A television interview of a top Qatari official confessing the truth behind the origins of the war in Syria is going viral across Arabic social media during the same week a leaked top secret NSA document was published which confirms that the armed opposition in Syria was under the direct command of foreign governments from the early years of the conflict.And according to a well-known Syria analyst and economic adviser with close contacts in the Syrian government, the explosive interview...

Donald Trump’s presidency, like preceding ones, is trapped by the interests of the power elite that has ruled America since World War II. The constraints imposed on domestic policy by this elite inevitably have a direct impact on America’s foreign policy. Alternative social forces, like the ones behind Trump’s presidential triumph, only have a limited impact on domestic and ultimately on foreign policy. A conceptual detour and a brief on history and on Trump’s domestic setting when he was...

In the past, America has witnessed “McCarthyism” from the Right and even complaints from the Right about “McCarthyism of the Left.” But what we are witnessing now amid the Russia-gate frenzy is what might be called “Establishment McCarthyism," traditional media/political powers demonizing and silencing dissent that questions mainstream narratives.This extraordinary assault on civil liberties is cloaked in fright-filled stories about “Russian propaganda” and wildly exaggerated tales of the...

Twitter has announced today that it will no longer be accepting advertisements from Russian outlets RT and Sputnik, thereby protecting Americans from consuming advertisements by propaganda outlets other than CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, ABC, NBC, CBS, the Daily Beast, The Hill, NPR, the LA Times,USA Today, Newsweek, AP, Reuters, the Guardian, and any corporate media outlet used to manufacture public support for a corporatist system of...

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, picture right, meets with Saudi Arabia’s Arab Gulf Affairs Minister Thamer al-Sabhan in Beirut, Lebanon on February 6 2017. The fight to free the Syrian city of Raqqa from Daesh (ISIS) — by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), led by U.S. special forces — has all but ended. With Raqqa now under SDF control, the question has become how to rebuild the former Daesh stronghold. The reconstruction of Raqqa will undoubtedly last longer than the...

Our two-party system makes it almost impossible for libertarians to get elected to office, especially on the national level. In order for libertarians to get elected to Congress, their best bet is to run as a Republican. Ron Paul is a perfect example of this. But libertarians should have no illusions about the Republican Party. And they shouldn’t make the Republican Party out to be something it is not. A former member of the Libertarian Party who is now running for office as a Republican...

An historic opportunity is being missed. The disastrous 2016 presidential election could and should have been a wakeup call. A corrupt political system that gave voters a choice between two terrible candidates is not democracy. This should have been the signal to face reality. The US political system is totally rotten, contemptuous of the people, serving the corporations and lobbies that pay to keep them in office. The time had come to organize a genuine alternative, an independent movement to...

A prominent Iraqi militia leader with close ties to Iran has told the United States to go home while also accusing US forces of not actually being interested in fighting ISIS: “Your forces should get ready to get out of our country once the excuse of Daesh’s presence is over," said Sheikh Qais al-Khazali, the commander of the Shiite PMU group Asaib (Popular Mobilization Unit), through the group's TV channel on Monday. The threatening statement was issued the same day Iraqi Prime Minister...

Sometimes it is possible to read or view something that completely changes the way one looks at things. I had that experience last week when I read an article at Lobelog entitled “A Plea for Common Sense on Missile Defense,” written by Joe Cirincione, a former staffer on the House Armed Services Committee who now heads the Ploughshares Fund, which is a Washington DC based global foundation that seeks to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.The article debunks much of the...

On October 4 in Niger in central Africa four American special forces soldiers were killed in an ambush by “fifty fighters, thought to be associated with ISIS [Islamic State], a US official said.” In the course of the attack, one US soldier was left behind when the others withdrew, and was subsequently found dead. Nigerien soldiers were also killed, and it is interesting to examine how US media outlets recorded this aspect of what was obviously a disaster for US Africa Command, AFRICOM, the...

This week President Trump revealed his final five candidates for Federal Reserve chair. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, all five have strong ties to the financial and political establishment. The leading candidates are former Federal Reserve governor and Morgan Stanley banker Kevin Warsh and current Fed governor, former investment banker, Carlyle Group partner, and George H.W. Bush administration official Jerome Powell. Gary Cohn, current director of the president’s National Economic...

It’s not often that I get to be the bearer of good news at my humble little gig here on Medium, but readers will be glad to learn that I can put your minds at ease about at least one major concern today: the CIA is about to become much more vicious.It goes without saying that one of the major worries on the average American’s mind is that the Central Intelligence Agency has gotten far too soft and cuddly lately, but at Thursday's National Security Summit for the Foundation for Defense of...

The morning of June 29, 2010, began much like any other day for Frank Ranelli, the owner of FAR Computers in Ensley, Alabama. Ranelli, who had owned his computer repair business just outside of Birmingham for more than two decades, was doing some paperwork in his windowless office when he heard loud banging on the front door. Within a matter of moments Ranelli was placed under arrest and all of the computer equipment in his store, much of which belonged to customers, had been confiscated by...

The so-called Islamic State organization was primarily a bogeyman encouraged by the western powers. I’ve been saying this for the last four years.I asserted, as a former soldier and war correspondent, that IS would collapse like a wet paper bag if proper western ground forces attacked their strongholds in Syria and Iraq. This week, the western powers and their local satraps finally took action and stormed the last IS stronghold at Raqqa. To no surprise, IS put up almost no resistance and ran...

On August 25, 2017, a raid involving Somali and U.S. forces took the lives of 10 civilians, including 3 children. Last Saturday (October 14, 2017), in an apparent revenge attack in Mogadishu, two truck bombs killed at least 300 people and injured about an equal number. A report yesterday suggests revenge as a motive: Following the raid, in which three children aged between six and 10 died, local tribal elders called for revenge against the Somali government and its allies.Not only was the...