In her recent address at the Jackson Hole monetary policy conference, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen suggested that the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates by the end of the year. Markets reacted favorably to Yellen’s suggested rate increase. This is surprising, as, except for one small increase last year, the Federal Reserve has not followed through on the numerous suggestions of rate increases that Yellen and other Fed officials have made over the past several years. Much more...

I was fortunate enough to view a screening of the new Snowden movie Wednesday evening with some of the whistleblowers who have cameos in it and with its director Oliver Stone. I'm not allowed to review it until Saturday night, but it is a truly great movie and has the potential to be the most widely seen, heard, or read thing of any political decency or truth in the world this year. That's not, however, why I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad I watched Snowden because it gave me an extra several hours...

Here are 10 of the worst lies that have been peddled by the West regarding Syria, with the aim of giving people living in Western countries an entirely false view of the conflict that has been raging in the Middle East country since 2011. As in the case of previous US-led wars against Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya the lies told in relation to the ongoing conflict in Syria have been quite outrageous. 1. The West has failed to intervene in Syria - and that's been the problem This oft-repeated claim...

The United States over the weekend denied travel to a former British ambassador, Craig Murray, who was also a British diplomat for some 30 years, and is the author of several books. Murray has stood twice for election to the House of Commons. He was “honored” by being thrown out of Uzbekistan by its repressive government after risking his life to expose appalling human rights abuses there. He is not a terrorist and is not a social media jihadi. He has no criminal record, no connection to drug...

One of the most troubling aspects of the recently released documents from the FBI is a timeline established for when Clinton staffers used BleachBit to try to eradicate emails and prevent them from ever being recovered. It appears that staff may have deleted the email archive after the staff received a subpoena to preserve all such evidence. The staffer working for Platte River Networks (PRN) in Denver, Colorado reportedly had what was described as an “Oh Sh*t” moment when they realized that...

The humanoid collective is in an unforgiving snit over the refusal of NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, to stand for the playing of the national anthem. For a society that was once grounded in a greater tolerance for individual values and preferences, this reaction is another symptom of a system that no longer serves – much less tolerates – the diverse nature of human life. Why would an intelligent person in any country want to stand for and sing a “national anthem?” How would such an act...

The media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover terrorism so much, because then people “wouldn’t know what’s going on.” That little bit of wisdom comes courtesy of US Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry’s offhand remark was made during a visit to Bangladesh last week, prompting immediate criticism and even subsequent clarification from State Department spokesperson John Kirby. The secretary of state’s suggestion that simply ignoring terrorism might help it go away and that an...

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s recent speech on immigration really missed the point. I understand Trump’s frustration over the US government’s inability to control the US borders and keep out those who would come to this country illegally. Trump was right that the media ignore legitimate questions we have on our immigration policy and he is right that special interests have a great interest in maintaining the status quo. However when it comes to really solving the immigration...

The country of Venezuela is on the edge of collapse. This is partly the result of a weak oil price that has shrunk an important revenue lifeline for the Venezuelan government.The government has responded by printing massive amounts of new Venezuelan currency to keep the government running. This, in turn, has resulted in hyper-inflation far in excess of 500% annually.The authoritarian government has attempted to "fight" the inflation, not by stopping the money printing and shrinking the...

What a mess! In the crazy Syrian war, US-backed and armed groups are fighting other US-backed rebel groups. How can this be?It is so because the Obama White House had stirred up the war in Syria but then lost control of the process. When the US has a strong president, he can usually keep the military and intelligence agencies on a tight leash.But the Obama administration has had a weak secretary of defense and a bunch of lady strategists who are the worst military commanders since Louis XV,...

Just a few short years ago, Yemen was judged to be among the poorest countries in the world, ranking 154th out of the 187 nations on the U.N.’s Human Development Index. One in every five Yemenis went hungry. Almost one in three was unemployed. Every year, 40,000 children died before their fifth birthday, and experts predicted the country would soon run out of water. Such was the dire condition of the country before Saudi Arabia unleashed a bombing campaign in March 2015, which has destroyed...

Hardly a day goes by without some “news” about the Russian “threat,” and in the past twenty-four hours the hate-on-Russia campaign seems to have picked up speed. After learning from Hillary Clinton that Vladimir Putin is not only responsible for the Trump campaign, but also for the “global nationalist movement” that yanked the British out of the European Union, mainstream media are telling us that Russian interlopers are supposedly invading our electoral process by hacking into voter...

The main criticism of US policy in Syria has long been that President Barack Obama should have used US military force or more aggressive arms aid to strengthen the armed opposition to Assad. The easy answer is that the whole idea that there was a viable non-extremist force to be strengthened is a myth – albeit one that certain political figures in London and Washington refuse to give up. But the question that should have been debated is why the Obama administration acquiesced to its allies...

The FBI is worried: foreign hackers have broken into two state election databases. The Department of Homeland Security is worried: the nation’s voting system needs greater protection against cyberattacks. I, on the other hand, am not overly worried: after all, the voting booths have already been hacked by a political elite comprised of Republicans and Democrats who are determined to retain power at all costs. The outcome is a foregone conclusion: the police state will win and “we the people”...

When I was a kid, successive presidents told us we had to fight in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, because if we didn’t fight them over there, we’d have to fight them on the beaches of California. We believed. It was a lie. I was a teenager during the Cold War, several presidents told us we needed to create massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons, garrison the world, maybe invade Cuba, fight covert wars and use the CIA to overthrow democratically elected governments and replace them with dictators,...

Marathon 10-hour talks this weekend between the US and Russia in Geneva failed to produce a comprehensive plan to end the brutal Syrian war. Cutting through diplomatic jargon, the fundamental problem is that the US remains in denial about its criminal role in fueling the war. It is this role by the US and various foreign allies in supporting illegally armed groups that ensures the continuance of the conflict, which has been running for nearly six years with hundreds of thousands killed....