The RPI Challenge

On January 2nd the United States assassinated Iran Quds Force General Qasem Soleimani on the US pretext of an anti-terror strike, killing him and his entourage by drone strike at Baghdad International Airport, just subsequent to disembarking from a flight.  As head of the Iranian IRGC elite Quds Force, Soleimani commanded effective operations versus ISIS and assorted Salafi terror groups in Iraq and Syria.  US Pentagon officials claimed the drone strike was authorized under section 10 U.S....

The United States is now at war with Iran in a conflict that could easily have been avoided and it will not end well. There will be no declaration of war coming from either side, but the assassination of Iranian Quds Force Commander General Qassem Soleimani and the head of Kata’ib Hezbollah Abu Mehdi Muhandis by virtue of a Reaper drone strike in Baghdad will shift the long-simmering conflict between the two nations into high gear. Iran cannot let the killing of a senior military officer go...

The creatures that lurk through the corridors of power in Washington DC have refined corruption to the point where almost anything goes and almost no one is ever held accountable. Traditionally, Congressmen reward their various constituencies by inserting riders into larger pieces of legislation that grant money, exemptions or favors to certain groups or individuals. It is sometimes referred to as “pork.” The recent bloated omnibus spending bills totaling $1.4 trillion, which passed through...

It's entirely possible that Joe Biden could be the next US President. If so, buckle your seatbelts because the advice he's getting on Russia is, almost certainly, dangerously wrong. Regular readers will know of my deep scorn for “Russia Watchers” - Westerners who, as a rule, purport to have an understanding of the country beyond their actual competence. Sadly, they are an unavoidable hazard on this beat, much as snow is to Siberia, or blazing summer sun to Krasnodar. For the most part they are...

This week, amid protests by people upset with United States intervention in Iraq, individuals forced their way into and damaged the US embassy compound in Baghdad. In response, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper declared on Tuesday that 750 additional US troops would be deployed immediately to the Middle East, and it was reported that anonymous US officials said thousands more could be sent there soon. Here is another option to consider: End US intervention and sanctions, along with the threat...

Libya's Government of National Accord has little time to sort out the mess it is in, with the Libyan National Army making some progress in Tripoli's suburbs. LNA warlord Haftar's strike on the Zawiya Oil installation near al Harsha in west Tripolitania on the 27th of December resulted in drastic damage to the facility causing Libya’s National Oil Company to warn about potential evacuation of offices nearby.* The LNA's decision to target the az Zawiya Oil installation may be seen as a proxy...

I have to wonder who Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is actually loyal to. Because, the U.S. strike of Kata’ib Hizbullah forces near the Al Qaim border crossing with Syria in Iraq is a dangerous escalation there.And it’s completely at odds with Trump’s goals of wanting us out of the Middle East. The Al Qaim border crossing is a particular red line for Israel and their allies in the US State and Defense Departments.It represents the normalization of commerce between Syria, Iraq and Iran over...

Depending on whose political echo chamber I happen to be arguing with on a given day, one common criticism I run into a fair bit which many of my readers have surely also encountered is that I put all my energy into criticizing the foreign policy of the United States and its allies. “You’re not anti-war, you’re only anti-AMERICAN wars!” they say, as though they’re delivering some kind of devastating slam-dunk point. “If you’re so antiwar, why don’t you criticize Assad’s war in Syria? If you’re...

Political correctness recently took a dangerous turn in the United Kingdom when the North Bristol National Health Service Trust announced that hospital patients who use offensive, racist, or sexist language will cease receiving medical care as soon as it is safe to end their treatment.The condition that treatment will not be withdrawn until doing so is safe seems to imply that no one will actually suffer from this policy. However, health-care providers have great discretion to determine when...

Every time you speak out against western imperialism in a given nation or question western propaganda narratives about that nation’s government, you will inevitably be accused of loving that nation’s government by anyone who argues with you. When I say “inevitably”, I am not exaggerating. If you speak in any public forum for any length of time expressing skepticism of what we’re told to believe about a nation whose government has been targeted by the US-centralized empire, you will with...

Despite having provided no proof of Russian meddling in the 2016 or 2020 US presidential election, the Pentagon is preparing to launch a cyberwar against Russia in retaliation. Could the real reason be political? From May 2017 until March 2019, a team of investigators and lawyers led by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller engaged in a frenetic search for evidence sustaining allegations that individuals affiliated with the campaign of President Donald Trump—and even the president himself—had...

The leadership of the chemical weapons watchdog took efforts to remove the paper trail of a dissenting report from Douma, Syria which pointed to a possible false flag operation there, leaked documents indicate. In an internal email published by the transparency website WikiLeaks on Friday, a senior official from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) ordered that the document be removed from the organization’s Documents Registry Archive and to “remove all traces, if...

Conspiracy theorist and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has been called out by Washington Post columnist Erik Wemple for breathlessly peddling the Steele Dossier - becoming a "clearinghouse" for the largely debunked opposition research funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC in 2016 (and fed to the MSM six weeks before the 2016 US election by the former British spy who wrote it). Wemple has been writing about the media's coverage of the Steele dossier since it was significantly undercut...

Watching the impeachment “vote” was hard work. With only a few exceptions, each Congressman rose for roughly 90 seconds and provided a prearranged, almost completely scripted-along-party-lines explanation of how he or she was casting one’s ballot. After four grueling hours of hearing self-serving lies like “no one is above the law,” I was hoping that one of them would either fall off the podium and fracture a leg or actually go mad and break out into a song and dance routine. The entire...

A spate of leaks from within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the international inspectorate created for the purpose of implementing the Chemical Weapons Convention, has raised serious questions about the institution’s integrity, objectivity and credibility. The leaks address issues pertaining to the OPCW investigation into allegations that the Syrian government used chemical weapons to attack civilians in the Damascus suburb of Douma on April 7, 2018. These...