Richard Balzano

Censorship as Foreign Policy

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by Richard M. Balzano State Department policy planners, White House speechwriters, and much of Congress enjoy an unusual workplace protection: federal buildings are equipped with an Irony Suppression System, referred to internally as the Irony Dome. OSHA has never acknowledged the hazard, but whatever they’re pumping through federal ventilation systems has rendered government officials clinically incapable of detecting irony. Thus, the U.S. lectures the world on democracy and press freedom, condemning censorship abroad while normalizing it at home, sanitized by national security-speak, albeit of an increasingly low-IQ nature. The targets are hardly random: journalists challenging American and Israeli foreign policy repeatedly encounter this machinery. Irony …

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Accountability: The Greatest Threat to U.S. National Security

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by Richard M. Balzano The Trump administration’s recent assault on the International Criminal Court (ICC) may be an abominable disgrace, but there’s no reason to panic—this is an American tradition. Washington has been treating international law like an inconvenient parking regulation for decades. The only novelty is how openly we’re admitting it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently announced that “President Trump will never allow the International Criminal Court to prosecute Americans,” explaining that Washington would “ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling their ability to operate against us.” Rubio declared that Americans “are not subject to the jurisdiction of …

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The Hydrocarbon Doctrine

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War is Hell, Energy is Business by Richard M. Balzano Venezuela, Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza appear to be separate crises, each with its own history and its own official Washington explanation. Viewed against the global energy economy, however, they begin to look considerably less distinct, as oil fields, gas reserves, pipelines, refineries, shipping lanes, sanctions, and competition for customers repeatedly intersect with American foreign policy. The countries and circumstances vary, but control over hydrocarbons and the markets through which they flow remains remarkably constant. Study the global energy economy if you want to understand American foreign policy. After murdering fishermen accused of smuggling drugs in …

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Randy Fine and the Ministry of Acceptable Journalism

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by Richard Balzano Calla Walsh, Jackson Hinkle and Christopher Helali have been accused of disinformation and propaganda. They are nontraditional journalists, certainly. They do not spend their days interviewing retired generals for mainstream outlets about why this week’s bombing campaign is regrettable but necessary, and they don’t wait until truth commissions to be on the right side of history. Instead, they travel to countries the United States considers enemies, talk to people Americans are told to hate and fear, and report perspectives that rarely penetrate our Western media echo chamber. The trio were among the remarkably few Western media figures who attended the funeral procession …

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The Politics of Agency

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by Richard M. Balzano The algorithm-driven debate-industrial complex recently gifted the internet another installment of its ongoing effort to merge cable news, professional wrestling, and civic collapse into a single monetized spectacle: Jubilee Media and Straight Arrow News released a video titled “1 Journalist vs 20 Trump Supporters” in which constitutional law attorney-turned-journalist Glenn Greenwald volleyed geopolitical common sense into a clown car of personalities parroting curated conservative talking points and outright falsehoods about the Iran war—“Operation Epstein Fury.” I highly recommend the video to anyone wishing to observe the effectiveness of propaganda and the failures of the American educational system in real time. Among …

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Ortega, Elections, and the Context Western Media Won’t Print

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by Richard Balzano “Crackdown.” “Democratic backsliding.” “Authoritarian grip.” Journalists persecuted, opposition parties crushed—and now, according to the latest eruption from the Western press, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega has abolished elections. The peripheral left offers another interpretation: Ortega is preventing U.S.-backed political organizations implicated in subversion from participating in elections, while Nicaragua has restricted media organizations with subversive ties to Washington amid ongoing U.S. hostility. Whether one approves is beside the point. Nicaragua is behaving as though the United States poses a threat to Nicaraguan sovereignty. How could they possibly have gotten that idea? First, the elections. During his July 19th address commemorating the Sandinista Revolution, …

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