Watch this video:

When the U.S. public was told that Spain had blown up the Maine, or Vietnam had returned fire, or Iraq had stockpiled weapons, or Libya was planning a massacre, the claims were straightforward and disprovable. Before people began referring to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, somebody had to lie that it had happened, and there had to be an understanding of what had supposedly happened. No investigation into whether anything had happened could have taken as its starting point the certainty read more

The International Committee of the Red Cross and InterAction (a coalition of U.S. human rights groups) have published a report on how to protect civilians when waging war on cities. They seek to catalog the “humanitarian challenges specific to urban warfare.”

While I would not (one wishes it were needless to say) prefer that they strive to maximize the human destruction possible in urban warfare, I want to note that any report seeking to address the humanitarian challenges specific read more

In 1982 a 10-year-old girl from Maine named Samantha Smith wrote a letter to Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov:

“Dear Mr. Andropov,
“My name is Samantha Smith. I am ten years old. Congratulations on your new job. I have been worrying about Russia and the United States getting into a nuclear war. Are you going to vote to have a war or not? If you aren’t please tell me how you are going to help to not have a war. This question you do not have to answer, but I would like to know read more

By Donald Trump
Translated into English by David Swanson

I am very honored to have been invited here to tell you about Islam. King Salman invited me, and I said you know I really need to go to Israel first because I have a connection to any chosen people. I was chosen by the majority of Americans last November, of electoral Americans. They love me. But King Salman — great guy, really great guy, and such beautiful houses — King Salman told me what he wanted me to talk about, and then read more

Just back from a week in Moscow, I feel obliged to point out a few things about it.

• Most people there still love Americans.
• Many people there speak English.
• Learning basic Russian is not that hard.
• Moscow is the biggest city in Europe (and far bigger than any in the United States).
• Moscow has the charm, culture, architecture, history, activities, events, parks, museums, and entertainment to match any other city in Europe.
• It’s warm there now with flowers everywhere.
• Moscow is safer than U.S. cities. You can walk around alone at night with no worries.
• The Metro goes everywhere. A train comes every 2 minutes. The trains have free Wi-Fi. So do the parks.
• You can rent bicycles at lots of different spots and return them to any other.
• You can fly direct from New York to Moscow, and if you fly on the Russian airline Aeroflot you’ll get a nostalgic reminder of what it’s like to have airplane seats large enough to hold a human being.
• Everybody says that St. Petersburg and various other cities are even more beautiful than Moscow.
• Right now the sun is up from 4:00 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. in Moscow, and until 9:30 p.m. in St. Petersburg. The longest day of the year in St. Petersburg is 18-and-a-half hours.

Americans seem not to know about Russia. While four-and-a-half million Americans visit Italy in a year, and two-and-a-half million go to Germany as tourists, only 86 thousand go to Russia. More tourists go to Russia from several other countries than go there from the U.S.

If you want to visit Russia and really learn about it, go, as I did, with the Center for Citizen Initiatives.

If you want the best tour guide I’ve read more