ERIC ZUESSE—To understand the Deep State, its basic ideological principles need to be recognized. Under Hitler, hereditary rights and obligations were publicly recognized; and democracy, the rule over a land by the residents on that land, was publicly condemned. Not only the hereditary principle, but the imperialistic principle, the right of foreign conquest, was publicly honored. The two principles go naturally together. The main reason why the Sauds and the other (all of them fundamentalist Sunnis) Arab kings, want to conquer Iran, is that Shia Islam denies the right of hereditary rule. (This is also why in Syria, Bashar al-Assad claims no hereditary right to rule; if he were to do otherwise, he’d violate Shia Islam and he would be rejected by Iran.) The main reason why America’s aristocracy wants to conquer Russia (other than the latter’s natural-resources wealth, which has always been a reason) is that Vladimir Putin insists that only the residents in a land should possess sovereignty there, but the U.S. and British aristocracies insist upon the right to conquer foreign lands.
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MOON OF ALABAMA—Imran Khan cannot take on the Pakistani military – at least not now. To clean up the endemic corruption and to solve the basic economic problems of his country are already huge tasks. If he proves to be successful with those he may get a chance to slowly wrestle back control over foreign policy from the military’s oversized power.
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RAY McGOVERN—Ten years ago I contended that The Gray Lady — like the rest of the Fourth Estate — was moribund. More recently, I have been saying it is dead. I now stand corrected. Rumors of its death have been exaggerated. But how does one characterize its current state? Let me borrow a memorable phrase from philosopher Billy Crystal, playing Miracle Max in “The Princess Bride,” while trying to bring the character Wesley back to life. He is just “mostly dead,” Chrystal insisted.
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Multiple activists and human rights groups have been demanding to free Assange. In 2016, a UN panel also found that Assange’s stay in the embassy amounted to “arbitrary detention,” but nothing has changed since then. The reason behind Ecuador’s change of heart towards the whistleblower is unclear, but “pressure has been brought to bear, presumably by the United States,” human rights activist Peter Tatchell believes. “The prospect of the president revoking those protections that go with citizenship and asylum, that’s a very very big deal, very big step to abrogate the right to protect an Ecuadorian citizen,” Tatchell told RT.
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NICK BEAMS—The contradictions of capitalism are not, as Harvey attempts to portray them, the contrast between what would be possible under socialism as compared to present reality but are rooted in the inexorable drive of the profit system towards the impoverishment of the working class, the development of authoritarian forms of rule and war, threatening the very destruction of human civilisation, and a relapse into barbarism. For socialism to become a reality and not simply a dream of human advancement, there must be a social force in capitalist society whose material interests drive it forward to its realisation. That force is the working class…
