I am often asked to explain why countries like Iran appear to be so aggressive, involving themselves in foreign wars and seeking to create alliances that they know will provoke the worst and most paranoid responses from some of their neighbors. My response is invariably that perceptions of threat depend very much on which side of the fence you are standing on. Saudi Arabia and Israel might well perceive Iranian actions as aggressive given the fact that all three countries are competing for...

Does the US Deep State really want to provoke a thermonuclear world war with Russia, China and Iran at the same time? The recklessness and confusion of US policies provoking major crises on every side certainly suggests so. Yet the truth may be even more terrifying. The dangers of nuclear war and global conflict should literally be regarded as suicidal and insane. Yet the policies being repeatedly urged on President Donald Trump by Democrats and Republicans in both chambers of Congress, the...

Michael Moore had epiphany while on the road to Rome. The filmmaker lambasted corporate media for placing more emphasis on frivolous entertainment than hard-hitting objective news. “If you allow rich corporations to buy up and control most of the media, and then put things on the media that are intended to appeal to the stupidity that’s in all of us, you will have a dumb-downed nation,” he said. Notice the use of the transitive verb “allow” in the above statement. If Moore sat atop the...

In a new article titled “Mueller report PSA: Prepare for disappointment“, Politico cites information provided by defense attorneys and “more than 15 former government officials with investigation experience spanning Watergate to the 2016 election case” to warn everyone who’s been lighting candles at their Saint Mueller altars that their hopes of Trump being removed from office are about to be dashed to the floor. “While [Mueller is] under no deadline to complete his work, several sources...

The Saudi version of the disappearance and murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi seems to change every day or so. The latest is the Saudi government claim that the opposition journalist was killed in a “botched interrogation” at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Or was it a fist-fight? What is laughable is that the Saudi king has placed Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, a prime suspect, in charge of the investigation of Khashoggi’s murder!Though the official story keeps changing, what is...

Facebook banned several pages operated by disabled by Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage, after he says he spent $300,000 on advertising. The social media giant removed without warning Kolfage's Right Wing News and Military Grade Coffee Company (which donates 10 percent of all profits to veteran organizations), in a site-wide effort to crack down on "misinformation" on the network.Right Wing News alone had over 3 million followers at the time of its banning. According to his new wesbite, Kolfage,...

If a single exchange stood out during the tense interview of President Trump with the CBS News 60 Minutes on Sunday — Washington Post listed 8 of them — I would say it was when he tried to filibuster Lesley Stahl over the topic of ‘Russian meddling’ in the American elections. Stahl kept taunting Trump but all she’d get was Trump repeating, ‘But China also meddled in the US elections.’ When she pointed out that she was asking about Russia, Trump repeated calmly, “And I think, frankly, China is...

If you read anything today, read Andre Damon’s analysis of the concerted effort by the state and its corporate partners—the very essence corporatism, fascism as Mussolini described it—to once again dominate the narrative as it did before the internet and the web.Damon critiques a paper put out by the Atlantic Council. The author, John T. Watts, a former Australian Army officer and consultant to the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security, writes that in order for the state to...

In August, Tucker Carlson declared at his Fox News show that it would be an act of war on the United States for the Mexico government to cease engaging in a war on heroin. Carlson even supported his wacky conclusion by pointing to drug overdose deaths in America, despite those deaths in fact being multiplied because of the US war on drugs. On Wednesday, Carlson was back at his show spouting drug war nonsense — this time expressing his dread of marijuana legalization that kicked in this week...

Getting to the bottom of the Jamal Khashoggi disappearance is a bit like peeling an onion. It is known that Khashoggi entered the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul on October 2nd to get a document that would enable him to marry a Turkish woman. It is also known, from surveillance cameras situated outside the building, that he never came out walking the same way he entered. The presumption is that he was either killed inside or abducted, though the abduction theory would have to be based on a...

Last week, Mark Zuckerberg made the media rounds to give a rather shady explanation of why Facebook suddenly closed hundreds of incredibly popular pages in what’s being called The Alternative Media Purge. Zuckerberg accused the closed pages, many of which had millions of fans, of spreading “political spam.”Ironically, many of the pages that were shut down had absolutely nothing to do with politics or elections, unless you include the fact that they recommended skipping the entire circus. None...

At this point we can only assume that the Turkish version of events regarding the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi is true. As always, I’m open to being proved wrong, and it’s certainly incumbent upon Ankara to release the audio evidence of which they claim to be in possession (though this, should it come out, will naturally be dismissed by the Saudis as fabricated or doctored), but the list of plausible alternative scenarios currently stands at zero. Khashoggi went into the Saudi consulate...

A recent purge by Facebook and Twitter of a host of independent media sites has pushed thousands of people out of work and has killed one of the most effective forms of expressing political dissent. On Thursday last week, Facebook purged more than 800 pages and accounts, accusing them of engaging in “inauthentic behaviour” and violating Facebook’s anti-spam policies. According to a statement released by Facebook on its website, many of these pages were: using fake accounts or multiple accounts...

In the uproar over Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, many members of Congress declared that women have a “right to be believed.” Unfortunately, Congress is ignoring legions of women who have been sexually abused thanks to the immunity Congress provides to federal agents. But a federal appeals court may grant relief despite Washington's negligence.Congress gives the Transportation Security Administration almost $8 billion a year and does nothing...