Red pill or blue pill? You decide. Continue reading
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Red pill or blue pill? You decide. Continue reading
No other country in the Middle East is as important in countering America’s rush to provide Israel with another war than Iraq. Fortunately for Iran, the winds of change in Iraq and the many other local countries under similar threat, thus, make up an unbroken chain of border to border support. This support is only in part due to sympathy for Iran and its plight against the latest bluster by the Zio-American bully. Continue reading
What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of political theater. And what political theater it is, diabolically Shakespearean at times, full of sound and fury, yet in the end, signifying nothing. Continue reading
On Fox News Channel’s May 2 edition of “The Story with Martha MacCallum” it was alleged, by the program host (at 2:45 in this video), that one reason we must invade Venezuela (if we will) is that “People have lost 24 pounds” there. So (her point was), if we invade, that’s not evil, it’s no coup, but instead it’s humanitarian (presumably like it was in Iraq in 2003, when we invaded that country, which likewise had never invaded nor threatened to invade the United States—it was raw international aggression, by our country, against Iraq). Continue reading
There are many partisan responses to this question. Of course, internationally, the United States is regarded by many people to be the gold standard of what constitutes a democracy (perhaps because the U.S. was the first nation that was born out of a successful revolution against an existing dictatorship and that quickly produced a written Constitution, which endorses many democratic principles and which lasts proudly until the present day). However, that reputation is not a substantive answer to the question as to whether the United States is today a democracy. There are dictatorships that have democratic written constitutions. Furthermore, the way that a constitution is enforced or not enforced can determine whether or not the nation’s constitution is real or whether it’s instead more of a mere formality than a reality. Continue reading
The U.S. Congress has begun debate on the FY2020 military budget. The FY2019 budget for the U.S. Department of Defense is $695 billion dollars. President Trump’s budget request for FY 2020 would increase it to $718 billion. Continue reading
Unlike America under Donald Trump, who is proudly psychopathic and went so far as to blurt out that his followers would accept his leadership even if he were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, the European Union is so rabidly hypocritical (Trump would probably call it “politically correct”) that its leaders routinely moralize about ‘human rights and democracy’ even while their governments indiscriminately rob and slaughter people in foreign lands (as will be documented here). Continue reading
More and more informed observers in Washington, DC are beginning to take note of Donald Trump’s often inane comments. On two recent separate occasions, the 72-year-old Trump insisted that his father was born in Germany, which is not true according to New York state birth records. Trump’s father, Fred Trump, was born in The Bronx in 1905. Continue reading
Wherever one looks, it is evident that the post-war Establishment élites are on the backfoot. They maintain a studied panglossian hauteur. But whether it is in Britain, where a PM seems ready to sacrifice her own party’s future on the altar of maintaining the cosy nexus between big business and Brussels’ smug ambitions to be a global economic player, rivalling the US or China. Or, whether it is Trump’s readiness to put America’s financial system into fiscal and debt jeopardy, in order to keep the cogs and wheels of the Military Industrial Complex whirring and spinning comfortably – at a time when US government over-spending already threatens to break dollar ‘trust’. Continue reading
We live in a very corrupt era. A case in point is the current and scandalous manipulation of the Mueller report by the Trump administration, with hardly any outcry from people in authority. Indeed, of the close to 400 pages (excluding tables and appendices) of the Mueller report delivered to the U.S. Attorney General on Friday March 22, 2019, not a single page has yet to be made public either to the elected Congress and/or to the American people to see for themselves the real content of the full report. Continue reading
When Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968, the American public fell into a hypnotic trance in which they have remained ever since. The overwhelming majority accepted what was presented by government authorities as an open and shut case that a young Palestinian American, Sirhan Sirhan, had murdered RFK because of his support for Israel, a false accusation whose ramifications echo down the years. That this was patently untrue and was contradicted by overwhelming evidence made no difference. Continue reading
So far, every Trump regime tactic used to try toppling Maduro and eliminate Venezuelan social democracy failed. Continue reading
Yes, the latest research confirms that Venezuela is so rich in natural resources, that it could single-handedly satisfy all global demand for oil, for over 30 years. And it has much more than oil to offer, in its Orinoco basin and in other areas of the country. Continue reading
On March 27, US President Donald Trump said that “Russia has to get out” of Venezuela, and that “All options are on the table” if Russia refuses to withdraw from Venezuela the protection it has recently provided to Venezuela’s elected government, which Trump is attempting to overthrow, by an illegal coup. And Vice President Mike Pence, on the same day, said “Nicolás Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power, and it is the policy of the United States of America, at the direction of President Donald Trump, that Nicolás Maduro must go.” The United States is therefore trying to do to Maduro what Barack Obama did to Victor Yanukovich in Ukraine in 2014, and to Muammar Gaddaffi in Libya in 2011, and tried to do to Bashar Assad after 2011 in Syria, and what George W. Bush did in 2003 to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But, this time, there is a difference, because right up front, Russia isn’t allowing it, and is sending men and equipment to Venezuela, to prevent it from happening—in other words, to block the US government from achieving a conquest of Venezuela. Continue reading
War spending is bankrupting America. Continue reading
