US foreign policy

Eric sits down with author Nicholas Schou to discuss his new book Spooked: How the CIA Manipulates the Media and Hoodwinks Hollywood. Eric and Nick explore the history of CIA manipulation of the media going back decades, and how it has evolved into the propaganda consensus we see today. The conversation touches on everything from Nicaragua and the Reagan counter-revolution to the sycophantic relationship between Hollywood and Langley.

Funded not by the communities they claim to serve, but by these foreign interests, they often operate under the pretext of upholding the legitimate roles and responsibilities of genuine NGOs while in reality undermining a targeted nation's government, its people, its institutions, and national peace and stability. Ironically, such organisations also undermine the perceived legitimacy and effectiveness of real NGOs.

On his visit to Hiroshima last May, Obama did not, as some had vainly hoped he might, apologize for the August 6, 1945 atomic bombing of the city. Instead he gave a high-sounding speech against war. He did this as he was waging ongoing drone war against defenseless enemies in faraway countries and approving plans to spend a trillion dollars upgrading the US nuclear arsenal.

The Obama administration announced on Monday the beginning of US air strikes in Libya against ISIS targets, marking the fourth country the United States is currently bombing with the goal of “degrading and destroying” the terror group. A campaign that began two years ago this Sunday has now, 50,000 bombs and 25,000 dead ISIS fighters later, expanded to a whole new continent.

German parliamentarians prepare to ask also for sanctions against USA, Britain and France. According to those parliamentarians, by implementing the Chaos Strategy in the Middle East, in order to “promote democracy”, as they kept saying, Washington, London and Paris are directly responsible for the refugee crisis, the terror attacks and the whole instability which landed now in Turkey.

The US has launched a sustained bombing campaign around Sirte in Libya in a new escalation of the War on Terror. US officials are reported to be briefing that they plan to take a greater role in Libya as part of a long-term campaign against Islamic State.

Relations between Ankara and Washington are deteriorating rapidly following the July 15 coup attempt in Turkey, which the Turkish government believes was supported by the Obama administration. In a series of stunning statements on Friday, delivered from the bombed-out ruins of a police base in Ankara, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan directly accused the US government of backing the coup.

Aged but untamed, Zbigniew Brzezinski tackles the "catastrophic" situation of the US in an article that - like others in his career - is meant to create a lasting impression and perhaps go down in history. It is published in " The American Interest"

The South China Sea is and will continue to be the ultimate geopolitical flashpoint of the young 21st century – way ahead of the Middle East or Russia’s western borderlands. No less than the future of Asia – as well as the East-West balance of power – is at stake.

"TRUMP: I think right now when it comes to civil liberties, our country has a lot of problems, and I think it’s very hard for us to get involved in other countries when we don’t know what we are doing and we can’t see straight in our own country. We have tremendous problems when you have policemen being shot in the streets, when you have riots, when you have Ferguson. When you have Baltimore. When you have all of the things that are happening in this country — we have other problems, and I think we have to focus on those problems. When the world looks at how bad the United States is, and then we go and talk about civil liberties, I don’t think we’re a very good messenger."