On Sunday morn, February 28 1813, General Ramon Correa, commander of 800 Spanish Royalist troops, sat upon his favourite Cucuta pew. While Correa communed with the Almighty, Simon Bolivar marched 400 men to hilltops overlooking Cucuta. Futile attempts to dislodge Bolivar left Correa’s men disorganised and demoralised; and left Correa sporting a head-wound. In the afternoon Bolivar, espying gaps in Cucuta’s defences and in his own ammunition stores, led a bayonet charge at the town....

The Wall Street Journal has an article whose very title – Ambitions for an “Arab NATO” Fade, Amid Discord – more or less, says it all. No surprise there at all. Even Antony Zinni, the retired Marine General who was to spearhead the project (but who has now resigned), said it was clear from early on that the idea of creating an “Arab NATO” was too ambitious. “There was no way that anybody was ready to jump into a NATO-type alliance,” he said. “One of the things I tried to do was kill that idea...

After Congress rejected President Trump’s request for 5.7 billion dollars for the border wall, the president declared a national emergency at the southern border. President Trump claims this “emergency” gives him the authority to divert funds appropriated for other purposes to building the border wall. President Trump’s emergency declaration is not just an end run around Congress. It is an end run around the Constitution. Article One of the Constitution gives Congress sole authority to...

CARACAS, VENEZUELA – On Sunday, the US-backed and self-declared “interim president” of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó, announced that he would meet with the Lima Group on Monday to “formally propose” keeping “all options open” for the “liberation” of Venezuela. The Lima Group, composed of the US and its allies and client states in the Americas, have all recognized Guaidó as the “legitimate” leader of Venezuela. The likelihood that Guaidó would use this meeting to request US-backed military...

This article was originally published yesterday exclusively for Ron Paul Institute subscribers. Subscribe for free here.When the neocons wanted to invade Iraq and overthrow its government they spent a good deal of time trying to convince us that they didn't just want to invade Iraq and overthrow its government. No, it was all about 9/11 and WMDs and US national security and ultimately about "humanitarianism" in the end. We would be greeted as liberators, they said. They tried to make the case...

CARACAS, Venezuela — The Trump administration’s coup against Venezuela culminated on February 23 with US-backed opposition attempting to ram several trucks loaded with boxes of USAID“humanitarian aid” across the previously unused Francisco de Paula Santander bridge connecting Colombia to Venezuela. The trucks failed to reach the other side — but that was never really the point of the stunt. As Father Sergio Munoz, a right-wing Venezuelan activist posted on the Colombian side of the border,...

Mike Pompeo, the former boss of the world’s most prolific terror organization, the CIA, climbed up on his high State Department horse Saturday and lectured us on the crimes of the “sick tyrant” Nicholas Maduro. We denounce Maduro’s refusal to let humanitarian assistance reach #Venezuela. What kind of a sick tyrant stops food from getting to hungry people? The images of burning trucks filled with aid are sickening. pic.twitter.com/bJ1Qsxkgx8 — Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) February 24, 2019...

As I write this, there is a false flag underway on the border of Venezuela and Brazil.It looks like two people were killed and a dozen wounded after Venezuelan troops opened fire on locals. The confrontation is part of an effort to deliver “aid” to the crisis-wracked nation (thanks in large part to US sanctions). Of course, the Maduro government doesn’t trust USAID, a US government funded agency that specializes in “democratic” color revolution and undermining elections around the world under...

The humiliation of United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Warsaw last week was a good thing. The ancient Greeks, exercising their demonstrated ability to synthesize defining characteristics, had a word for it: hubris. Hubris is when one develops an extreme and unreasonable feeling of confidence in a certain course of action that inevitably leads to one’s downfall when that conceit proves to be based on false principles. Pompeo was in Warsaw for a “summit” arranged by the US State...

US President Donald Trump’s top foreign policy advisor John Bolton appears dead set on resuming his decades-long stand-off with Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega, hinting that Washington-backed regime change may be in the offing. “The Ortega regime has sentenced three farm leaders to 550 years in prison for their roles in protests in 2018, where Ortega’s police forces reportedly killed 300 activists. As President Trump said Monday, Ortega’s days are numbered and the Nicaraguan people will soon...

In recent times the international media, including many who promised to “resist” the dangerous commander-in-chief Donald Trump, have been awash with stories about Nicolas Maduro blocking US “humanitarian aid” reaching Venezuela. Maduro is said to have even blocked a bridge in his desperation to starve his own people (see, for example, CNN, CBC, Associated Press, BBC, NPR, ABC, Bloomberg, The Guardian). A constant flow of stories such as this have served to establish a narrative of a dictator...

“Today, President Trump presented Venezuela’s military officers with a choice — work for a democratic future for all Venezuelans or see the financial circle close for their families and loved ones,” tweeted US National Security Advisor John Bolton today following a Miami speech by the president. If you know anything about John Bolton, you just know he typed “noose” first instead of “circle”. This would be the same John Bolton, for the record, who once threatened to murder an international...

Taking over the annual Munich security conference, the Atlantic Council has come out with a declaration of principles that seeks to legitimize the rogue behavior of the West after the Cold War as a "rules-based" world order. For almost three decades now, Washington and its numerous clients and allies have insisted they were only upholding a “rules-based international order” against those who seek to challenge it, be it “rogue states” such as North Korea and Iran or great powers such as Russia...

In the year 2001, what ought to be called the most controversial legislation in the history of the United States was rapidly passed through Congress with few objections. The Patriot Act was an almost entirely unconstitutional expansion of American governmental power, all of which could be and subsequently has been directed against American citizens who were otherwise entitled to constitutional protections of their lives, liberties and property. Enacted into law just two months shy of the ten...