https://youtu.be/psaqOZ4nvEw [Y]ou have to tell America to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. They are killing a lot of innocent people. What am I to do here when my people are getting killed over there...You have to tell the U.S. government to stop bombing. They are killing too many children, they are killing too many women, okay?...[Y]ou need to know that they need to stop bombing Syria and Iraq. The U.S. is collaborating with Russia and they are killing innocent women and children, okay?...The air strikes need to stop and stop collaborating with Russia...[N]ow you feel, now you feel how it...
the U.S.
Biden Announces U.S. Will Not Supply Ukraine with Longe-Range Rockets
President Biden on Monday told reporters that the U.S. will not send Ukraine rocket systems that can strike targets inside Russian territory. “We’re not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that strike into Russia,” Biden told reporters. Biden’s comments came after several media outlets reported that the administration was leaning towards providing Ukraine with Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (MLRS), which Ukrainian officials have been requesting for months. A White House official later clarified Biden’s comments and said sending the MLRS is still on the table, but that it wouldn’t have...
NYT Claims U.S. Intelligence Has Helped Assassinate Russian Generals
According to a report from The New York Times citing unnamed senior U.S. officials, intelligence provided by the U.S. on Russian military units has helped Ukraine target and kill Russian generals. Ukraine has claimed to have killed 12 Russian generals, but the number is not confirmed, and Kyiv has an interest in exaggerating its success on the battlefield, and the officials wouldn’t specify how many Russian officers were killed as a result of the assistance. But either way, the claim by U.S. officials that they are helping kill Russian generals is a major provocation toward Moscow. Like...
Backdraft: How U.S. Sanctions on Russia May Burn the Dollar
There’s much to despise about economic sanctions. Aside from the fundamental immorality of making innocent individuals suffer for the sins of governments, sanctions almost universally fail to achieve the goals of those who inflict them. Nonetheless, sanctions have become the knee-jerk U.S. government response to any real or claimed foreign misdeed. According to the U.S. Treasury department, the number of U.S.-imposed sanctions soared 933% between 2000 and 2021. Where today’s Ukraine invasion-prompted sanctions are concerned, civilians in Russia and all around the world are already feeling...
12/30/21 Basir Bita on the Economic Crisis in Afghanistan
Scott interviews activist Basir Bita about the economic calamity that’s hit Afghanistan since the U.S. withdrawal this past summer. With the U.S. and IMF freezing Afghan government funds as well as widespread market corrections after the fall of the previous regime, Afghanistan has been thrown into turmoil. Food prices have tripled since the summer and many Afghans face issues with food security. Bita argues that the Biden Administration and others should get over their hesitation to work with the new government of Afghanistan. And that a refusal to do so reveals how little they truly...
12/30/21 Daniel Larison: US Militarism Should Have Died With the Soviet Union
Scott is joined by Antiwar.com contributing editor Daniel Larison to discuss his most recent piece. Larison argues that the period following the peaceful breakup of the USSR was the best moment for the U.S. to shed the militaristic blob it had built up in the name of fighting communism. Instead, the military-industrial-congressional complex scrambled to find a new enemy. And the next thirty years of meddling in the Middle East and Eastern Europe have resulted in today’s messy geopolitical status quo. Discussed on the show: “US Militarism Should Have Died With the Soviet Union”...
COI #207: Is Biden Turning to Diplomacy with Russia and Iran?
On COI #207, Kyle Anzalone and Connor Freeman update the JCPOA talks’ recent developments and the Russians’ security proposals presented to Washington. Kyle discusses the Russians pulling 10,000 troops off the border with Ukraine and sending them back to their bases. This is potentially a show of goodwill before the upcoming talks with the U.S. next month. Kyle and Connor then cover some recent escalations that do not necessarily bode well for substantive diplomacy like the Americans flying spy planes over Ukraine not far from the separatist Donbas region. There is also talk of a...
The Human Under the Numbers
The story of Anne Frank is tragic. If not for the words that she wrote in her diary, she would be a digit of history. Her diary is relatable, and the thoughts that collected inside her being during a horrible time in history gives the reader an idea of who she was. She is immortalized because of the little things that she wrote, not because of any great deeds recorded by others. As a victim of tyranny she is remembered as an innocent murdered. She is a story found inside the numbers. Thanks to her diary, we have a human figure to know and mourn, despite the mechanized bureaucratic...
Salafis Throwing Bombs: How American and British Planners Partnered With Al-Qaeda Affiliated Groups At the Start of the Syrian Civil War
Introduction In the mainstream view, al-Qaeda did not play a role in the Syria conflict until Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dispatched his deputy, Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, to Syria in August 2011 to establish a wing of the group there, called Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front. Additionally, al-Qaeda allegedly did not carry out any military operations until December 2011 and did not announce its establishment until January 2012. However, there is evidence that al-Qaeda affiliated militants were involved in the Syrian conflict much earlier. Saudi intelligence...
Lunatic With a Plan: Erdogan and Turkey’s Economic Woes
Since the first assault on Turkey’s finances in 2018, which I wrote about multiple times (here, here, and here), I’ve been the lone voice telling everyone that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a lunatic but he’s a lunatic with a plan. That plan is to de-dollarize the economy of a valuable member of NATO geostrategically. Since the first shots across the bow by the Trump administration at Erdogan’s toying with those powers east of the Bosporus (Russia, China and Iran) the Turkish lira has been the primary mode of attack against Erdogan. Erdogan has pursued what has been deemed unorthodox...