Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, ISIS, Hong Kong — why is the US at war with much of the rest of the world? Why does the government lie to trick so many Americans into backing their impoverishing and dangerous plans? Who is behind this warmongering and why?
RPI Director Daniel McAdams is on the Robert Wenzel Show at the Economic Policy Journal today to survey the expanse of the US empire. read on...
Even as a shaky ceasefire holds in east Ukraine between pro-independence and US-backed government forces from Kiev, details begin to emerge of secret agreements made on the margins of last week's NATO summit in Wales that will escalate the conflict.
While NATO as a whole could not agree unanimously (as required) to provide lethal aid to Kiev government forces, individual member governments reportedly signed bilateral agreements to provide such assistance. Which member states agreed to such aid was not made public...until yesterday. read on...
Today in Cardiff, Wales, NATO agreed to provide $15 million to the Ukrainian government for "cyberdefense, logistics, rehabilitating soldiers injured by the rebels, and command, communications and control capabilities."
The government in Kiev has waged war against several regions in eastern Ukraine that have sought to break away from the west after a US-backed coup in February. read on...
A major component in the latest western government and media claims of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is protests of the various Russian "Soldiers' Mothers Committes" over the supposed disappearance of their soldier sons in Ukraine. Absent compelling visual evidence of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, these NGOs are said to provide the evidence that, as NATO claims, 1,000 young Russians have been forced to go fight in Ukraine.
The US mainstream media has reported extensively over the past several days that these "Soldiers' Mothers Committes" are a smoking gun indicating the Russian government's military intervention in Ukraine. 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...
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...
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...
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...
How does the Obama administration frame the issue on the shootdown of the Malaysian Airliner to pin the blame on Putin? Get out early, go hard, go heavy, get your mainstream ducks in a row and dominate, dominate, dominate!
But what about the narrative falling apart? Will anyone hear the lone tree falling in the forest? If the US provided some evidence we would certainly consider it. read on...
The Ukrainian government is desperate for more men on the eastern front to fight the separatists. The Ukrainian president, Poroshenko, has announced yet a third round of general military mobilization, and draft orders are being delivered across Ukraine. Scores more young men from as far off as the Romanian border face conscription into the military and being sent to fight fellow Ukrainians in the east.
Cash-strapped Ukraine is burning through $6 million per day as it enters its fifth month of attacks on separatist provinces. The government in Kiev announced late last month that it would spend an additional nearly one billion dollars on its military assault, while admitting that the treasury was totally empty. To make up some of the difference, the government announced that it was sharply reducing social services and would also introduce a 1.5 percent additional "war tax" on workers. read on...
