China’s mediation to normalise Saudi-Iranian diplomatic ties has been widely welcomed internationally, especially in the West Asian region. A clutch of unhappy states that do not want to see China stealing a march on any front, even if it advances the cause of world peace, mutely watched.  The US led this pack of dead souls. But the US is also on the horns of a dilemma. Can it afford to be a spoiler? Saudi Arabia is not only the fountainhead of petrodollar recycling — and, therefore, a pillar...

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Berlin, December 2022. (NATO)Divide and rule is the eternal law of Empire.  Above all, don’t let other big guys get together. Keep them at each other’s throats. Half a century ago, stuck in the unwinnable Vietnam war, President Richard M. Nixon heeded Henry Kissinger’s advice to open relations with Beijing in order to deepen the split between the Soviet Union and China. But which big guys, and when? Priorities have evidently shifted. Eight years ago,...

It is easy to be distracted right now by the bread and circus politics that have dominated the news headlines lately, but don’t be distracted. Don’t be fooled, not even a little. We’re being subjected to the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst. This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls. What characterizes American government today is not so much...

I was part of Iraq 2.0, heading two embedded civilian provincial reconstruction teams (ePRTs) 2009-2010 and wrote a book critical of the program, We Meant Well, for which was I was punished into involuntary retirement by my employer the U.S. State Department. The working title for the book was originally “Lessons for Afghanistan from the Failed Reconstruction of Iraq” and was meant to explain how our nation building efforts failed to accomplish anything except setting afire rampant corruption,...

Below is my column in the New York Post on the expected indictment against former President Donald Trump. It is an effort to reanimate a long dead legal claim against Trump, but could reanimate his presidential campaign. Here is the column: “It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive . . . it’s moving . . . IT’S ALIVE!” The scene from the 1931 movie “Frankenstein” came to mind this week as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg prepared an indictment of former President Donald Trump. It is the...

A New York Times Magazine article in July 2020 focused on then Secretary of State Powell and his U.N. speech of Feb. 5, 2003 and the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) upon which it is largely based. A lot of the detail in the article may have been new to many readers, but not to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which had been established a month before. VIPS watched the speech, dissected it, and sent their verdict to President George W. Bush before close of business that same...

The failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 10 was the second largest bank failure in US history. Just two days following SVB’s collapse, Signature Bank joined the record books as the third largest bank failure in US history. First Republic Bank also seemed on the edge of collapse until Bank of America, Citigroup, and other big banks agreed to jointly fund a bailout for it.Major Swiss bank Credit Suisse was also teetering on the brink when it received a 54 billion dollars line of credit...

In the “collective West,” hypocrisy rules the narrative, most recently in regard to the ICC and the “kidnapped” children of Ukraine. In America, the scurrilous neocon and warmonger propagandist Max Boot weighed in on the meaningless and unenforcible decision to arrest President Putin. Boot’s argument is delusional, but then neocons thrive on lies and delusions. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine can be seen as a desperate gambit to increase Russia’s declining population at gunpoint.That the Russians...

While lost in the explosive news about Donald Trump’s expected arrest, journalist Matt Taibbi released new details on previously undisclosed censorship efforts on social media. The latest Twitter Files revealed a breathtaking effort from Stanford’s Virality Project to censor even true stories. After all, the project insisted “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures. The effort included suppressing stories that we now know are legitimate such as natural...

Thursday marked the three year anniversary of the infamous “15 Days To Slow The Spread” campaign.By March 16, yours truly was already pretty fed up with both the governmental and societal “response” to what was being baselessly categorized as the worst pandemic in 100 years, despite zero statistical data supporting such a serious claim. The Moment That Shook the World: "15 Days to Slow the Spread" (March 16, 2020)Fauci: "In states with evidence of community transmission, bars, restaurants,...

Thursday was three years since President Donald Trump announced the “15 days to slow the spread” campaign that played a big role in propelling the use of new expansive government powers to limit the exercise of freedom in the name of countering coronavirus. The campaign both did not slow the spread and did not end after 15 days. What it did do was help grow and maintain tyrannical policies of the United States, state, and local governments that were marketed as based in science and promoting...

“Moral courage can be lonely indeed. People don’t mind being trapped, as long as no one else is free. But stage a break, and everybody else begins to panic.” - William Deresiewicz When I look back at the times of Covid hysteria, I think most about outliers and rule followers, and what separates courageous people from cowards. These past three years served as a good reminder that true courage is an isolating experience. It is both difficult to possess and retain, and regularly interpreted by...

If you give the government an inch, it will always take a mile. This is how the slippery slope to all-out persecution starts. This particular slippery slope has to do with the government’s use of geofence technology, which uses cell phone location data to identify people who are in a particular area at any given time. First, police began using geofence warrants to carry out dragnet sweeps of individuals near a crime scene. Then the FBI used geofence warrants to identify individuals who were in...

As world tensions heighten over Ukraine, some fear this crisis might grow into a great geopolitical catastrophe. Certainly it could. But few recognize there is an even greater matter of conflict brewing between the US and Russia. It could quickly outpace the already-dangerous Ukraine war. Consider the following statement about the war: "This is not about Ukraine at all, but the world order." Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said that, referencing the war. Oxford University professor...

Marina in Rostock, Germany. (Beauwell, CC0, Wikimedia Commons)Back in 2000, the television series “Andromeda” premiered, based upon unused material from Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek series and franchise. The plot is premised on the notion of a spaceship, “Andromeda,” frozen in time, which is given the opportunity to reverse the clock and undo history. The series ran five years. Fast forward to the present. History has dealt a tough hand to the administration of US President...

The agreement announced on Friday in Beijing regarding the normalisation of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the reopening of their embassies is a historic event. It goes way beyond an issue of Saudi-Iranian relations. China’s mediation signifies that we are witnessing a profound shift of the tectonic plates in the geopolitics of the 21st century.  The joint statement issued on Friday in Beijing begins by saying that the Saudi-Iranian agreement was reached “in response to...