We have previously discussed the denials of former Vice President Joe Biden that his son did anything wrong in Ukraine. As I have written, not only did Hunter Biden clearly enter into a corrupt (but arguably lawful) contract but Joe Biden did not do enough to confirm that his son was not engaging in influence peddling. Nevertheless, this week, Joe Biden continued this indefensible position and declared bizarrely that “no one has suggested my son did anything wrong.” According to the Washington...

Although Western media has a shoddy track record of lying on Syria (and Libya, Iraq...), the US State Department will pump $35 million more into future war propaganda on Syria, under the guise of promoting honest reporting. A US State Department grant, “Support for Independent Media in Syria,” is unabashed in stating one of its main goals is “to advance US Government policy objectives in Syria.” That is probably the sole honest clause in the grant description: that it is in the end about US...

The US Constitution brought into existence a federal government whose powers were limited to those enumerated in the Constitution itself. If a power wasn’t enumerated, it simply could not be exercised. That’s because our American ancestors didn’t trust governmental power. They clearly understood, based on both historical knowledge and life experience, that the greatest threat to their freedom and well-being lay with their very own federal government. That’s why there was such a deep antipathy...

Call it a colossal victory for a Pentagon that hasn't won a war in this century, but not for the rest of us. Congress only recently passed and the president approved one of the largest Pentagon budgets ever. It will surpass spending at the peaks of both the Korean and Vietnam wars. As last year ended, as if to highlight the strangeness of all this, the Washington Post broke a story about a “confidential trove of government documents” -- interviews with key figures involved in the Afghan War by...

On January 10, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin announced new economic sanctions imposed on Iran in response to its missile strikes against US forces in Iraq. The sanctions target enterprises operating in the manufacturing, textile, construction, and mining sectors. President Trump said that “These punishing sanctions will remain until the Iranian regime changes its behavior.” The Iranian strikes were in retaliation to the US drone attack that killed...

On the 17 September 1656, Oliver Cromwell, a Protestant Puritan, who had won a civil war, and had the English king beheaded in public, railed against England’s enemies. There was, he told Parliament that day, an axis of evil abroad in the world. And this axis – led by Catholic Spain – was, at root, the problem of a people that had placed themselves at the service of “evil”. This “evil”, and the servitude that it beget, was the evil of a religion – Catholicism – that refused the English...

Supporters of Donald Trump often make the point that he has not started any new wars. One might observe that it has not been for lack of trying, as his cruise missile attacks on Syria based on fabricated evidence and his recent assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani have been indisputably acts of war. Trump also has enhanced troop levels both in the Middle East and in Afghanistan while also increasing the frequency and lethality of armed drone attacks worldwide. Congress has been...

The UN Security Council met in New York on Monday to discuss the investigation by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) into an alleged chemical attack that was said to have taken place in April 2018 in Douma, Syria. The alleged attack was blamed on the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and the US, UK, and France responded with an airstrike against Syrian government targets. A former OPCW employee spoke to the UN Security Council and accused OPCW management of...

US President Donald Trump wants to destroy the nuclear agreement with Iran. He has threatened the EU-3 poodles in Germany, Britain and France with a 25% tariff on their car exports to the US unless they end their role in the JCPOA deal. In their usual gutlessness the Europeans gave in to the blackmail. They triggered the Dispute Resolution Mechanism of the deal. The mechanism foresees two 15 day periods of negotiations and a five day decision period after which any of the involved countries...

This article first appeared in an update sent exclusively to RPI subscribers. Be the first to get updates - subscribe here.Remember Juan Guaido? Just a year ago the Venezuelan politician, unknown even in his own country, was tapped by the US government to lead a coup against the elected government of Nicolas Maduro. In a phone call with no less than Vice President Mike Pence himself, Guaido was told that if he declared himself president the US would back him. So...he did.Guaido hadn't received...

The Trump administration sees the US assassination of Qassem Soleimani as a form of deterrence not only with regards to Iran but also towards Russia, China and others. That view is wrong. The claim that the murder of Soleimani was necessary because of an "imminent threat" has been debunked by Trump himself when he tweeted that 'it doesn't really matter' if there was such a threat or not. In a speech at the Hoover Institute Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the assassination was part of...

Cato Institute Research Fellow Patrick Eddington recently filed several Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to find out if the Federal Bureau of Investigation ever conducted surveillance of several organizations dealing with government policy, including my Campaign for Liberty. Based on the FBI’s response, Campaign for Liberty and other organizations, including the Cato institute and the Reason Foundation, may have been subjected to FBI surveillance or other data collection.I say “may...

Without warning, tech giant Google “permanently removed” Iranian government-owned media channel Press TV UK’s YouTube channel Monday night amid increasing American hostility to Iran. “This attack on the freedom of speech of Press TV’s journalists seems to be part of an anti-Iran purge as the West sets its sights on regime change in Iran,” Press TV said. Its content, in its own words, focuses on “anti-imperialism, anti-racism, and covers aspects of the news which the mainstream corporate media...

First, the background. When the United States abandoned the Iran agreement, that left Turkey’s oil imports adrift due to newly imposed US Treasury sanctions on Iranian oil exports. By December 2018, Turkey was forced to look elsewhere for its oil imports with Libya being the most logical choice by price and proximity, despite the violence there. Misrata rebels allied with Libya Dawn in charge of Libya’s largest free trade port, arranged oil exports from Zawiya and Sirte to Italy* and Turkey,...