Stunned by falling poll numbers, Hillary Clinton is hoping that Democrats will rally to her neocon-oriented foreign policy and break with Bernie Sanders as insufficiently devoted to Israel. But will that hawkish strategy work this time, asks Robert Parry. In seeking to put Sen. Bernie Sanders on the defensive over his foreign policy positions, ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is embracing [...]

French President Emmanuel Macron claimed “Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism.” This is widely seen as a direct criticism of Donald Trump. After all, Trump calls himself a nationalist. Is ‘nationalism’ a dirty word? Says who? CrossTalking with John Laughland, George Szamuely, and Lew Rockwell. [...]

In order to justify regime change strategies in certain countries, official Washington demonizes their leaders, making them objects of revulsion and ridicule and thus influencing opinions of the American people, a game particularly dangerous when played against the leader of nuclear-armed Russia, according to an American psychology professor. [...]

Although officially condemning the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Washington is unwilling to antagonise Riyadh, which it sees as an important business partner and a “great ally” in the region. [...]

Austrian police records in Vienna and the Styria district bordering Slovenia show the number of applications for handgun permits has risen fourfold in the past months, while firearms dealers say the number of weapons sales has skyrocketed. [...]

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has imposed martial law after the country’s vessels faced off with Russian ships near Crimea. The measure could potentially allow him to call off scheduled elections and preserve power. [...]

After Saudi-backed Syrian rebels balked at peace talks and the Russian-backed Syrian army cut off Turkish supply lines to jihadists and other Syrian rebels, the U.S. and its Mideast Sunni “allies” appear poised to invade Syria and force “regime change” even at the risk of fighting Russia, a gamble with nuclear war, writes Joe Lauria. [...]

Washington's reported plans to ratchet up sanctions against Moscow have sparked heated debates both in the US and in Russia over which country will be hurt more. The US has hinted that it would target exports of sensitive national security goods to Russia, stop flights by Russia's Aeroflot airlines to the US, and could go as far as banning all US exports to Russia. [...]

The premier of the German state of Bavaria has lashed out at Chancellor Angela Merkel's handling of the refugee crisis, calling the current policy a “rule of injustice” – a term typically used to describe dictatorships or oppressive regimes. [...]

We live in a world fashioned by Washington, and as 2019 approaches the dire consequences remain woefully evident. In 1948 US State Department mandarin George Kennan – the man credited with devising the policy of containment vis-à-vis the Soviet Union at the end of WWII, – laid bare the focus of US foreign policy in the postwar period: [...]

The US economy died when middle class jobs were offshored and when the financial system was deregulated. Jobs offshoring benefitted Wall Street, corporate executives, and shareholders, because lower labor and compliance costs resulted in higher profits. These profits flowed through to shareholders in the form of capital gains and to executives in the form of “performance bonuses.” Wall Stre [...]

KIEV (Sputnik) - Several hundreds of people participated Tuesday in marches commemorating the birthday of the Ukrainian fascist collaborator Stepan Bandera in Kiev, media reported. [...]

Moscow is not discussing alternative plans for a political settlement in Syria, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov has said. The Russian-American peace initiative is going to be formalized through a UN Security Council resolution. “We’re perplexed by our Western partners, the US included, mentioning the existence of some kind of ‘Plan B,’ Nothing is known on that one, we are consi [...]

Authorities in southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have closed highways and some railroads due to heavy snowfall in the region, according to Fox News reports. Thousands of tourists ended the Christmas holiday in the Alps on 6 January being evacuated due to heavy snowfall, including visitors to the popular Matterhorn in Switzerland, Fox News reported, saying that airports and trains have exp [...]

The race is far from over, Bernie Sanders told his supporters on Saturday night, after news outlets projected a big win for Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina Democratic primary. "Let me be clear on one thing tonight," Sanders said in a statement just after 7 pm EST [...]

Desperate times call for desperate measures, such was the bizarre case in which a man at risk of dying from alcohol poisoning was pumped full of 15 cans of beer to save his life. [...]

Can the U.S. Department of Education be trusted to protect the millions of Americans with federal student loans? U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has tussled with the federal agency before, isn't so sure. She said as much in a letter (pdf) sent Thursday to acting Education Secretary John King Jr., [...]

Adding to the pile of flaws and setbacks plaguing the F-35 joint strike fighter, a new report by the Pentagon reveals that jet's life span is nearly four times shorter than expected and the accuracy of its guns is "unacceptable." [...]

Hillary Clinton has judged that she can wait out public calls for her to release the transcripts of speeches to Goldman Sachs, which earned her $675,000 in 2013, since she expects to soon wrap up the Democratic presidential nomination, as Chelsea Gilmour describes. One of Bernie Sander’s standard attack lines against Hillary Clinton has been to call attention to the hundreds of thousands of d [...]

The Russian ruble has been gaining ground on the US dollar and the euro after global credit rating agency Moody’s upgraded Russia’s sovereign rating to investment grade with a stable outlook. [...]

Now that Trump is under attack from a fair part of the Republican establishment, it is worth remembering that much of Trump’s noxious shtick is consistent with the longstanding GOP playbook. What are we to make of the arch-authoritarian, white-nationalist Donald Trump phenomenon? [...]

India appears to be defying every foreign policy goal relentlessly pursued by the US, stubbornly striking deals with nations Washington is trying to isolate from global trade. Russia, Iran and now Venezuela – all among the top targets of Washington's aggressive rhetoric and sanctions – are also among the nations India has been refusing to turn its back on. [...]