The RPI Challenge

As usual, Secretary of State John Kerry got off on the wrong foot at his press conference in Geneva yesterday, where he announced a US/EU/Russia/Ukraine agreement to lower tensions in eastern Ukraine. In fact he again put his foot in his mouth. After ignoring the real neo-Nazis who have infected the US-backed post-coup government in Kiev like an ebola virus, Kerry began his press conference yesterday denouncing the anti-coup protesters in the east as the real Nazis, citing an inflammatory...

photo: Will GriggWar came to the Western Range that April, a conflict pitting the forces of order and respectability against a restive band of extremists accused of cheating the government of what it was due. The prohibitively stronger side consisted of regulatory agencies allied with powerful non-governmental organizations determined to control the land and expel small private interests who made productive use of it. The unyielding demands of the political elite were met with the unflinching...

Our government has long seemed to be descending into a type of Orwellian universe of double speak. The Libyan War was not a war but a “time-limited, scope-limited military action” under Obama. Torture of detainees was not torture but “enhanced interrogation” under Bush. Now it appears open bribery of foreign officials is not bribery but “incentives” to implement policies favorable to their own people. Congressional members are moving to address what is being called a “slush fund” with the...

I'm confused. A few weeks ago we were told in the West that people occupying government buildings in Ukraine was a very good thing. These people, we were told by our political leaders and elite media commentators, were 'pro-democracy protestors'. The US government warned the Ukrainian authorities against using force against these 'pro-democracy protestors' even if, according to the pictures we saw, some of them were neo-Nazis who were throwing Molotov cocktails and other things at the police...

There could hardly be an American official more sinister than CIA director John Brennan, yet when his mysterious visit to Kiev at the weekend is exposed in various news media the White House responded with vacuous naiveté and as if Russia is foolishly over-reacting. It is not without good reason that Brennan is known unofficially as Obama’s “assassination and torture tsar”. The 58-year-old spymaster is the embodiment of how Washington has itself become a secret, unaccountable government that...

The rush and rapidity of events in Bunkerville, Nevada surprised and cheered many, and there is a lot to learn from this case.It’s too soon to know the long-term impact of people standing up against armed federales last week, but here are some early takeaways.Location matters. This insurrection, brought on by federal government arrogance and greed, happened in part because people could get there, physically and intellectually. Wide open rangeland (for hardy cattle and 100 year old turtles)...

Anyone watching last week’s debate over the Republican budget resolution would have experienced déjà vu, as the debate bore a depressing similarity to those of previous years. Once again, the Republicans claimed their budget would cut spending in a responsible manner, while Democratic opponents claimed the plan’s spending cuts would shred the safety net and leave vital programs unfunded. Of course, neither claim is true.The budget does not cut spending at all, and in fact actually increases...

"Where is Ukraine?"A century ago, crowds in Paris were cheering, “on to Berlin!” Crowds in Berlin cried, “on to Paris.” World War I, the supreme example of nationalist/militaristic stupidity, was about to begin.One hundred years later we hear cries across America to “get tough” with Moscow over fragmenting Ukraine. A dozen US F-16 fighters are being sent to the Baltic, a squadron of F-15’s to Poland, and a US warship to the Black Sea. In short, just enough to spark a war but certainly not...

We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was for this and against this they made war. Could anyone expect less? – General Philip Sheridan, who presided over the expropriation of the Plains Indians, in the 1878 Annual Report of the General of the U.S. Army Following the War Between the States, as the formerly independent South was being re-assimilated into the Soyuz, the US...

Many years after the end of the Cold War, when the United States government brings to power a neo-Nazi leader in Ukraine in order to hurt both Moscow and Europe, the world finds itself on the brink of nuclear war once again. This may sound like an oversimplified distillation of current headlines, but it is in fact a plot point in Norman Spinrad’s science-fiction novel "Russian Spring", published in 1991.Written as the Cold War came to an end, Spinrad’s novel envisioned the USSR not falling...

2014 is shaping up as a year of reckoning for the United States. Two pressures are building on the US dollar. One pressure comes from the Federal Reserve’s declining ability to rig the price of gold as Western gold supplies shrivel and market knowledge of the Fed’s illegal price rigging spreads. The evidence of massive amounts of naked shorts being dumped into the paper gold futures market at times of day when trading is thin is unequivocal. It has become obvious that the price of gold is...

Former CIA and National Security Agency director Michael Hayden has long been the face and voice of the growing security state within the United States. While many of his representations have been challenged, he continues (like Dick Cheney) to create his own reality to justify powers viewed as authoritarian and unlawful. Now, with the approaching release of a comprehensive report on the torture program, Hayden is out in the press denying the findings of the report that torture did not result...

“To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury.”—Benjamin Tucker, 19th century advocate of American individualist anarchism The State Department wants $400,000 to purchase a fiberglass sculpture of a camel looking at a needle for its new embassy in Pakistan. They’ve already spent their allotted $630,000 to increase the number of “likes” and fans on their Facebook and Twitter pages. The NATO ambassador for the U.S. needs $700,000 for...

In recent years, the limits on America’s ability to shape important outcomes in the Middle East unilaterally—or even with a few European partners—have been dramatically underscored by strategically failed interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Last year, President Obama’s inability to act on his declared intention to attack Syria after chemical weapons were used there in August made clear that Washington can no longer credibly threaten the effective use of force in the region. Still,...