Richard Balzano

by Richard Balzano The United States kidnapped Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, in January 2026* on now-crumbling allegations that he headed the fictional “Cartel of the Suns.” Washington framed Maduro as a narco-terrorist kingpin to justify what was effectively an act of war disguised as law enforcement, but prosecutors are now quietly backing away from the bolder claims used to rationalize his abduction. The irony, of course, is that the United States has spent decades enabling narcotrafficking in the name of democracy. For 40+ years Washington waged its unsuccessful War on Drugs alongside its oft-illegal Cold War pursuits. In the American hierarchy of foreign-policy values, anticommunism …

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by Richard Balzano The United States is often called the “world police,” and with reason. Washington tries to police the globe with decreasing success and a brutality that mirrors its own police state, yet framing U.S. foreign policy in legal terms implies, absurdly, that those subjected to “justice the American way” are criminals. Western media backs this up across a spectrum from overt jingoism to reluctant nuance, but the hyperbolic accusations railed against our caricatured adversaries almost always include the charge of human rights violations. Hypocrisy abounds, and the U.S.’s relationship with human rights casts an irony so dark it may yet kill us all. …

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by Richard Balzano 2026 will mark a steep drop-off in functioning American adults who still believe in American exceptionalism, American innocence, and the altruistic fairytales and moral gymnastics used to justify U.S. foreign policy for the last 100+ years. It’s been standard practice for the U.S. to disregard international law with impunity, but U.S. and Western imperialism at large has historically been framed in moral packaging. The troglodytic brazenness with which the Trump regime violates international law and projects towards the international community has exposed a dark imperial wizard behind the moral curtain, amplifying the chasm between feel-good myth and reality. Canadian Prime Minister Mark …

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by Richard M. Balzano The United States frequently criticizes Cuba, Nicaragua, Russia, Iran, China, and other adversaries for press restrictions and censorship. We repeat this with confidence, moral clarity, and the cadence of people who have internalized a very specific geopolitical common sense. And yet we, the most propagandized population on earth, may well be the one most certain we aren’t: confidently parroting conventional wisdom built through generations of curated narrative management so normalized, institutionalized, and respectably packaged that it doesn’t even register as propaganda. The problem isn’t that propaganda exists “over there”—it’s that we’ve spent decades perfecting a version of it so subtle, so …

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by Richard M. Balzano The Trump regime is itching to invade Cuba. Rambling to the press, Trump claimed it would be an “honor” to “take Cuba,” adding, “Whether I free it, take it, I think I could do anything I want with it.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called to topple Cuba throughout his career, and recently Texas Senator Ted Cruz called this “the most promising time in our lifetime to see the communist regime fall,” suggesting that intervention and foreign investment will transform it into an “island paradise.” With no sense of irony, these would-be liberators’ recent oil embargo has manufactured a humanitarian …

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by Richard Balzano Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has a skewed understanding of the Second World War. In a recent Sky News Arabia interview, Graham claimed the existential threats faced by Israel are akin to those faced by the U.S. in WWII, insisting that Israel’s military response in Gaza is no less justified than the allied choice to bomb civilian targets in Germany or the American decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan: “Just flatten it. We flattened Berlin. We flattened Tokyo. Were we wrong to drop an atomic bomb to end the Japanese reign of terror?” He has repeatedly invoked Hiroshima and Nagasaki to justify …

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