For over a year, the United States has played out a scenario designed to (1) reassert US control over Europe by blocking EU trade with Russia, (2) bankrupt Russia, and (3) get rid of Vladimir Putin and replace him with an American puppet, like the late drunk, Boris Yeltsin. The past few days have made crystal clear the perfidy of the economic side of this US war against Russia. It all began at the important high-level international meeting on Ukraine’s future held in Yalta in September 2013,...

In a perfect illustration of just how ridiculous the US government’s tax policies are, Mayor of London Boris Johnson is being pursued by the IRS for capital gains taxes he owes for selling his residence in London. Apparently Mr. Johnson was born in New York and, despite the fact that his parents returned to Britain when he was five years old, has never given up his US citizenship. Like many other people who through no fault of their own become United States citizens, he never realized that the...

Two summers ago Judge Andrew Napolitano joined the faculty of Mises University, the Mises Institute’s summer program for students. He was interested in teaching a nine-session special seminar to a select group of attendees. Students didn’t know what the format would be, but they were all thrilled at the opportunity. As it turns out, they were treated to a high-level seminar with a professor who spoke with authority, pulled out obscure legal references without notes, and traversed the room...

Last week the US House voted overwhelmingly in favor of an anti-Russia resolution so full of war propaganda that it rivals the rhetoric from the chilliest era of the Cold War. Ironically, much of the bill condemns Russia for doing exactly what the US government has been doing for years in Syria and Ukraine! For example, one of the reasons to condemn Russia in the resolution is the claim that Russia is imposing economic sanctions on Ukraine. But how many rounds of sanctions has the US...

Ukraine’s new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, a former US State Department officer who was granted Ukrainian citizenship only this week, headed a US government-funded investment project for Ukraine that involved substantial insider dealings, including $1 million-plus fees to a management company that she also controlled. Jaresko served as president and chief executive officer of Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which was created by the US Agency for International Development (US AID)...

The ink on Barack Obama's Chuck Hagel termination letter hasn't dried yet but already the US president's new, and seemingly far more hawkish advisors, are having their warmongering presence felt. Case in point: the Eastern European theater of (Cold) war, where Military.com reports that the new Army commander in Europe plans to bolster the U.S. armored presence in Poland and the Baltic states and keep rotations of U.S. troops there through next year and possibly beyond to counter Russia. Lt....

Today the US House passed what I consider to be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever. H. Res. 758 was billed as a resolution “strongly condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination.” In fact, the bill was 16 pages of war propaganda that should have made even neocons blush, if they were capable of such a thing. These are the kinds of...

Don’t you just love those Americans who celebrate how free they are under America’s national-security state system? I wonder if such Americans also celebrated how free people were who lived under East Germany’s national-security state system. I just read an interesting story in the New York Times about how the East German Stasi was confiscating art from wealthy East Germans. They would simply raid people’s homes, take valuable art, and then sell it, putting the money into the state’s coffers....

Your doorbell rings in the dark of night, so you quietly approach the peephole to size up your visitor. The porch light doesn’t illuminate the person well enough to see him clearly, but he’s definitely wearing a mask. You move your eyes lower to get a better look at the tall figure. He’s standing, waiting, on the other side of the threshold. He’s holding a machete. On any other night, this scenario might send adrenaline coursing through your veins, fueling an almost palpable fear. But tonight...

US-Russia relations have deteriorated severely in the past decade and they are about to get worse, if the House passes H. Res. 758. NATO encirclement, the US-backed coup in Ukraine, an attempt to use an agreement with the European Union to bring NATO into Ukraine at the Russian border, a US nuclear first-strike policy, are all policies which attempt to substitute force for diplomacy. Russia’s response to the terror unleashed by western-backed neo-nazis in Crimea and Odessa came after the local...

Prior to Thanksgiving, President Obama continued the presidential tradition of pardoning two turkeys. Too bad he didn’t use the occasion to also pardon every single victim of the US government’s decades-long failed and destructive war on drugs. I’m referring, of course, to all the people who have been convicted of violating federal laws against the possession or distribution of drugs, especially those people currently serving time in some federal penitentiary. Those people have no more...

It was a Malaysian jet, carrying Malaysian passengers, flown by Malaysian pilots, yet after Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine in July 2014, Malaysia has been systematically blocked from participating in the investigation, leaving an overwhelmingly pro-NATO bloc in charge of the evidence, investigation and outcome as well as the manner in which the investigation will be carried out. Despite the integral role Malaysia has played during several pivotal moments in the...

It seems nobody wants to be Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration. The president’s first two Defense Secretaries, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta, both complained bitterly this month about their time in the administration. The president’s National Security Council staff micro-managed the Pentagon, they said at a forum last week. Former Secretary Gates revealed that while he was running the Defense Department, the White House established a line of communication to the Joint Special...