The latest extraordinary roughshod violation of Russian diplomatic rights by the American authorities shows that the US doesn’t want to restore normal bilateral relations. Indeed, it has now resorted publicly to jackboot diplomacy.The rapid ordering of Russia to vacate three of its diplomatic properties – in a matter of hours – amid reported threats from the American authorities that they would smash down entrance doors if the orders were not complied with, shows a reckless disregard for...

Texans affected by Hurricane Harvey, including my family and me, appreciate the outpouring of support from across the country. President Donald Trump has even pledged to donate one million dollars to relief efforts. These private donations will be much more valuable than the as much as 100 billion dollars the federal government is expected to spend on relief and recovery. Federal disaster assistance hinders effective recovery efforts, while federal insurance subsidies increase the damage...

Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Russian President Vladimir Putin in person that Israel will not tolerate an Iranian military presence in Syria that threatens Israeli interests. Netanyahu also stated that Israel is prepared to take action in Syria to curb the alleged threat.At the time, Putin did not respond specifically to Israel’s issue with Iran. This provided some uncertainty regarding Russia’s position on the current conflict given Russia views Iran as a...

They say that most of the world’s real dangers arise not because of what people don’t know but because of what they do "know" that just ain’t so.As a case in point, consider three things about Korea that the bipartisan Washington establishment seems quite sure of but are far removed from reality:Delusion 1: All options, including U.S. military force, are "on the table."- Everyone knows there are no military "options" the U.S. could use against North Korea that don’t result in disaster. The...

General John F Campbell, commander of all foreign forces in Afghanistan 2014-2016, said in a speech in Kabul on December 28, 2014 that "The insurgents are losing, they’re desperate." But they weren’t and they aren’t.On August 21 President Trump outlined his plan for continuation of the 16-year US-NATO war in Afghanistan, in which there is supposedly a new strategy. Strangely, his speech included the announcement that "Our troops will fight to win. We will fight to win," which tends to beg the...

Old Chinese saying: "when elephants battle, ants get crushed." Think of the current crisis on the Korean Peninsula in which the government in Seoul has been all but ignored. South Korea’s newly elected president, Moon Jae-in, keeps insisting that the US must not launch war against North Korea without South Korea’s agreement. President Donald Trump and the US media appear not to have heard Moon’s pleas, or are simply disregarding them. Amazingly, six decades after the end of the 1950 Korean...

Elected to the Oval Office as a harsh critic of US involvement in costly Middle Eastern conflicts by a war-weary public, The Donald has turned out be just as much of a war president as those who went before. He’s ordered the firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian government airfield and dropped the "Mother of All Bombs" on Afghanistan. That’s in addition to threatening North Korea and Venezuela and escalating US involvement in the bombing of cholera-stricken Yemen.The millions of Americans...

The Associated Press has carried an exclusive report regarding the intensive, on-going political dialogue between the Afghan government and the Taliban behind the scene, the appearance of a "stalemate" notwithstanding. That such contacts have been going on was a widely known secret, but the AP report is specific regarding their high frequency and it discloses that these contacts are handled at a very high level. There is no reason to doubt the AP claim citing authoritative sources.Thus, there...

Louise Mensch and Chris Hayes on Real Time On Monday, The Guardian published a story which should have surprised no one: Information pushed aggressively on Twitter by anti-Trump conspiracy theorist duo Louise Mensch and Claude Taylor came from a hoaxer who duped Taylor in an email.Taylor, a former White House staffer under Bill Clinton, tweeted out “fake details of criminal inquiries” related to Donald Trump which did not exist and were “invented” by a hoaxer claiming to work for the New York...

In the wake of the protest in Charlottesville by white supremacists, many people are demanding a crackdown on dangerous right-wing extremists. The federal government has previously carried out similar campaigns against with disastrous results. Rather than intellectually purifying the nation, such efforts are far more likely to turn nitwits into martyrs and to ravage Washington’s credibility.Prior federal law enforcement efforts to take down “bad ideas” quickly spiraled out of control. In the...

When politicians are feeling the heat, they start a war and their popularity goes up even if the war is unnecessary or completely ridiculous. Donald Trump, the presidential candidate who promised that he would not take the nation into another Middle Eastern war, did so when he launched a fifty-nine cruise missile barrage against a Syrian Air Base even before he knew for sure what had happened on the ground. It was totally stupid but proved to be popular, even among talking heads and...

The Senate Intelligence Committee recently passed its Intelligence Authorization Act for 2018 that contains a chilling attack on the First Amendment. Section 623 of the act expresses the “sense of Congress” that WikiLeaks resembles a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such.” This language is designed to delegitimize WikiLeaks, encourage the federal government to spy on individuals working with WikiLeaks, and block access to WikiLeaks’...

The Ron Paul Institute's second annual Washington, D.C. conference got a shot in the arm over the weekend, as Wikileaks founder and chief editor Julian Assange agreed to open up the Whistleblowers Roundtable with a talk on the recent US Senate and Director of Central Intelligence attacks on Wikileaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence agency." Assange's appearance at the conference could not be more timely, as it looks like US intelligence is about to take more "active measures" against...

Two police officers in Kissimmee, Florida, were recently shot and killed while investigating illegal drug activity in a dangerous part of town. According to the New York Times, government officials praised the officers for their service and asked Floridians to pray for other law-enforcement personnel. President Trump weighed in with a tweet in which he offered his thoughts and prayers for the Kissimmee police and their families.There is one big thing about that picture, however: It is the drug...