Persicus Maximus

Richard Steve is an American author, historian, and TV personality focusing on European travel. He is the host of the public television series Rick Steves' Europe, has a Radio travel show called "Travel with Rick Steves", and has authored various location-specific travel guides. In 2009 he published a much anticipated report on Iran called “Iran: Yesterday and Today”. A man of his experience simply refused to allow politicians to hype up an already tense and complicated relationship that existed between Iran and the USA and have the two countries pushed into a spiral of military conflict. Underneath, are the report and his lecture on Iran, which I found well done.

"Every single member of my family on both sides was exterminated. Both of my parents were in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. And it is precisely and exactly because of the lessons my parents taught me and my two siblings that I will not be silent when Israel commits its crimes against the Palestinians." Norman Finkelstein "Norman is a very careful scholar. And he feels very passionately about the Holocaust. His parents are both survivors of extermination camps and he was deeply involved in their lives and the tragedies and so on. [He] knows everything about the Holocaust. And when he sees somebody using it, exploiting it, demeaning the memory of the victims for personal gain, he doesn't like it. I can understand that." Noam Chomsky, friend and professor of linguistics, MIT

One could not agree more with John Pilger when he said, The Euro-American attack on Libya has nothing to do with protecting anyone; only the terminally naive believe such nonsense. It is the West’s response to popular uprisings in strategic, resource-rich regions of the world and the beginning of a war of attrition against the new imperial rival, China. President Barack Obama’s historical distinction is now guaranteed. He is America’s first black president to invade Africa. His assault on Libya is run by the US Africa Command, which was set up in 2007 to secure the continent’s lucrative natural resources from Africa’s impoverished people and the rapidly spreading commercial influence of China. Libya, along with Angola and Nigeria, is China’s principal source of oil. As American, British, and French planes currently incinerate both "bad" and "good" Libyans, the evacuation of 30,000 Chinese workers is under way, perhaps permanently. Statements by western officials a...

Lee Wrights got it mostly right when he wrote.. “In politics, there are lies, damn lies and presidential statements. Nine days after taking the United States into another immoral, unnecessary, and unconstitutional war based on lies and distortions, President Obama continued to compound and expand the deceit. Everything about this action has been a lie, from the claims used to justify the action, to the bogus U.N. resolution crafted to give it an air of legality, to the implementation of the phony "no-fly zone." It should now be clear to anyone that the United States has intervened in a Libyan civil war on the side of the rebels. Just a day after President Obama said this action was not about removing Muammar Gadhafi from power by force, Secretary of State Clinton said the United States and our allies were considering arming the rebels, an action which would be a violation of the U.N. resolution that supposedly authorized this attack. Obama claimed, without presenting any ev...

The US wars across the world will someday come to an end, when the US runs out of money or soldiers or both. But less well understood is the collateral damage in the US where the consequences of the so called global war on terror will linger on in the form of a shattered constitution. The US Patriot Act is generally promoted as the principal legislative tool being used to fight international terrorism. It is, in reality, a devastating and poorly conceived bit of legislation originally approved just after 9/11. It will soon be up for an extension in the US Senate. President Obama, who criticized it while he was a candidate but apparently has had a change of heart since that time, favors its renewal. Most members of Congress, few of whom have ever read the entire act, want it renewed. The mainstream media likes it because who can resist patriotism? That is the bad news. But there is also some good news. Libertarians, traditional conservatives, progressives, and even some tea part...