The movie Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore famously laid the blame of invading Afghanistan on an oil pipeline plan pushed for by Unocal. The problem with that picture is that Unocal is currently owned by the Venezuelan’s. However, there were a large pile of contracts related to oil and natural gas…
I think there are military coup’s happen which do not generate worldwide alarm. On Friday, parts of the Turkish military announced they’d taken over in order to reestablish constitutional order etc. But within a few hours President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reestablished control and was cracking down on the dissidents — and perhaps…
Legendary British Journalist, John Pilger, telling us how The West (US, Britain, etc) created ISIS. Supposedly we’re fighting against ISIS…but…? This is appearing on RT News, and therefore serves Russia’s point of view. The civil war in Syria is due to the global face-off between The West (US, Britain…
This report by RT News looks into how ISIS .. a.k.a. Da-esh .. came into existence. Their portrayal is incomplete – they describe ISIS as having come out of nowhere, when in reality it was an outgrowth of the power vacuum created in Iraq by the U.S. invasion of Iraq and…
In the horrendous battle over Syria, one big question is Qatar’s role. Supposedly the Syrian conflict is due to the horrid behavior of the Bashar al-Assad regime, the people rose up in rebellion against that behavior, and the fighting has spiraled out of control. The rise of ISIS is therefore due…
Yesterday, after spending months building up its forces stationed in Syria, Russia suddenly began air strikes in Syria. While Russia claims they’re hitting ISIS targets, everyone else says Russia is instead hitting targets related to rebel groups fighting against the Syrian government. Additionally, Russia has had success at intelligence sharing…
At a tactical level the high drama of the Refugee crisis in Europe is caused by many in Europe refusing to take in the refugees. It might simply be the cost of supporting refugees once they’ve arrived, or it might be racism. As I’ve written over the last couple days,…
Refugees from wars in Syria, Yemen, North Africa and elsewhere are suffering unimaginably. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled their homes, some making it as far as Europe, some drowning at sea, others stuck in war-torn areas for one reason or another, all of them bereft of home and livelihood. In…
The current stock market turmoil – a major stock price collapse in China and other countries – may be (partly) caused by the glut of oil causing low crude oil prices. What’s happening is a market correction a.k.a. “global selloff” of stocks a.k.a. slumping stock prices in stock markets…
When al Qaeda terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Michael Morell was with President George W. Bush at an elementary school in Florida as the CIA’s daily briefer. He rose to become the CIA Acting Director and served Pres. Obama. Now that he’s…
Like everyone I’m in shock over the Charlie Hebdo massacre this week. It’s the latest in a long string of running battles between the West and “terrorists” associated with the Muslim world. In trying to understand why this happened, and I’m thinking of this through the lens of the global…
December 7 is one of those days that are supposed to live in Infamy, because of the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on that day in 1941. In school we are taught Japan’s intention was to ensure the U.S. didn’t enter the war, but that instead they woke a sleeping giant and…
The Islamic State is an egregiously violent movement that’s looking to overthrow governments in Syria, Iraq, Jordan and elsewhere. It’s a Sunni dominated version of Islamic governance that’s proven itself quite willing to commit genocidal acts. But is the U.S. at all responsible for its creation or did the Islamic…
About 11 1/2 years ago I took to the streets with thousands of others to shout “Not In My Name” and otherwise protest against the illegal invasion of Iraq, the illegal toppling of its government, etc. I spent a lot of time back then reading about the War which ensued,…
Did President Obama really launch an illegal war? We know that Pres. Bush did (the invasion of Iraq), and that war was clearly about securing supplies of fossil oil so we can all keep driving. I saw the “Obama launched an illegal war” in one of those raving paranoid lunatic…
