The RPI Challenge

Earlier this month, CIA-operated drones killed as many as 55 people in Yemen in several separate strikes. Although it was claimed that those killed were “militants,” according to press reports at least three civilians were killed and at least five others wounded. That makes at least 92 US drone attacks against Yemen during the Obama administration, which have killed nearly 1,000 people including many civilians. The latest strikes seem to contradict President Obama’s revised guidelines for...

Once again Americans are watching their government involve itself in an issue in which the United States has nothing at stake economically and no genuine national security interest at risk. Ukraine is a place that is worth neither a single American dollar nor more than a brief scan of the headlines by US citizens. And yet Obama and his fellow European interveners and democracy mongers are conducting themselves in a bellicose manner that could lead to some kind of military conflict in eastern...

Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the US government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado — two of the public leaders behind the violent protests that started in February — have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy “NED” and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have channeled multi-million dollar funding to...

According to Lisa Monaco, Barack Obama’s Security and Counter-terrorism adviser, parents have a duty to monitor the attitudes and enthusiasms of their children, and report them to law enforcement if they display symptoms of incipient extremism. In an address to Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Monaco suggested that “sudden personality changes” in children, including a “confrontational” attitude, might betoken terrorist tendencies. Monaco lamented that “The government...

On 21 February, the day the Yanukovich government collapsed, cocktail hour at the U.S. State Department must have been one rip roaring, hours-long, high-five fiesta. The many billions the US had invested in a string of attempts to undermine an elected government in a former Soviet republic had finally paid off. Since the targeted government was Ukraine’s, the possibility of new NATO bases and the eviction of the Russians from the Black Sea naval base in Crimea were back in play. So too was...

Photo: Shannon Bushman (click to enlarge) “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”—John F. Kennedy Those tempted to write off the standoff at the Bundy Ranch as little more than a show of force by militia-minded citizens would do well to reconsider their easy dismissal of this brewing rebellion. This goes far beyond concerns about grazing rights or the tension between the state and the federal government. Few conflicts are ever black and white,...

“The U.S. is sending about 600 ground troops to Eastern Europe … to ‘reassure’ allies there as Washington resumes its campaign of pressure on Russia over the Ukraine standoff.” — POLITICO How many American parents would proudly send their sons and daughters off to kill or be killed in Slovyansk or Donetsk? How many young men and women aspire to be the first American to fall in Kramatorsk? Those towns are in eastern Ukraine. President Obama says the “military option” — war, that is — is not on...

On Friday, April 18, President Obama voiced his righteous indignation over anti-Semitic fliers pasted on synagogue walls in the pro-Russian eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk. The fliers, calling on all Jews to register or face expulsion, had appeared the day before and were instantly denounced by Donetsk leaders as a gross provocation and a forgery. The next day, however, Obama “expressed his disgust quite bluntly”. At least, that is what his hawkish national security advisor, Susan Rice, told...