There Are No War Heroes. There Are Only War Victims.



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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.



Yesterday President Donald Trump tweeted, “My thoughts and prayers are with the families of our serviceman who was killed and his fellow servicemen who were wounded in Somolia. They are truly all HEROES.” Three hours later he tweeted it again, this time with the correct spelling of Somalia.

A few days earlier, at the climax of his phony, insipid feud with the Philadelphia Eagles, Donald Trump lectured Americans that they must always stand for the national anthem.

“We stand to honor our military and to honor our country, and to remember the fallen heroes who never made it back home,” the reality TV president bloviated. “We stand to show our love for our fellow citizens and our magnificent Constitution.  We stand to pay tribute to the incredible Americans who came before us and the heroic sacrifices they made.”

In both of these statements, President Trump was lying.

The US special operations soldier who was killed in Somalia (one of the “seven countries in five years” famously named in General Wesley Clark’s revelation of the US war machine’s plans for world domination) and the four others who were injured are not heroes. The US servicemen and women who have fought and died in America’s nonstop acts of military expansionism and wars of aggression are not heroes. They are victims. They are victims of a sociopathic power establishment which does not care about them, and never has.

If what I just wrote bothered you, it is because you have been conditioned to oppose such ideas by generations of war propaganda. If you believe that US soldiers are heroes, it means that you believe that they are fighting and dying for a noble cause; for your freedom, for democracy, for the good and the just. It turns the deaths of the fallen into a tragic but noble sacrifice in your eyes, which keeps you from realizing that they have actually been dying for the profit margins of war plutocrats, land and resource assets, and the neoconservative agenda to secure control of the planet.

There is nothing heroic about being thrown into the gears of the war machine and having one’s body and mind ripped apart for the advancement of plutocratic interests. But if your rulers can trick you into thinking that dead US soldiers died for something worth dying for, you won’t turn around and lay the blame on the war profiteers and ambitious sociopaths who are truly responsible for their deaths.

So they lie to you. Constantly.



People often counter this notion by pointing at World War 2, about which a case for the possibility of heroism in war can indeed be made. But the fact that this argument needs to reach back 73 years to the very brink of living memory in order to find a justifiable US war tells you everything you need to know about the weakness of that argument. Since 1945, when human civilization looked completely different and America itself was still an apartheid state, we have seen the US military spread around the globe, collapse nations, and butcher millions upon millions of people, all at the expense of the lives of US military personnel, and all without just cause.

The people whose lives have been used like Kleenex and discarded by the US war machine did not die for a good cause. They did not die fighting for freedom or democracy. They are not heroes. They are victims.

We need to talk about this. The way we can be shamed into silence for saying such things is truly toxic, because it prevents us from addressing the very real problem that the United States starts unjust wars constantly and spends soldiers’ lives like pennies. It probably is nice for the families of war victims to tell themselves comforting stories about how their loved one died fighting to make the world a better place, and normally I’d be happy to let them harbor that personal fantasy without saying anything to disrupt it, but people are dying here. Human lives are more important than the psychological comfort of those who would prefer to lie to themselves, whether it’s a grieving widow or just someone who doesn’t like thinking about how evil their government is.

Many of the men and women who fight and die advancing the depraved agendas of America’s unelected power establishment do so with good intentions. Many of them honestly, sincerely believe that they are forces of good in the world. But the longer we allow the delusion to continue that US military personnel are participating in something heroic, the longer we are necessarily perpetuating the delusion that acts of US military aggression are good and noble, and the more of these people will be needlessly killed, wounded and psychologically destroyed while enacting the corrupt will of evil people.

The correct response to news of a US serviceman or woman dying in combat is not gratitude and patriotism. The correct response is rage at the people who put them in harm’s way. The longer we continue pretending that their deaths are a glorious, noble sacrifice and not an unforgivable outrage, the longer those flag-draped coffins will keep flying home.



General Wesley Clark’s revelation has been coming true, but not in quite the way it was spelled out for him. The 9/11 attacks gave rise to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, which has enabled the United States to build up a military presence inside the borders of any nation deemed to have terrorists in it, which has in turn been made much easier as the regime change destabilization inflicted upon places like Iraq and Libya have caused terrorism to run rampant and widespread. The violence in Somalia has continued largely because of a US destabilization campaign. Now it is full of US troops, and its president is a dual US citizen from Buffalo, New York.

