A pattern has emerged: The more the West panics over its failed Ukraine project, the more it is willing to escalate the conflict. The same conflict they say they are not directly involved in. The last thing they are considering is a negotiated settlement. CrossTalking with Larry Johnson, Stanislav Krapivnik, and Daniel McAdams.
The resignation of the US Undersecretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, the third highest ranking diplomat in the Biden administration, came as a bolt out of the blue on Monday. An easy explanation could be that it rankles that she was overlooked for promotion as Deputy Secretary, a job she coveted in 2021 as the Biden presidency began, and instead Kurt Campbell, President Biden’s key advisor on China, recently moved in. The effusive praise Secretary of...
As of mid-January, global aid to Ukraine has reached what the Kiel Institute for the World Economy described as the “staggering” amount of $278 billion. This means that Ukraine has actually had more money than Russia has been able to spend on this war. Russia’s total GDP of $1.8 trillion is just slightly over California’s GDP and only about eight percent of the total U.S. GDP of over $23 trillion. The Congress has previously committed $114 billion to the Ukrainian war effort, and far too many...
The U.S. Supreme Court was right to keep President Trump’s name on the ballot. The high court’s decree that the power to remove a federal candidate from the ballot under the Constitution’s “insurrectionist ban” rests with Congress, not the states, underscores the fact that in a representative democracy, the citizenry—not the courts, not the corporations, and not the contrived electoral colleges—should be the ones to elect their representatives. Unfortunately, what is...
Good work, Mr. President Biden. You have managed to do what America’s enemies have not – creating widespread hatred for the United States around the globe. Your destruction of the Gaza refugee camps has inflamed antisemitism everywhere. There is widespread disgust and anger at the US government over your decision to give Israel’s new far right government carte blanche to massacre rebellious Palestinians in the open prison of the Gaza Strip. The death toll is now over 31,000 killed and at least...
As Ukraine careens toward a political and military disaster it is time to ask why did the CIA fail to predict this. “Wait a minute,” you might say, “how do you know the CIA did not?” Fair question. I no longer have access to classified information, but I can read the public statements of DOD and State Department officials as well as remarks by various members of Congress. At no time during the past two years — since the start of the Special Military Operation — have we heard a single...
“Tuesday’s local elections were a flashing warning light for Israel. The ultra-Orthodox parties, the religious Zionist groups, and the far-right, racist parties – organized in a few communities and scored gains that are disproportionate to the true size of the groups they represent. Conversely, the democratic camp [largely secular liberal Ashkenazi], which for nearly a year turned out weekly for giant demonstrations on Tel Aviv’s Kaplan Street and dozens of locations around the country, failed...
Many years ago, I traveled to Cuba, which, as most Americans recognize, is governed by a dictatorial regime. One day I took a cab from Havana to a small town named Trinidad. The drive took several hours and I arrived at dusk. I paid the cab driver and he returned to Havana. There were no hotels in Trinidad, but people would rent a room in their house. When I attempted to rent a room, the owner asked to see my passport. The regime required her to keep track of who stayed in her...
The spectre of Armageddon has been raised often enough during the 2-year old war in Ukraine that the reference to it in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state of the union address on Thursday had a familiar ring about it. Therein lies the risk of misjudgement on the part of the western audience that Putin was only “crying wolf”. Three things must be noted at the outset. First, Putin has been explicit and direct. He is giving advance notice that he is obliged to respond with...
According to the Federal Reserve, credit card delinquencies increased by 50 percent in 2023, while consumer debt grew to 17.5 trillion dollars. A recent survey by Clever Real Estate found that three in five Americans have credit card debt and that 23 percent of Americans increase their credit card debt every month. The survey also found that 48 percent of Americans (including 59 percent of millennials) use credit cards for essential living expenses. The overreliance on credit cards and the...
Leaders make choices in moments of crises which can either lead to enhanced security or catastrophe for their nations, with the lives of innocents often hanging in the balance. Immediately after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, I went to the floor of the House of Representatives and warned against the U.S. lashing out blindly in response to the devastating attacks which killed over 3,000 persons. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as recounted by Bob Woodward...
RPI Director Daniel McAdams joined the Kim Iversen show today for a wide-ranging, hour-long provocative discussion on what is wrong the the US political system, what is wrong with our foreign policy, what is wrong with current US culture...and how we can fix it. Though much of the talk is on the issues, there is plenty of fun banter and off-topic discussion to round out the program:
We have been discussing the alarming shift in higher education in favor of censorship and speech regulations. These voices have been amplified on media platforms like MSNBC which has championed efforts to censor people and groups on social media and other forums. The most recent example is the interview of University of Michigan Law Professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade by Rachel Maddow. In the interview, McQuade explains how the First Amendment is the “Achilles...
The second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on 24 February 2022, has led to an outpouring of nauseating propaganda from Western governments and the European Commission, accompanied by various symbolic photoshoots. The line is peddled vigorously that the Russian invasion was “illegal and unprovoked” and that Ukraine is defending Europe and its values. Neither of these claims is true and yet the cult of anniversaries is used to pretend that...
The last two years have produced what is, for most people around the world who ponder such things, one of the most unanticipated and yet astounding geopolitical turnarounds in modern history. The heretofore reigning global hegemon designed to inflict upon Russia — its long-time nemesis — a decisive strategic defeat that would deliver the greatest spoil ever taken, and thereby consolidate its power base into the foreseeable future and beyond. The empire imagined Russia to be at its...
As the pre-trial hearings in the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others who are charged with masterminding the 9/11 attacks proceed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, the government continues to stumble with its own witnesses. In hearings last week, government lawyers tried to demonstrate that statements the defendants made to CIA and FBI agents were voluntary. When the government’s principal torturer, a now retired psychologist, had difficulty recalling that during a torture session...
Many parents have been fearful that their children may be harmed or killed by coronavirus if in-person attendance at high school resumes. This fear, however, has little basis in...
RPI Director Daniel McAdams joins former US Senate foreign policy analyst (and RPI past conference speaker) Jim Jatras to discuss this week's moves by the Trump Administration to...
Are the people of Belarus taking to the streets to defend the sanctity of their elections against the "theft" by President Lukashenko? Are these protests by the "pro-democracy"...
College ain’t what it used to be. Supposedly because of a virus that for most college students is less of a threat to their lives than riding in a car, students at college...
In a Friday Reason article by Zuri Davis, Davis discusses a conversation she had the day before with Libertarian Party presidential nominee Jo Jorgensen. It was interesting to...
America is moving up the ranks of the Bloomberg Misery Index, an index in which being number one means being the worst. Last year, America came in 50th. This year, America jumped...
Across much of America, people are masked by mandate and large events are shut down by decree. But, in South Dakota, things are different. You can be mask-free in the state that...
People in New York City have been subjected to one of the most repressive coronavirus crackdowns in America. Included have been months-long forced closure of many businesses and...
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