President Trump is being reviled for wildly exaggerating the peril of Muslim refugees. Some commentators fret that his rhetoric signals a new fascist era descending on America. A Washington Post news analysis on Saturday derided Trump’s fear-mongering: “Playing upon the nation’s anxieties about what might happen also stands as a stark contrast to how presidents have lifted the country out of actual crisis in the past.”But presidential fear-mongering has a long and sordid history. We cannot...

Less than three weeks into the presidency of Donald J. Trump, there are several troubling signs that the new administration is abandoning its foreign policy mandate and going off the rails.First and foremost is the saber-rattling aimed at Iran. The ostensible reason for this is Tehran’s testing of mid-range ballistic missiles which, we are told, are “nuclear capable.” But of course any and all ballistic missile systems can be modified to carry nuclear warheads, and since Iran is complying with...

“After five years of Hitler’s dictatorship, the Nazi police had won the FBI’s seal of approval.”— Historian Robert Gellately Lately, there’s been a lot of rhetoric comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. The concern is that a Nazi-type regime may be rising in America.That process, however, began a long time ago.In fact, as historian Robert Gellately recounts, following the second World War, the U.S. government recruited Hitler’s employees, adopted his protocols, embraced his mindset about law...

The Ukrainian president exposed his preference for Clinton during the US presidential campaign, explains Daniel McAdams, executive director at Ron Paul Institute, adding that it could have resulted in a change of tone in the US after Trump’s win. US President Donald Trump met Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Timoshenko last week. According to Timoshenko, Trump reassured her that the US wouldn't remove sanctions on Russia until there’s peace in East Ukraine. The former Ukrainian prime minister...

As part of continued a NATO build-up and US efforts to counter an alleged Russian threat, US military hardware, including M1A2 Abrams battle tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles have arrived in the northern Estonian town of Tapa, shortly after similar deployments were made to other Eastern European nations including Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Germany."The movement of equipment and troops into and around Europe marks the beginning of a continuous rotation of armored brigade combat...

Many Americans who have wrestled with a 1040 form, or who have paid someone to prepare their taxes, no doubt cheered the news that Congress will soon resume working on tax reform. However taxpayers should temper their enthusiasm because, even in the unlikely event tax collection is simplified, tax reform will not reduce the American people’s tax burden. Congressional leadership’s one nonnegotiable requirement of any tax reform is “revenue neutrality.” So any tax reform plan that has any chance...

Flemish Father Daniël Maes (78) lives in Syria in the sixth-century-old Mar Yakub monastery in the city of Qara, 90 kilometers north of the capital Damascus. Father Daniel has been a witness to the “civil war” and according to him, Western reports on the conflict in Syria are very misleading. In short: “the Americans and their allies want to completely ruin the country.”Interviewer: You are very critical of the media coverage on Syria. What is bothering you?Father Daniel: “The idea that a...

Most ordinary Americans do not have the slightest idea how much suffering, hardship, and/or (in more fortunate cases) just disappointment has been caused by the intrusive foreign policy of practically of all recent US administrations in many parts of the world, including in countries such as mine. There has been much absurd hysteria recently over allegations of Russia hacking and influencing the November presidential elections in America. These are ridiculous allegations whose sole purpose is...

When it comes to mindless excess in the war on terror, it is difficult to compete with the 70+ fusion centers bankrolled by the Department of Homeland Security. They began to be set up around the nation shortly after 9/11 as federal-state-local partnerships to better track terrorist threats. But the centers have been a world-class boondoggle from the start.Fusion centers have sent the federally funded roundup of data on Americans’ private lives into overdrive. As the Brennan Center for Justice...

What a week in US foreign policy! First President Trump approves a commando raid in Yemen that was a total fiasco, leaving one US soldier and scores of innocent women and children dead. Then Trump's Iran-obsessed National Security Advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn, hijacks a White House Press conference to put Iran "on notice" over its legal testing of a missile and the false claim that it is involved in the Yemen war. But today marks an own-goal hat trick! Today, President Trump's Ambassador to the...

As Secretary of State, what will Rex Tillerson inherit at the State Department?The media has been aflame recently trying to stretch the facts — personnel changes and some unhappy employees in the midst of a major governmental transition — to fit the narrative of a State Department on the verge of collapse. But while rumors of the State Department’s demise are largely exaggerated, the organization may yet find itself shunted aside into irrelevance.There has been a lot of hot-blooded talk about...

Fighting in east Ukraine has restarted. This is an attempt by "deep state" forces to prevent any rapprochement between the US and Russia under the new Trump administration.The west-Ukrainian forces under command of the coup government of President Poroshenko started a large attack against the Russian supported Ukrainian self-defense forces in Donetsk and Lugansk governate.A ceasefire arranged after the Minsk II agreement provided for demilitarized zones along a line of separation. The...

Thanks to last summer’s release of 28 pages detailing a variety of links between 9/11 hijackers and Saudi government officials—and the October leak of a 2014 email from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declaring the Saudi government was directly supporting ISIS—it’s increasingly clear that the US government’s depiction of Saudi Arabia as a vital ally in the “war on terror” is dishonest. Unfortunately, Saudi Arabia isn’t the only supposed “ally” whose official depiction as a steadfast...

The torch has been passed to a new president.All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and...