US troops shouldn’t be there. US troops shouldn’t be anywhere but the US. People join the military with the understanding that they are doing it to protect and serve their country, not that their lives will be needlessly placed in harm’s way securing the belt of oligarchic imperialism. It’s time to stop pretending that globalist military expansionism and neoconservative power grabbing is a heroic cause to serve, and begin calling it what it is: the depraved misuse of a defense force that is causing the needless, meaningless deaths of human beings.

And it’s time to start getting angry about it.

____________________________

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Caitlin Johnstone
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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 


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U.S.-Saudi Pressure On Jordan Opens The Way For Iran

DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY “B”

HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.


The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has traditionally been in the 'western' camp. It is politically attached to the United Kingdom and the United States as well as to Saudi Arabia and other Sunni majority Gulf states. The Jordanian King Abdullah II has in the past been hostile to Iran. He was to first to publicly stoke fear of a 'Shia crescent'.  But the new Saudi and U.S. plans for 'peace' with Israel are a threat to Jordan and to King Abdullah's personal legitimacy. He needs to change his position. Provided with the right incentives Jordan could, eventually, join the 'resistance' side with Iran, Syria and Hizbullah.

The country ruled by King Abdullah has nearly ten million inhabitants but is relatively poor. It has few natural resources. The generally well educated population attracted some foreign investment in its industry. Many Jordanians work abroad and send remittances. But all that is not enough. The country needs foreign subsidies to keep its standard of living.

The King of Saudi Arabia derives legitimacy from his title as "Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques" in Mecca and Medina. The King of Jordan springs from the thousand year old great Hashemite dynasty. He heads the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf (Foundation) and is the custodian of the Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. This responsibility is the only prominent function left for the Hashemite family. It is the source of King Abdullah's legitimacy.

The changes in Saudi Arabia's policy towards Israel and the Zionist 'peace plan' the Trump administration develops create a new situation for Jordan. It is put under immense economic pressure to agree to these plans.

Jordan took part in the war on Syria. While Turkey provided support for the "rebels" attacking Syria from the north Jordan played a similar role in the south. Weapon and ammunition supplies from Saudi Arabia and Qatar were shipped through Jordan and smuggled into Syria. The country welcomed the families of the 'rebels' as refugees and provided medical support. The "southern operation room" of the 'rebels', run by the CIA, was hosted in Jordan's capital Amman.



The war interrupted the important and lucrative transportation line from Turkey through Syria and Jordan to the Gulf countries. The refugees were a burden. The once flourishing tourist business fell back. Like most other countries Jordan had expected a short war leading to 'regime change' in Syria within a few months. But now, seven years later, the war on Syria is a major problem for Jordan. The one million refugees from Syria led to an increase in rents while wages went down. About 20% of the working population is without a job. The war needs to end.

Jordan receives some $1.2 billion per year in military and economic aid from the United States. In earlier years it additionally received $1 to 2 billions from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf States. That still was not enough to compensate for the burden of the war. Since 2011 Jordan's public debt increased from 70% to 95% of its GDP. Its budget deficit this year will likely top $1 billion.

This year Saudi Arabia held back. It gave no money for Jordan. With Trump ruling in Washington the U.S. payments are in doubt. Jordan took out a $723 million IMF loan but it came with strings attached. The IMF demands austerity from the Jordan state. Since the beginning of this year taxes on basic food staples increased by 50 to 100 percent. There were five increases of fuel prices. Electricity and water prices were also hiked. All that was not enough. Since last year the Prime Minister of Jordan worked on a new income tax law which would double the number of people who have to pay income tax. It would also introduce harsh measures against tax evaders.

Since May 30 Jordan has seen daily protests, seemingly over rising costs of living and the new income tax law. The protests were led by 33 trade unions who called for a general strike. The call for a strike was followed by many and the protests attracted quite large crowds. They demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister and an end of the income tax plans. Such protests are not especially extraordinary. The usual solution for such a situation is known.

After a few days of protests King Abdullah fired Prime Minister Hani Mulki who had insisted on the tax law. Usually that would have been enough. The people would go home, the law in question would be tweaked or abolished and the government would muddle through.

But not this time. The demonstrations continue. They now include chants against the monarchy. This is unusual. Very unusual.

The economic situation and the income tax law may not be the only explanation for this civil strife. There are rumors that the Saudis, or the CIA, are behind them.

