The Wells Fargo bank account scandal took center stage in the news last week and in all likelihood will continue to make headlines for many weeks to come. What Wells Fargo employees did in opening bank accounts without customers' authorization was obviously wrong, but in true Washington fashion the scandal is being used to deflect attention away from larger, more enduring, and more important scandals. What Wells Fargo employees who opened these accounts engaged in was nothing more than fraud...

Another US-Russian Syria ceasefire deal has been blown up.Whether it could have survived even with a US-Russian accord is open to doubt, given the incentives for al-Qaeda and its allies to destroy it. But the politics of the US-Russian relationship played a central role in the denouement of the second ceasefire agreement.The final blow apparently came from the Russian-Syrian side, but what provoked the decision to end the ceasefire was the first ever US strike against Syrian government forces...

The extent of the destruction inflicted upon the Kurdish-held Sheikh Maqsoud by the U.S.-backed “moderate rebels” and the scars of the battle for its liberation are highlighted in the state of the neighborhood’s infrastructure. (Photo by Vanessa Beeley)ALEPPO, Syria — Aleppo has become synonymous with destruction and “Syrian state-generated” violence among those whose perception of the situation in the war-torn nation is contained within the prism of mainstream media narratives. The...

Forget about those endless meetings between Sergei Lavrov and John Kerry; forget about Russia’s drive to prevent chaos from reigning in Syria; forget about the possibility of a real ceasefire being implemented and respected by US jihad proxies. Forget about the Pentagon investigating what really happened around its bombing 'mistake' in Deir Ezzor. The definitive proof of the Empire of Chaos’s real agenda in Syria may be found in a 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document declassified in...

Several weeks ago the mainstream media (MSM) gave saturation coverage to a picture of a little boy pulled from the rubble of Aleppo after his home and family were crushed in what was dubiously reported as a Russian airstrike. Promptly dubbed “Aleppo Boy,” his dusty image immediately went viral in every prestige outlet in the United States and Europe. The underlying message: we—the “international community,” “the Free World,” the United States, you and I—must “do something” to stop Syrian...

The show-down over the damaged aid convoy west of Aleppo is reaching comedy level. The UN/Syrian Red Crescent convoy came from the government held west-Aleppo. It had reached a Syrian Red Crescent center in Umm al Kubra in the "rebel" held area further west where it started to unload. Something happened and many of the trucks burned or where otherwise damaged. Allegedly some 20 people were killed. The incident happened shortly after the ceasefire had officially expired. US sponsored "White...

This article is a lightly edited version of a paper presented at the Ron Paul Institute’s conference on peace and prosperity held on September 10, 2016 in Dulles, Virginia On September 9th the Washington Post featured a front page article describing how the Defense Department had used warplanes to attack targets and kill suspected militants in six countries over the Labor Day weekend. The article was celebratory, citing Pentagon officials who boasted of the ability to engage “multiple targets”...

Fifteen years, hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars later, the United States’ war on terror has spawned more instability, violence and chaos than we could have imagined when this undefined and never-ending global campaign began. Today, jihadist terror groups control more territory and are more of a threat to the world than they were on September 11, 2001. Last week, US-based security firm the Soufan Group estimated that many of the post-9/11 concerns about global terrorism...

Last week’s announcement of a record-breaking US aid package for Israel underscores how dangerously foolish and out-of-touch is our interventionist foreign policy. Over the next ten years, the US taxpayer will be forced to give Israel some $38 billion dollars in military aid. It is money we cannot afford going to a country that needs no assistance to maintain its status as the most powerful military in the Middle East. All US foreign aid is immoral and counterproductive. As I have often said,...

The latest from the Gallup Poll is that only 32 percent of Americans trust the print and TV media to tell the truth. Republicans, 18 to 49 year old Americans, and independents trust the media even less, with trust rates of 14 percent, 26 percent, and 30 percent. The only group that can produce a majority that still trusts the media are Democrats with a 51 percent trust rate in print and TV reporting. The next highest trust rate is Americans over 50 years of age with a trust rate of 38 percent....

Video footage appears to show US commandos fleeing a Syrian town under a barrage of abuse and insults hurled at them by fighters from the American-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group. The video appears to be the first evidence of US special forces cooperating with Turkish troops in their battle against Islamic State (ISIS).The incident illustrates the complex web of alliances and enmities in Syria, where many of America’s allies are fighting each other and some rebel groups that receive...

Oh, it was a very big deal, one of those Defining Moments our media likes to chortle over. There was Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson on “Morning Joe” being interviewed by a panel of pundits including Mike Barnicle. “What,” asked Barnicle, “would you do about Aleppo?” Johnson looked puzzled, because he was: “And what is Aleppo?” he answered. “You’re kidding,” said Barnicle. “No,” said Johnson. “Aleppo is in Syria,” explained Barnicle, looking and sounding both smug and...

The US military-industrial complex and the US mainstream media often describe the leadership of North Korea, headed by President Kim Jong-un, as crazy and irrational. But what could be more crazy and irrational than doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? What better way to describe the actions of the US national-security establishment and its loyal acolytes in the mainstream press whenever North Korea does something that they don’t like, such as engaging in...

Snowden is a helluva movie, kicking an audience’s ass on a number of levels. I had a chance to see the film last night at a preview event; it opens everywhere on September 16. Go see it.On one level the film presents Snowden’s story as a political thriller. A brave but frightened man, certain he is doing the right thing but worried if he can pull it off, smuggles some of the NSA’s most secret information out of a secure facility. He makes contact with skeptical journalists in Hong Kong,...