Kim/Putin Summit: Another Neocon Policy 'Success'
Wednesday April 24, 2019
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Kim/Putin Summit: Another Neocon Policy 'Success'
Wednesday April 24, 2019
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The Collapse of Deterrence with Iran
Wednesday April 24, 2019
Earlier this month, the US administration announced its decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). Just this week, the Trump administration said that it will no longer exempt any country from US sanctions if they continue to buy Iranian oil. These moves are justifiably sparking renewed debate about US strategy for Iran.
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Pompeo Finally Tells The Truth: 'We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal'
Tuesday April 23, 2019
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Governing Ukraine is No Laughing Matter
Tuesday April 23, 2019
Comedy, it is often said, is unusual people in real situations and farce is real people in unusual situations. No doubt, it can be said that by electing comedian Vladimir Zelensky as their new president in a landslide victory in Sunday’s runoff, the people of Ukraine find themselves in a farcical situation. To be sure, the country’s embrace of an inexperienced showman represented a verdict on three decades of political failure.
Ukraine’s first president in the ‘post-Soviet’ era Leonid Kuchma told the Russian paper Komsomolskaya Pravda, “Ukraine is tired of its politicians, who for 28 years have been unable to organise life, deliver democracy, well-being or peace. The people are tired, and believe it’s time to turn over a new page.”
The Ukrainian voters perceived Zelensky as an upright candidate, a straightlaced and open person without a corruption-related past, who personified hope. He was quite tight-lipped about his policies or even about the team he’s picked to govern Ukraine. In fact, it’s a bit too early to form a full opinion about this political rookie.
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The Three Purposes of Russiagate
Tuesday April 23, 2019
Russiagate has three purposes.
One is to prevent President Trump from endangering the vast budget and power of the military/security complex by normalizing relations with Russia.
Another, in the words of James Howard Kunstler, is “to conceal the criminal conduct of US government officials meddling in the 2016 election in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign,” by focusing all public and political attention on a hoax distraction.
The third is to obstruct Trump’s campaign and distract him from his agenda when he won the election.
Despite the inability of Mueller to find any evidence that Trump or Trump officials colluded with Russia to steal the US presidential election, and the inability of Mueller to find evidence with which to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice, Russiagate has achieved all of its purposes.
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The Conspiracy Against Trump
Tuesday April 23, 2019
The real “deplorable” in today’s United States is the continuation of a foreign policy based on endless aggression to maintain Washington’s military dominance in parts of the world where Americans have no conceivable interest. Many voters backed Donald J. Trump because he committed himself to changing all that, but, unfortunately, he has reneged on his promise, instead heightening tension with major powers Russia and China while also threatening Iran and Venezuela on an almost daily basis.
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Pentagon’s Endless War Brings Endless Pollution
Monday April 22, 2019
Many of us do our part to help the environment. We recycle, we bike to work, and we buy less plastic. Yet tap water everywhere is still so filthy; the air, coastlines, parks, and lands are more and more polluted; and cancer continues to take the lives of millions of workers, young and old.
Who’s to blame? Bottling companies? Chemicals corporations? These companies are very serious polluters, and should be held accountable. But most of all, blame the US Department of Defense.
Pentagon is the biggest destroyer of all living things
The Pentagon is by far the world’s largest polluter, producing more hazardous waste than any country, and more environmental poisons than the five largest US chemical companies combined. And they get away with it. They’re accountable to no one. Misnamed the Department of Defense, it really is the “the offender of all.”
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(Government) Spending is Theft
Monday April 22, 2019
Imagine being robbed every time you receive a paycheck, but once a year getting some of the stolen money back because the thieves took more than they intended. Would you be happy about it? If you are like most Americans the answer is yes, since most people are grateful when they get a partial “refund” of the taxes the government withheld from their paychecks.
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The Prosecution Of Julian Assange Is Infinitely Bigger Than Assange
Monday April 22, 2019
Julian Assange’s mother reported yesterday that the WikiLeaks founder has not been permitted any visitors during his detention in Belmarsh Prison, including from doctors and his lawyers. Doctors who visited Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy have attested that he urgently needs medical care. Belmarsh is a maximum security prison sometimes referred to as “the UK’s Guantanamo Bay“.
And yet we’re asked to believe that this has something to do with an alleged bail violation and a US extradition request for alleged computer crimes carrying a maximum sentence of five years. If you zoom out and listen to the less-informed chatter of the overt propagandists and the brainwashed rank-and-file western mass media consumers, you will also see that people believe this has something to do with Russia and rape allegations as well.
Actually, none of these things are true. Assange is being imprisoned under draconian conditions for journalism, and for journalism only. The Obama administration declined to prosecute him after WikiLeaks’ publication of the Manning leaks out of concern that doing so would endanger press freedoms, and the Obama administration didn’t have any more evidence at its disposal than the Trump administration has now. The “crime” Assange is accused of consists of nothing other than standard journalistic practices that investigative journalists engage in all the time, including source protection and encouraging the source to obtain more material. The only thing that has changed is an increased willingness in the White House to prosecute journalists for practicing journalism, and there are an abundance of reasons to believe that he will be hit with far more serious charges once extradited to US soil. They’re not going to all this trouble for a bail violation and a five-year maximum sentence.
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Mueller Was Supposed to be the Democrats' Savior, But Now They’re Out For Blood
Friday April 19, 2019
The Mueller report has finally dropped and instead of being relieved to discover, once and for all, that the president didn’t collude with a foreign power to steal an election, Democrats and media pundits are utterly devastated.
This is America in the era of Russiagate.
The partly-redacted, nearly 400-page report, delivered to Congress on Thursday afternoon, offered no new evidence or indication that Donald Trump or his 2016 campaign were in cahoots with Moscow to prevent Hillary Clinton from ascending to what Democrats believed was her rightful presidential throne.
Of course, their high expectations for the report had already come crashing down when Mueller wrapped up his investigation mid-March and Attorney General Bob Barr sent a four-page letter summarizing its anti-climactic findings to Congress. No evidence of collusion, it said.
The opposition party and the media’s most ardent Russiagate pushers had been moving the goalposts on “collusion” for months. In the earliest days of the two-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was given savior status; he would be the one, they said, who would deliver them from the evil of the Trump presidency. “Wait for the Mueller report!”they had screamed, as the weeks and months dragged on with “bombshell” after “bombshell” evaporating into thin air.
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