Though its ostensible purpose is to fund the US military over a one year period, the National Defense Authorization Act, better known as the NDAA, has had numerous provisions tucked into it over the years that have targeted American civil liberties. The most well-known of these include allowing the government to wiretap American citizens without a warrant and, even more disturbingly, indefinitely imprison an American citizen without charge in the name of “national security.”One of the...

In addition to funding for a border wall and other border security measures, immigration hardliners are sure to push to include mandatory E-Verify in any immigration legislation considered by Congress. E-Verify is a (currently) voluntary program where businesses check job applicants’ Social Security numbers and other Information — potentially including “biometric” identifiers like fingerprints — against information stored in a federal database to determine if the job applicants are legally in...

Considering that a nuclear conflict over North Korea appeared imminent in recent weeks, the winter Olympics at Pyeongchang, South Korea, is a most welcome distraction – and might even deter a major war on the peninsula.The highlight of the games was the arrival of Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-un. This was the first time a member of North Korea’s ruling Kim dynasty had come to South Korea. Her handshake with South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in was a historic...

Should the feds be permitted to treat anyone who is not a choirboy like a criminal suspect? Unfortunately, local, state, and federal agencies have a long history of targeting, harassing, and entrapping fans of untraditional music. Because so many innocuous activities have become criminalized in recent decades, it has never been easier for the feds to tar any group they please. Precedents established against devotees of unruly music could be used in the future against peaceful libertarians.From...

With text messages between US Justice Department (DOJ) conspirators Peter Strzok and his adulterous main squeeze Lisa Page now revealing that then-President Barack Obama “wants to know everything we’re doing,” it now appears that the 2016 plot to subvert the rule of law and corrupt the US organs of state security for political purposes reached the very pinnacle of power. To call the United States today a “banana republic” increasingly may be seen as a gratuitous insult to the friendly...

The so-called Nunes memo prepared for the Republican majority on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, even if overblown, clearly suggests that there might have been an unwarranted and quite possibly illegal Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) surveillance of a former Trump staffer over his completely legal Russian business ties. Meanwhile, the nine month-long Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigation into Moscow’s possible interference in the US election has so far only...

So, why is Vice-president Mike Pence attending the Winter Olympics in South Korea? Is it because he’s a sports fan who just wants to enjoy the quadrennial spectacle of the Olympic games?Unfortunately, no.Pence is going to the games for political purposes. He intends to use them as an opportunity to level a propaganda attack against North Korea, the communist regime that the US government has long been committed to regime-changing. To advance this political aim, Pence will be accompanied by...

Last night the illegal US occupation force in north-east Syria attacked a group of Syrian government aligned troops and their Russian support. The incident happened north-east of Deir Ezzor city on the east side of the Euphrates. The US claims that it killed some 100 Syrian soldiers that were allegedly attacking its proxy forces in an attempt to recover oil fields.There is a factual separation of areas south-west of the Euphrates under Syrian government control and north-east of the Euphrates...

Countering Russia has become a lucrative industry in Washington. In recent years, the think tank business has exploded. But who funds these organizations, who works for them and what are the real agendas at play?From the start, let’s be clear, the term "think tank" essentially amounts to a more polite way of saying "lobby group." Bar a few exceptions, they exist to serve – and promote – the agendas of their funders.However, particularly in the United States, the field has become increasingly...

Tehran has begun highlighting in loud decibel its hitherto-low key voice of disquiet that the United States is transferring the Islamic State* fighters from Syria and Iraq, where they have been defeated, to Afghanistan.On January 30, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said: "The US goal of transferring the ISIL terrorists to Afghanistan is aimed at creating the justification for its continued deployment in the region and for buttressing the security of the Zionist regime." Indeed, any...

Americans like to think of their country as different from those run by military regimes. They are only fooling themselves. Ever since the federal government was converted into a national-security state after World War II (without a constitutional amendment authorizing the conversion), it has been the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA that have run the government, just like in countries governed by military dictatorships.Oh sure, the façade is maintained — the façade that is ingrained in all of...

The release of the House Intelligence Committee’s memo on the FBI’s abuse of the FISA process set off a partisan firestorm. The Democrats warned us beforehand that declassifying the memo would be the end the world as we know it. It was reckless to allow Americans to see this classified material, they said. Agents in the field could be harmed, sources and methods would be compromised, they claimed. Republicans who had seen the memo claimed that it was far worse than Watergate. They said that...

The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the United States Constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms... and, as The Duran's Alex Christoforou writes, according to California Congressman Adam Schiff, those pesky Russians are using bots to promote the second amendment with an ultimate goal of having Americans ‘kill each other.’Once again, another brilliant plan hatched by Putin... good thing Schiff caught on to it and can now begin seizing American’s guns so as to thwart...

"I don’t have the evidence,” Mattis said. “What I am saying is that other groups on the ground - NGOs, fighters on the ground - have said that sarin has been used, so we are looking for evidence.”This week the American public was once again bombarded by fresh headlines alleging the Syrian government under President Bashar al-Assad gassed its own people. And in predictable fashion the usual threat of US military force soon followed.Except of course rather than "alleging" a chemical incident,...

Last summer, I was positioned just across the border from the Syrian town of Afrin around which Turkish and Kurdish and, possibly, American forces, are now poised for a head-on clash.  It seems crazy to me that anyone would want to fight over this one-donkey farm town. We were there on a mission to rescue wild animals trapped in a zoo in war-torn Aleppo, Syria.Why on earth are at least 2,000 US troops mixed up in this fracas in darkest Syria?  Because the pro-Israel neocons in Washington, who...