“Shanahan was ‘cleared’ by the Pentagon of charges that he favored his old employer in contract awards by the Pentagon. Shanahan oversaw the first ever complete audit (not!) of the Pentagon last year which ended in a blowout failure on Nov. 15. In announcing the failure, he made light of it, saying ‘We expected to…

“From 2007, several or more Afro-descendants have been burned alive by the violent sectors of the opposition. There were regular depictions in elements of the opposition of Chavez as a monkey — they highlight his curly hair and big lips as part of the racialized nature of their outlook. Skin color is a substantial indicator…

“The Trump State Department, working with and through the Secret Service and the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, is engaged in wholesale violation of civil rights, constitutional rights, and international law. The State Department has authorized violations of core provisions of the Vienna Convention — an unprecedented step that will have global repercussions. Even in times…

“Donald Trump’s key advisers are looking for an excuse for an air attack on Iran, and they have now taken a big step closer to their publicly announced objective. Pompeo and Bolton both threatened war with Iran last September over a few mortar shells landng in the vicinity of … the U.S. Embassy and a…

“‘Denial’ is what they broadcast to the public. To the captains of industry, Pompeo is confirming that climate change is indeed taking place and is something to rejoice in! However, the very ice-melting that makes him salivate will lead, at the same time, to the submersion of coastal regions — including major population centers –…

“The way sentences are constructed and the word choices made (‘militant,’ ‘retaliation,’ etc.) frame the story in such a way that the story is told before it even really begins, because the words have done their work. (Once you hear that a state is ‘retaliating’ for ‘militant’ rocket fire, what more do you really need…

She said today that the peace activists at the Venezuelan embassy “remain lawfully present until divested of that right, which has not happened. If they were not lawfully present law enforcement would be able to take lawful steps to have them leave, but instead it is trying to force them to leave by allowing and…

“Mueller begins, on Page 1, with this assertion: ‘The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.’ Maybe so, but Mueller, who is not averse to editorializing and contextualizing elsewhere in the report, gives readers no historical background or context for this large generalization. In particular, was the interference –…

“Harvard University political scientist Joseph Nye cites the precedent set by the 1972 Incidents at Sea Agreement that sought to limit behavior on the high seas that might lead to escalation and war. Says Nye, ‘Skeptics object that such an arrangement is impossible, owing to the differences between American and Russian values. But even greater…

Wesibrot and Sachs, two noted economists, co-authored a just-released report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimating that U.S. Sanctions on Venezuela are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths.