ROBERT STEVENS—No less implicated in this criminal affair is the corporate media, especially the New York Times, which has spent the past month disseminating the raw propaganda issued by London and Washington and baying for Moscow’s punishment. At no point did the Times raise a single question about the reliability of the claims of the May government. And now its response to the refutation of the lies is to ignore and bury Aitkenhead’s statement.
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MARGARET KIMBERLEY—The creation of an all purpose villain is meant to cover up Democratic Party electoral failures, end the Trump presidency, and of course make the case for the American exceptionalism and interventions. Regime change, proxy wars, and imperial conquest are all very much a part of the anti-Putin hysteria. But the Russophobes are playing a very dangerous game. The story of the poisoned man does not take place in a vacuum. While the public are distracted by a tall tale of Putin killing any Russian who ever died outside of that country the very dangerous Syrian war continues. Lies about the Russian government should be taken very seriously. They are war propaganda and they are meant to get public support for military action against Russia and its allies.
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What we have is, first, a genuine man bites dog story. Two of the senators who penned the letter, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), have in recent months been among the most vociferous promoters of the unproven allegations of Trump collusion with the Russians. Now they are putting aside for the moment their attacks on Trump and members of his entourage who dared shake hands or share a joke with a Russian ambassador. They are openly calling upon the Secretary of State to send U.S. personnel to negotiate with Putin’s minions over our survival on this planet.
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DEAN BAKER—There are a whole a range of other measures which leave real enlightenment types appalled by the state of the country today. While Brooks/Pinker tell us “only half the population had any savings at all” in the 1950s, a recent survey found that 63 percent of the country could not afford an unexpected bill of $500. The homeownership rate is roughly the same as it was 60 years ago. Life expectancy for those in the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution has barely budged in the last 40 years.
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What’s even more irritating is that these idiots, for their narrow and abject purposes,…