The world faces many overlapping crises: regional political crises from Kashmir to Venezuela; brutal wars that rage on in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia; and the existential dangers of nuclear weapons, climate change, and mass extinction. Continue reading
You think you’ve got rights? Think again. Continue reading
There is an immense amount of criticism of Putin, especially coming from America, most of it empty criticism which ignores realities and genuine analysis. For the more thoughtful, it represents only the stink and noise of propaganda, and not honest criticism in its true sense at all. Continue reading
While waiting without positive expectations for the Trump ‘deal of the century,’ the Palestinian ordeal unfolds day by day. Many Israelis would like us to believe that the Palestinian struggle to achieve self-determination has been defeated, and that it is time to admit that Israel is the victor and Palestine the loser. Recent events paint a different picture. Every Friday since the end of March 2018 the Great March of Return has confronted Israel at the Gaza fence. Israel has responded with lethal force killing more than 250 Palestinians and injuring over 18,000, using grossly excessive force to deal with almost completely nonviolent demonstrations. The world allows these weekly atrocities to go without any concerted adverse reaction and the UN is awkwardly silent. Continue reading
Putin’s approval rating is high, but it has declined over the past year. The decline is mainly related to domestic policy. Apparently, the public perceives recent Kremlin economic policy as a continuation of the disastrous policies that Washington imposed on Russia in the 1990s when Russia was loaded up with foreign debt while state assets were privatized and plundered by oligarchs sponsored by the West who “cashed out” by selling the assets to foreigners. Continue reading
Uncle Sam wants you. Continue reading
On February 18, members of extremist Jewish groups raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Occupied Al-Quds (Jerusalem). They clashed with Palestinian worshippers, as the settlers attempted to shut down the gate of Al-Aqsa itself. Continue reading
A largely ignored story reported by the Lebanese magazine “Ash Shiraa” on November 3, 1986, soon blossomed into a major scandal involving the covert sale of US weapons to the government of Iran and the illegal supply of weapons to right-wing Nicaraguan rebels. The Lebanese magazine was the first to reveal that the Ronald Reagan administration was covertly selling arms to Iran in exchange for the release of seven American hostages by pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon. Continue reading
Who pays the price for the dissolution of the constitutional covenant that holds the government and its agents accountable to the will of the people? Continue reading
The Russian-sponsored Palestinian unity talks in Moscow on February 11 were neither a success nor failure. Uniting Palestinian factions was not the main objective of the Moscow conference, in the first place. Continue reading
Trump could not have become America’s president if he had not won the “vote” of his nation’s second-largest political donor in 2016, casinos-owner Sheldon Adelson. Continue reading
The Trump administration is barreling ahead with plans to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the largest refuge in the country and an area of global ecological importance. Continue reading
The case that will be documented here is that Venezuela’s people are suffering from a tragic national situation which actually cannot be reversed by anything that’s within the power of Venezuela’s government to do or to block. In order to understand this very unfortunate reality (if one wants to understand it), one must first understand the relevant parts of the broader situation in the world that affects Venezuela. What’s dooming the country isn’t merely a local situation, but instead is global and environmental. It also is economic, pertaining to the role that Venezuela is playing in the global economy. But the economic factor is definitely not of the kind that it’s commonly assumed and alleged to be. It is instead very different. Continue reading
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is getting significant media attention these days, after Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview that it should “be a larger part of our conversation” when it comes to funding the Green New Deal. According to MMT, the government can spend what it needs without worrying about deficits. MMT expert and Bernie Sanders advisor Prof. Stephanie Kelton says the government actually creates money when it spends. The real limit on spending is not an artificially imposed debt ceiling but a lack of labor and materials to do the work, leading to generalized price inflation. Only when that real ceiling is hit does the money need to be taxed back, and then not to fund government spending but to shrink the money supply in an economy that has run out of resources to put the extra money to work. Continue reading
BOGOTÁ, Colombia—Several troubling situations are currently playing out across Colombia, yet the country’s continuing downward spiral into drug-fueled and politically-motivated violence has caused little concern in Washington, offering yet another clear indication that the U.S.’ current posturing on Venezuela is hardly motivated by concerns about “democracy,” “human rights,” or the welfare of the Venezuelan people. Continue reading
In his masterpiece, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II, William Blum, who died in December 2018, wrote chapter-length accounts of 55 U.S. regime change operations against countries around the world, from China (1945-1960s) to Haiti (1986-1994). Noam Chomsky’s blurb on the back of the latest edition says simply, “Far and away the best book on the topic.” We agree. If you have not read it, please do. It will give you a clearer context for what is happening in Venezuela today, and a better understanding of the world you are living in. Continue reading
American President Donald Trump has done a lot of unheard of things since his 2016 election, most of them have been controversial and some have been utterly scandalous. The latest one to date was his shutting down of part of the U.S. government for 35 long days, on a whim, with the intention of bullying the newly elected Democratic majority of the House of Representatives. However, this time he hit a wall—a democratic wall—as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called his bluff and defeated him at his own game. Continue reading