The RPI Challenge

A New York Times Magazine article in July 2020 focused on then Secretary of State Powell and his U.N. speech of Feb. 5, 2003 and the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) upon which it is largely based. A lot of the detail in the article may have been new to many readers, but not to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which had been established a month before. VIPS watched the speech, dissected it, and sent their verdict to President George W. Bush before close of business that same...

In the “collective West,” hypocrisy rules the narrative, most recently in regard to the ICC and the “kidnapped” children of Ukraine. In America, the scurrilous neocon and warmonger propagandist Max Boot weighed in on the meaningless and unenforcible decision to arrest President Putin. Boot’s argument is delusional, but then neocons thrive on lies and delusions. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine can be seen as a desperate gambit to increase Russia’s declining population at gunpoint.That the Russians...

While lost in the explosive news about Donald Trump’s expected arrest, journalist Matt Taibbi released new details on previously undisclosed censorship efforts on social media. The latest Twitter Files revealed a breathtaking effort from Stanford’s Virality Project to censor even true stories. After all, the project insisted “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. The effort included suppressing stories that we now know are legitimate such as natural...

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10 was the second largest bank failure in US history. Just two days following SVB’s collapse, Signature Bank joined the record books as the third largest bank failure in US history. First Republic Bank also seemed on the edge of collapse until Bank of America, Citigroup, and other big banks agreed to jointly fund a bailout for it.Major Swiss bank Credit Suisse was also teetering on the brink when it received a 54 billion dollars line of credit...

Thursday marked the three year anniversary of the infamous “15 Days To Slow The Spread” campaign.By March 16, yours truly was already pretty fed up with both the governmental and societal “response” to what was being baselessly categorized as the worst pandemic in 100 years, despite zero statistical data supporting such a serious claim. The Moment That Shook the World: "15 Days to Slow the Spread" (March 16, 2020)Fauci: "In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants,...

Thursday was three years since President Donald Trump announced the “15 days to slow the spread” campaign that played a big role in propelling the use of new expansive government powers to limit the exercise of freedom in the name of countering coronavirus. The campaign both did not slow the spread and did not end after 15 days. What it did do was help grow and maintain tyrannical policies of the United States, state, and local governments that were marketed as based in science and promoting...

“Moral courage can be lonely indeed. People don’t mind being trapped, as long as no one else is free. But stage a break, and everybody else begins to panic.” - William Deresiewicz When I look back at the times of Covid hysteria, I think most about outliers and rule followers, and what separates courageous people from cowards. These past three years served as a good reminder that true courage is an isolating experience. It is both difficult to possess and retain, and regularly interpreted by...

If you give the government an inch, it will always take a mile. This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts. This particular slippery slope has to do with the government’s use of geofence technology, which uses cell phone location data to identify people who are in a particular area at any given time. First, police began using geofence warrants to carry out dragnet sweeps of individuals near a crime scene. Then the FBI used geofence warrants to identify individuals who were in...

As world tensions heighten over Ukraine, some fear this crisis might grow into a great geopolitical catastrophe. Certainly it could. But few recognize there is an even greater matter of conflict brewing between the US and Russia. It could quickly outpace the already-dangerous Ukraine war. Consider the following statement about the war: "This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order." Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that, referencing the war. Oxford University professor...

Marina in Rostock, Germany. (Beauwell, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)Back in 2000, the television series “Andromeda” premiered, based upon unused material from Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series and franchise. The plot is premised on the notion of a spaceship, “Andromeda,” frozen in time, which is given the opportunity to reverse the clock and undo history. The series ran five years. Fast forward to the present. History has dealt a tough hand to the administration of US President...

The agreement announced on Friday in Beijing regarding the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the reopening of their embassies is a historic event. It goes way beyond an issue of Saudi-Iranian relations. China’s mediation signifies that we are witnessing a profound shift of the tectonic plates in the geopolitics of the 21st century.  The joint statement issued on Friday in Beijing begins by saying that the Saudi-Iranian agreement was reached “in response to...

For years, members of Congress have asked for access to suspicious activity reports (SARs) related to the Biden family’s foreign business deals. Those efforts were cut off by the Biden Administration and the Democratically controlled houses of Congress. Even after the GOP took over the House, however, the Treasury Department continued to refuse to turn over the SARs. While the GOP had to threaten hearings with Treasury officials, the department has finally relented. It now appears that time is...

I often joke that I survived Washington because I had low expectations, but last week’s hearing of the House Weaponization of the Federal Government subcommittee would have tested the lowest of my low expectations. The purpose of the subcommittee is to look into the politicization of US government agencies and its effect on our civil liberties. But last week’s inaugural hearing of the committee was not at all a good look for the Democrats, who brought nothing but insults for the...

Let’s take a look at USAID, the United States Agency for International Development. The first thing to know: the agency is run out of the State Department. Its pubic relations cover is to provide “international development.” This is code for fomenting regime change and undermining elected governments not on-script with the neoliberal agenda. Second point: USAID is basically a cutout for CIA activity. David H. Price, in his “Cold War Anthology: The CIA, the Pentagon, and the Growth of Dual Use...

Friday’s announcement that Iran and Saudi Arabia had restored bilateral ties for the first time in seven years marks a major geopolitical development in the Persian Gulf. As the region’s two main powerhouses, Tehran and Riyadh had found themselves supporting opposing sides in conflicts in both Syria and Yemen over the past decade, resulting in tensions that would culminate in the ending of diplomatic relations in January 2016, following the execution of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Al-Nimr by Saudi...

“When a problem arises either inside or outside a republic, and has become so serious that it has begun to terrify everyone, the safest policy to put off dealing with it rather than trying to eliminate it, because almost always those who eliminate it only increase its strength and hasten the harm that is expected from it…when you put off dealing with them, they either fade away by themselves or at least the evil is postponed for a longer time.” - Machiavelli [Discourses, I.33] There is a...