The Trump administration announced Monday its support for an additional 54 billion dollars in spending for military and national security programs in fiscal year 2018 and a 30 billion dollar bump for such spending in fiscal year 2017. Meanwhile, 54 billion dollars in spending decreases in other areas in fiscal year 2018 are being put forward as an offset. The story the White House is promoting is that, because of the offsetting cuts, the 54 billion dollars in additional spending will not...

When US President Donald Trump dismisses the NATO alliance as “obsolete” what he really means is not withdrawing from the military pact, but rather offloading running costs onto European nations.Several times during his election campaign, Trump sounded contemptuous about the 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization. His comments about it being “obsolete” raised hopes in certain quarters that the 45th president would scale back American military participation in NATO as part of a wider move...

Last Monday The Washington Post featured an op-ed by one Edward Price entitled “I didn’t think I’d ever leave the CIA. But because of Trump, I quit.” I must admit that it was refreshing at first to read something in The Post that did not rush to blame BOTHTrump and Vladimir Putin for everything going wrong in the world but, not to worry, evil Russia was indeed cited a bit farther along in the narrative. Edward “Ned” Price is a likely lad. He has a nice intense look, clean cut, neat tie, good...

Trump has stated in no uncertain terms that he’s against ISIS. He’s awaiting a military review due on Feb. 28 that provides him with options. In addition: ’The president has been very clear that he’s going to work with any country that shares our interest in defeating Isis,’ White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said on Monday, in his first daily press briefing. This includes Russia and Syria. Syria’s president in response said that he’d be willing to work with the US to rid Syria of...

It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute. Consider his speech last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). It was reported as “fiery” and “blistering,” but it was also full of contradictions. In the speech, President Trump correctly pointed out that the last 15 years of US military action in the Middle East has...

The Nuclear Question is becoming increasingly obfuscated by spin and lobbying as the West sleepwalks into Cold War II — a walk made all the more dangerous when the loose lips of the US tweeter-in-chief announced that another nuclear arms race is a great idea (see link, link,link). Two Cold War II issues are central and almost never addressed: What will be the Russians' understanding of all the propaganda surrounding the Nuclear Question and the looming American defense spendup? And how might...

I just finished watching the much-acclaimed series “Narcos” on Netflix. What a fantastic program. And what an excellent depiction of the futility and corruption of the war on drugs.The series is a true-life account of Pablo Escobar, a Colombian drug lord who headed up the Medellin drug cartel, a black-market drug group that smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States in the 1970s and 1980s. Smuggling an estimated 80 percent of the cocaine into the United States, Escobar became...

photo: Boone County Sheriff's Department The Department of Justice proudly announced the first FBI terror arrest of the the Trump administration on Tuesday: An elaborate sting operation that snared a 25-year old Missouri man who had no terrorism contacts besides the two undercover FBI agents who paid him to buy hardware supplies they said was for a bomb — and who at one point pulled a knife on him and threatened his family.Robert Lorenzo Hester of Columbia, Missouri, didn’t have the $20 he...

The media continues to be an increasingly petty, insecure clique as it mimetically parrots its own echo chamber talking points against any person who challenges their preferred leftist-corporatist brand of state hegemony. Think of political ideologies like denominations of a religion. They agree on fundamental dogma, that the statist form of governance is self-evident and unquestioned in its necessity. But not all denominations are equally powerful and entrenched.The politically correct...

Liberals are supposed to be antiwar, right? I went to college in the 1960s, when students nationwide were rising up in opposition to the Vietnam War. I was a Young Republican back then and supported the war through sheer ignorance and dislike of the sanctimoniousness of the protesters, some of whom were surely making their way to Canada to live in exile on daddy’s money while I was on a bus going to Fort Leonard Wood for basic combat training. I can’t even claim that I had some grudging...

As Saudi lobbyists continue to fly U.S. military veterans to Washington to oppose a recently-passed law that cleared the way for 9/11 families and victims to sue the kingdom for its alleged assistance to the hijackers, an expert on international law says the principal argument motivating the veterans’ participation is false.Lobbyists are persuading veterans to call for the amendment or repeal of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) by claiming that, if other countries...

Two days ago the Takfiri Islamist leader Omar Abdul-Rahman , the so called "Blind Sheik", died in a US prison. He had been found guilty of involvement in the 1993 attempt to bring down the World Trade Center in New York and of other crimes.The obituaries of Omar Abdul-Rahman in US media are an example of white washing of the US exploitation of radical Islamism for its imperial purposes. While extensively documented in earlier media and official reports the CIA's facilitation and involvement...

The Munich conference held over the weekend – an annual event that brings the leaders of the Atlantic alliance together to celebrate their hegemonic pretensions – was anything but celebratory this time around. Despite the assurances of Vice President Pence that America’s commitment to NATO is “unwavering,” the Euro-crats in the audience were miffed that he failed to mention the European Union. And while they agreed, at least in public, with US admonitions that they have to start fulfilling...