does Western reporting show these “newspeople” to be nothing more than a pack of idiots and whores, as Roberts suggests, but the heavy handed propaganda effort makes it damned near impossible for most of us to gain an informed idea of what is actually happening in Ukraine. What is happening? I will try to sort out the true situation and establish a framework for discussing the many facets of the “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” that is the war in eastern Ukraine.
At a macro level, this is a re-ignition of the Cold War. Some just can’t pass up a chance to tweak the Bear’s nose and are oblivious to the possibly of deadly consequences. Others have long memories and precious little forgiveness. Russia can deal with all that as long as Ukraine is not a hostile outpost of NATO on their border. But I believe it is the Neocons and R2P-ers most responsible for this mess. They’ve spent five billion and twenty years getting to this point and they appear willing to double down. I think they had dreams of Sevastopol becoming a NATO/US naval base. That would be tweaking the Bear’s nose just a little too hard. Beyond the whole spreading democracy vision thing, there is now the specter of a world economy arising to compete with the petrodollar based Western economy. That scares the hell out of some dangerous people… or perhaps it just presents an investment opportunity. read on...
In his new book, Set Money Free, RPI contributing writer Chris Rossini has managed to explore the dark nexus between the United States’ dishonest monetary system and that system’s usefulness in financing the US military empire. read on...
Former US House of Representatives member and Democratic Party presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, speaking Wednesday with Bill Hemmer on Fox News, explained that “Christians, in effect, are receiving the blowback from the US war against Iraq,” and that further US intervention in that country is not the answer.
Kucinich elaborates that the US government’s invasion and occupation of Iraq starting in 2003 fueled the situation today with the Christian population of Iraq reduced by three-quarters. Kucinich explains that this population reduction arose in large part from Christians, along with people in other religious minorities, being “targeted by jihadists who did not have a presence in Iraq prior to the US invasion.” read on...
Is Russia sending a Trojan horse convoy into Ukraine? Is Putin hiding S-300s in with medicine and blankets to the displaced in eastern Ukraine? That is how it is reported in the western media. How close is the government in Kiev to economic suicide by cutting off gas to western and central Europe? Also on the menu: back to Iraq, libertarians for war, how some humanitarian disasters are more equal than others. Daniel McAdams is again with Jay Taylor to digest the week in war... read on...
Why are so many of those who call themselves "non-interventionist" suddenly jumping on the "bomb Iraq" bandwagon with the latest dose of US government propaganda about the critical need to "save the Kurds"? Do people really believe the US government is telling the truth this time and, more importantly, that bombs will solve the problem?
How strange that humanitarian catastrophes of a much larger scale are taking place currently in Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, and elsewhere and the US government is totally silent or even hostile to those who seek to help! Not to mention the half-million Christians already cleansed from Iraq under US occupation. Might it have something to do with oil? Israel? Neocons striking back? Yes, yes, and yes! read on...
Will the Ukrainian government vote to freeze the trans-shipment of oil from Russia to the European Union? What will it mean to Poland, the Baltics, and much of central Europe to suddenly be cut off from their main supply of natural gas with cold weather just a couple of months away? RPI Director Daniel McAdams discusses what happens when sanctions bite both ways... read on...
The US administration began bombing Iraq today, with hopes that the disaster created by the 2003 Iraq War II could be rectified by starting Iraq War III. The pretext was to rescue a religious minority trapped by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters. It was called a “humanitarian” intervention.
The ISIS menace is one created in Washington through the much-vaunted 2007 “Arab Awakening” in Iraq – where, as Justin Raimondo points out, the US was “arming, training, and bribing the very folks who are now welcoming ISIS with open arms.” ISIS has been significantly strengthened over the past three years by the US program to arm and back Islamist insurgents fighting to overthrow the secular government in Syria. Without US support for the rebels in Syria, ISIS would not be overrunning Iraq right now. read on...
