The RPI Challenge

In my article “The Evil of Killing Children,” I pointed out how the US government, in an attempt to achieve regime change in Iraq, knowingly and intentionally killed hundreds of thousands of innocent children in Iraq.Unfortunately, killing those innocent Iraqi children was not the only evil action taken by US officials regarding the Iraq sanctions. They also went after an American man for trying to help the children that US officials were trying to kill with their sanctions.The man’s name is...

President Trump’s ignorant, oafish and crude foreign policy style rivets our attention, arouses our indignation. But the drama of the diplomatic mayhem he wreaks while traveling abroad also distracts from recognizing more serious underlying problems of US policy— deep negative trends that predate Trump. Focusing on Trump’s latest crude pronouncements encourages the soothing belief that these current dilemmas are all his doing. In other words, if we didn’t have Trump, the US would be back in...

NSA "leaker" Reality Winner An NSA document purporting to show Russian military hacker attempts to access a Florida company which makes voter registration software is sent anonymously toThe Intercept. A low-level NSA contractor, Reality Winner, above, is arrested almost immediately. What’s wrong with this picture? A lot.Who Benefits?Start with the question of who benefits — cui bono— same as detectives do when assessing a crime. — Trump looks bad as another trickle of information comes out...

Claims of “Russian interference” have been ubiquitous in U.S. political discourse for almost a full year now; these often amount to a melange of allegations ranging from “hacking” to “influence campaigns” to “online trolls” sent by the Kremlin to harangue unsuspecting Midwestern voters. “Hacking,” however, remains the centerpiece of the narrative — the idea that Russian state actors “hacked” the Democratic National Committee and exfiltrated emails is routinely cited as the centerpiece of the...

Another terrorist attack in London, and more predictable responses from President Trump, British Prime Minister May, other public officials, and the mainstream press. We have to crack down on terrorism. The problem is with extremist Muslims. They hate us for our freedom and values. Don’t be afraid. Go about your daily lives as if nothing has happened.And, of course, not one single word of the US government’s interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East and Afghanistan, which has entailed...

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas We have entered a new regime and it’s called the American police state.As the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in County of Los Angeles vs. Mendez makes clear,...

President Donald Trump's proposed budget has generated hysteria among the American left. Prominent progressives have accused the president and his allies of wanting to kill children, senior citizens, and other vulnerable Americans. The reaction of the president’s allies — including some conservatives who should know better — is equally detached from reality as they hail Trump for launching a major assault on the welfare state and making the hard choices necessary to balance the...

On the 3rd of June, Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) gained its most significant strategic military victory in the southern part of the country which now means that almost two thirds of Libya is under Haftar's LNA control. This may prove to be a game changer in the six year struggle for power after the US and UK-led attack on Libya in 2011. The LNA entered the southern town of Waddan in Jufra and overran the area. The nearby town of Sukna was taken by the LNA. Haftar’s forces then...

The latest attack in London – the third to hit Britain within seventy-five days – is once again provoking a debate about the relationship between Islam and terrorism. On one side we have those who say Islam is inherently violent, and is incompatible with the basic canons of Western civilization. On the other side, we have liberals who say that this is a libel on an entire religion, and that advocates of religious violence are a distinct minority within the Muslim faith.These two views have...

Will there ever be an end to the war in Afghanistan? Apparently not if our generals have anything to say about it – and they do. President Trump has turned over the prosecution of our perpetual “war on terrorism” to the Pentagon, claiming that they’ve been held back by previous administrations. The new policy is to turn them loose.We saw what this means when the so-called “Mother of All Bombs” was dropped in a remote location where ISIS was said to be hiding: 92 “militants” were said to have...

Without free speech people stop thinking, losing out on all but a narrowing band of ideas. Open discussion, debate, and argument are the core of democracy. Bad ideas are defeated by good ideas. Fascism seeks to close off all ideas except its own. Yet all of these most basic concepts of free speech in our nation are under threat, and too many of them are under threat from the left. I never thought I would write that last phrase, just as I never thought I’d need to explain five bad arguments the...

The Manchester tragedy effected much more the future of Libya in so many ways than people realise. Western governments are forced to ask their intelligence agencies to refocus on Libya, a subject that had dropped in priority in both UK & US. Now due to the linkage particularly between Libyan former Al Qaeda fighters LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) and the Manchester suicide bomber who it has now been established was part of a cell(s), Libya has gone to the top of the priority list.To...

How ironic that a major upsurge in violence in Afghanistan has coincided with the death of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the viscerally anti-Russian Cold War warrior and architect of the US policy of backing jihadists in the country to "bleed" the Soviet Union.On Saturday, the first day of Ramadan, 18 people were killed in a suicide blast close to a military base in Khost Province. Meanwhile, attacks by militants on the security forces in Badghis Province reportedly left 36 dead and many more wounded....