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Russia: Frustrating Foreign Wars

Demographic, Russia

Russia: Frustrating Foreign Wars

Russia admits that about a third of its population is living in poverty. Many Russians, and foreign economists, believe the real rate is nearly 70 percent. Russian living standards have suffered continuous disasters since 2013 when the price of the major export (oil and has) fell by more than half and has not recovered. In 2014 Russia declared it was at war with NATO and Ukraine. That resulted in economic sanctions that have gotten worse since then. When the current Russian government took power in 2000 it became very popular by keeping a key campaign promise; to reduce the poverty rate. The poverty rate fell from 29 percent of the population in 2000 to just under 12 percent in 2012.

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Wars crimes and western media complicity

Genocide, Threats

Wars crimes and western media complicity

According to the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, the definition of ‘War Crimes’ includes: “those violations of international humanitarian law (treaty or customary law) that incur individual criminal responsibility under international law. As a result…war crimes must always take place in the context of an armed conflict, either international or non-international.” Thus, we can establish that the violence unleashed each day in Gaza over the last two weeks constitutes Israeli war crimes. What remains even more clear, however, is that we aren’t receiving news about these on-ground realities from western media but from social media.

Following the hashtags, reading tweets, watching video clips and live updates from Palestinians caught up in the eye of this terrifying storm reminds us of the appalling western media bias andspreading of propaganda, the likes of which Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Germany’s Propaganda minister would have been proud.

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American Nuclear Strategy: A Complex Problem of Law and Intellect

Policies, Security

American Nuclear Strategy: A Complex Problem of Law and Intellect

On core matters of national security, American analysts should think in terms of intellectual and legal criteria. Ignoring the day-to-day banalities of national and international politics, these strategists and policy-makers ought continuously to bear in mind that such primary standards may intersect with one another, always converging, sometimes in synergistic fashion. In such cases, the “whole” of any examined outcome would more-or-less exceed the sum of its “parts.”

This point should appear obvious to any reasonably-educated US population. American reality, however, has been distressingly different. To wit, during the law-violating and science-flouting Trump administration, tens of millions of citizens sought remedy for broadly complex medical and economic problems in narrowly partisan politics. Most grievously lamentable in this regard was the slow and public-relations oriented Covid-19 response. As was learned later from former White House Covid advisor Dr. Deborah Birx, the American nation suffered more than 400,000 unnecessary pandemic deaths. In essence, these plausibly preventable deaths were the result of a defiling willingness to value “common-sense” thinking more highly than science and law.

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The heroes I met fighting Iran’s brutal prison system

Demographic, Iran

The heroes I met fighting Iran’s brutal prison system

Sepideh Kashani was an administrator at the now-defunct Persian Wildlife Heritage Foundation, Iran’s premier conservation NGO. She was as well-behaved and unassuming a prisoner as the guards could have asked for. Despite the fact that we were being held in a maximum-security detention facility, the guards sometimes forgot to close the door of her cell, and Sepideh would pull it closed herself.

Both of us spent most of our time in solitary confinement, but for a time we shared a small, cramped cell. Forced to wear blindfolds every time we left it, Sepideh would pull hers firmly over her eyes and stumble around on the arm of the guard, whereas I was forever getting in trouble for wearing mine high on my forehead, my roving eyes registering every detail of the detention site and the shady, nameless individuals who ran it.

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Counter-Terrorism: Rocks Of Doom

Terrorism, Threats

Counter-Terrorism: Rocks Of Doom

In western Iraq (Anbar province), the Syrian border has turned into another contested area where high-tech sensors are very useful detecting hostile border crossers. American and Iraqi forces cooperate to monitor the border and in late 2020 the Americans suggested using hidden night-vision digital cameras that covertly detect anyone crossing at night and can either store images on an SD card or transmit the data to a UAV high overhead which can then use its more powerful sensors to track the border crossers to their destination.

The success of this technique led the Iraqis asking to expand the use of this tech as well as help replacing cameras discovered and removed or destroyed by smugglers, Islamic terrorists or even some civilians looking to make some money.

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Nuclear disarmament: Thinking outside the silo

Proflieration, Threats

Nuclear disarmament: Thinking outside the silo

Every five years since 1970 diplomats and arms control experts have gathered to review progress – or lack of it – in the disarmament process enshrined in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). The latest review conference, which was scheduled for May 2020, was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This postponement is a silver lining behind a very dark cloud made up of the pandemic and several looming nuclear crises. It has bought time and with that time a new administration in Washington, one that is likely to be more open to multilateral efforts, pragmatic compromise and cooperative solutions.

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Wars of Blood and Faith

Terrorism, Threats

Wars of Blood and Faith

In the no-holds-barred tradition that has won him so many fans across the nation and around the world, best-selling author and strategist Ralph Peters confronts the crucial security issues of our time–and the troubled times to come.

With his trademark clarity and force, Peters argues that we have left behind the Age of Ideologies to enter a violent period in which ethnicity and religion–blood and faith–will continue to be the source of ferocious rebellions, genocide, and global terrorism.

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The Power of Israel in the United States

Diplomacy, Policies

The Power of Israel in the United States

This book is a chapter-by-chapter analysis and documentation of the power of Israel via the Israeli, Jewish or Pro-Zionist Lobby on US Middle East policy. It raises serious questions as to the primary beneficiary of US policy, and its destructive results for the United States. The extraordinary extent of US political, economic, military and diplomatic support for the state of Israel is explored, along with the means whereby such support is generated and consolidated.

Contending that Zionist power in America ensured unconditional US backing for Israeli colonization of Palestine and its massive uprooting of Palestinians, it views the interests of Israel rather than those of Big Oil as the primary cause of the disastrous US wars against Iraq and threats of war against Iran and Syria. It demonstrates and condemns US imitation of Israeli practice as it relates to conduct of the war on terrorism and torture. It sheds light on the AIPAC spying scandal and other Israeli espionage against America; the fraudulent and complicit role of America’s academic “terrorist experts” in furthering criminal government policies, and the orchestration of the Danish cartoons to foment antipathy between Muslims and the West

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Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change

Demographic, Iran

Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Scott Ritter’s War on Iraq was embraced by the antiwar movement in America even though his claims that Iraq had been effectively disarmed were ignored by both the Bush administration and the mainstream media. In the wake of the debacle, Ritter has been vindicated. Now Ritter, a former United Nations weapons inspector, has set his sights on the White House’s hyping of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. In Target Iran he once again sets the record straight.

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Containing Missile Proliferation: Strategic Technology, Security Regimes, and International Cooperation in Arms Control

Proflieration, Threats

Containing Missile Proliferation: Strategic Technology, Security Regimes, and International Cooperation in Arms Control

The proliferation of ballistic missiles that can deliver weapons of mass destruction halfway across the world is a matter of growing urgency and concern, as is the fate of agreements limiting the development of such deadly weapons. The Bush administration’s scrapping of the ABM Treaty and pursuit of a huge National Missile Defense initiative are dramatic evidence of this concern

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