EDITOR—Keaton and Russell dissect the demagogic contortions being used by the so-called “progressive” wing of the Democrats, as crystallised by AOC’s answer regarding the question of Palestine. Given the stakes and the corrupt nature of US politics, presenting ever more rotten politicians as “choices”, the American electorate is continually faced with the dilemma of the duopoly, whose cynicism has reached new heights in the current period of imperial decay. It is noted that AOC, like the rest of the Democrats —from leaders to rank and file—are so conditioned by now to speak only or mostly of identitarian issues, that their election discourse now rarely or never refers to economic or foreign policy issues, and much less to class questions, making cultural matters such as abortion and transgender problems the putative central issues of the nation (and the world). This in the midst of a blatant systematic genocide and as the world continues to slide toward a nuclear clash.
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OLIVER BOYD-BARRET—In his column yesterday, Gilbert Doctorow summarizes the comments to the Russian audience for The Great Game TV talk show of a well-credentialled Russian military source and commentator, Frants Klintsevich. Klintsevich sees the fight in Kursk as complicated and challenging and suggests that the numbers of Russian casualties are worse than generally thought. He fears a dramatic Russian escalation because it is essentially a NATO invasion, by forces that he believes – I suspect wrongly – are superior to anything that Russians possess and that might therefore prompt Russia to use nuclear arms. He claims that there are now 20,000 Ukrainian (and NATO) forces in Ukraine.
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MATT TAIBBI (et al)—n April 9th, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, reminding him of a subpoena in search of communications between Meta, the FBI, and “alleged foreign influence or election integrity.” Jordan’s office subsequently released a “Facebook Files” series, revealing documents showing Meta executives worrying about “continued pressure… including from the White House” to remove content.
Zuckerberg yesterday sent a letter that in a country with a functioning news media would have major ramifications. Not in direct response to Jordan’s April query, it appears to have been sent at Zuckerberg’s own volition, and is filled with passages deeply embarrassing to authorities. The first is about pressure to “censor” — specifically “censor,” not “moderate” or “exercise oversight”.
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OLIVER BOYD-GARRETT—The scale of Israel’s attack on Hezbollah has been grossly exaggerated for propaganda purposes.
The most important conclusions that we should draw:
(1) we have resumed a war of attrition and calibrated escalation;
(2) that Hezbollah, Iran and the Houthis will separately deal with their own “accounts,”
(3) that Iran knows that the very last thing it should give Netanyahu is a full-scale war. This is what Netanyahu most needs so that he can:
(a) draw in the US to a conflict that Israel is too weak and divided to achieve on its own;
(b) so that he can use the fog of war to camouflage the continuing liquidation of the Palestine people in Gaza and the West Bank;
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DAVID P GOLDMAN—Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the last living torch-bearer of his family’s political dynasty, endorsed Donald Trump in a scorched-earth August 23 speech denouncing the American foreign policy establishment for provoking and perpetuating the Ukraine war.
In particular, he blamed the American Neocons for the Ukraine conflict and declared that Trump’s promise to reopen negotiations with Russia and end the war as soon as he took office were reason enough to endorse the former president’s campaign.
