Putin’s plan for global dominance runs through pipelines

As the FBI drills down in its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Pentagon vows to build new capabilities to take on Russian weapons, Russia is, in plain sight, also working on a global power grab with its energy gambit. Nord Stream 2 , the deal that prompted President Donald Trump to blow a gasket at the NATO summit earlier this month, has Germany doubling the amount of natural gas it is buying from Russia.

Charlottesville, Act II

The anniversary of the August 12, 2017 Charlottesville protest is coming up. It was on this day, so the story goes, that the left confronted the right over the right's support for a statue of civil war general Robert E. Lee and a woman was killed by a white nationalist driving his car into a crowd of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other protestors.

The Health 202: Democrats seeking to recapture emotion of ACA vote in Kavanaugh fight

Saturday marked one year since Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain's now famous thumbs-down vote that upended the last GOP attempt to fully repeal the Affordable Care Act. In the leadup to that vote, Republicans faced intense political pressure from a grassroots campaign that focused on the often emotional stories of the tens of millions of Americans who would lose coverage if the ACA went away.

Giuliani won’t explain the ‘very nasty’ business relationship Trump says he had with Mueller

President Trump's lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani declined on Monday to explain the president's allegation that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has a conflict of interest because of a past business relationship with Trump. In a series of tweets about the Russia investigation on Sunday, Trump claimed that Mueller has multiple conflicts of interests, including "the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship."

Suffrage and Race

The story of how white suffrage activists went full racist in the late 19th century in their demands for the right to vote is well-known among American historians. But as we reach the centennial of the 19th Amendment in 2020, to what extent will this racism be recognized in the celebration of suffrage? Brent Staples has a good piece here and he does what journalists should do-rely on historians, who tell straightforward stories about the past that are increasingly written to be accessible to the general public, as opposed to many other disciplines for whom communication seems to be an outright enemy, to inform his analysis.

How The Russian Government Used Disinformation And Cyber Warfare In…

The Soviet Union and now Russia under Vladimir Putin have waged a political power struggle against the West for nearly a century. Spreading false and distorted information - called " dezinformatsiya " after the Russian word for "disinformation" - is an age-old strategy for coordinated and sustained influence campaigns that have interrupted the possibility of level-headed political discourse.

How Exactly the Russian GRU and Troll Disinformation Campaign Worked: By an Ethical Hacker

The Soviet Union and now Russia under Vladimir Putin have waged a political power struggle against the West for nearly a century. Spreading false and distorted information - called " dezinformatsiya " after the Russian word for "disinformation" - is an age-old strategy for coordinated and sustained influence campaigns that have interrupted the possibility of level-headed political discourse.

US-Backed Kurds Propose rejoining Syria if it will Decentralize

The Syrian Democratic Forces alliance, which controls a swathe of the north and northeast, said it had agreed with the government to form joint committees to discuss the major issues after a first round of talks on Thursday and Friday. The SDF's political arm, the Syrian Democratic Council, said the aim was to "clear the way for a broader and more comprehensive dialogue" and forge a "roadmap leading to a democratic and decentralised Syria".

Judge Stops Attempt to Block 3-D Gun Blueprints

The Brady Campaign :Until a few weeks ago, the United States government held the longstanding and reasonable policy that enabling terrorists, domestic abusers, and international crime rings to make their own undetectable guns with 3D printers posed a danger to national security and international peace. On Friday, July 27th, using Orwellian, "Lies are Truth" logic, the Trump Administration announced that enabling international terrorists to download plans for, and then make, AR-15s and other guns "is in the interest of the security and foreign policy of the United States."

U.S. Diplomats Held Face-to-Face Talk With Taliban, Insurgents Say

American diplomats held face-to-face talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar a week ago without Afghan government officials present, in a reversal of a longstanding United States policy, two senior Taliban officials said on Saturday. The United States State Department has not denied that its diplomats had taken part in such talks - a significant shift in American strategy toward the Taliban in Afghanistan.

US-Backed Leftist Kurds Holds talks with Damascus on Future of Northeast

Between them the Damascus government and the Syrian Democratic Forces control some 90 percent of the country, after a series of Russian-backed victories over rebel groups in recent months saw the government reassert its authority over much of the south. The delegation from the SDF's political wing is discussing the future of the autonomous administrations it has set up in areas of northern and northeastern Syria under its control, the alliance official said.