On May 18 the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held an extraordinary summit in Turkey to protest against Israel's atrocities in Palestine and Trump's plans for Jerusalem. Many heads of states took part including the President of Iran and the Emir of Qatar. Saudi Arabia and its Emirate ally sent only lower level delegations. The Jordan King had been asked(machine transl.) not to attend the summit. He went anyway:

King Abdullah of Jordan told the Istanbul summit that he rejected any attempt to change the status quo of Jerusalem and its holy sites.

That comment went against the U.S. decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem. It went against the Saudi-U.S. 'peace plan' which will hand Jerusalem to the Zionists. But even more important from a Saudi point of view was this picture.


King Abdullah not only shook hands with Iran's President Rohani but the two also held the first top level talks between Jordan and Iran in 15 years:

The Iranian and Jordanian heads of state have reportedly held a brief meeting on the sidelines of an special summit of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Turkey.
...
King Abdullah II is a pro-Western monarch but Amman’s ties with the US and Saudi Arabia have recently been shaken over the issue of Palestine.

Riyadh’s reported coziness to Israel has worried Jordan which is in charge of the major Muslim shrine complex on the Temple Mount, the al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Trump administration and the Saudi Clown Prince Muhammad bin Salman want Jordan to agree to their 'peace plan' with Israel. The Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem would come under Israeli control and would be endangered. Jewish fanatics plan to build a 'third Jewish temple' over the Al-Aqsa mosque. (There is no proof that a first or second temple was ever there.)  Any such agreement thus threatens the legitimacy of the Hashemite King.

The lack of financial support from Saudi Arabia and the unusual demonstrations in Jordan are supposed to put pressure on King Abdullah. The Saudis and the U.S. want him to submit under the dirty deal they made with the Zionists. If Abdullah does not go along with the Saudi/U.S. plans he will have to leave. If he goes along he will lose his legitimacy.

There is one alternative. King Abdullah could change sides. He can ask Iran (or Qatar? Or maybe even Russia?) for financial support. A few billions will do. They could come in the form of industrial investments. In exchange for such economic support he would have to commit to the 'resistance' side. He would have to stop his support for the war on Syria. He would have to lower his relations with Saudi Arabia and take a stronger position against Israel.

But Saudi Arabia is still a neighbor of Jordan and rich. Many Jordanians work there. The U.S. protects Jordan from Israel. It is thus unlikely that Abdullah would openly take such a big step towards Iran. But there are probably ways and means to slowly move into a more neutral position.

Wherever the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have started conflicts and wars - in Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar, Yemen and Syria - Iran has won. The Saudi pressure on Jordan might have a similar effect.

Posted by b on June 7, 2018 at 02:15 PM | Permalink .


About the Author
"b" is a funding editor of the Moon of Alabama website.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

 ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL QUOTES BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS

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Russia-gate and the Crisis of American Exceptionalism

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.



The following is an edited version of remarks delivered to the Black Agenda Report panel on “Russiagate: Muzzling the Black Left and the March to War,”at the Left Forum, in New York City, this past weekend.

“Indications of deep unrest that occurred under Obama, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Sanders phenomena, have all been blamed on Russia.”

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he era of Trump has been just as frustrating as the era of Obama. Over the last six months, I have channeled some of this frustration into the co-writing of a book with Professor of Liberation Theology Roberto Sirvent titled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: The Fake News of US Empire. The book will consist of twenty-one chapters detailing just how important the ideologies of American exceptionalism and innocence are to the promotion of US empire, racism, and capitalist exploitation. Russia-gate was a catalyst for the work and has its own chapter in the book. The psychotic narrative has dominated political discourse in the United States for over two years with no end in sight. There was no way to avoid it.

Russia-gate is a manifestation of American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism posits that the American way of life is the most superior way of life. It is the white man’s burden personified in the nation-state. The ideology burdens Americans, defined as white and preferably capitalist, with the duty to civilize those outside of their class and racial affiliation. The twin evils of white rule and capitalist plunder reign supreme and are expanded and protected by a third evil: militarism. American exceptionalism says that war redeems the uncivilized from the perils of ungovernability, capitalist plunder leads the uncivilized to prosperity, and white rule bestows humanity itself upon the non-white world.

“American way of life is ‘white man’s burden’ personified in the nation-state.”

Russia-gate has profoundly challenged the logic of American exceptionalism in a period of American decline. Unlike the first Cold War, Russia has been labeled a threat not for its socialist political economy but because it has been accused of helping elect Donald Trump. The imaginary Russian threat to America is not terrorism or communism, but Russia as a state itself. Russia-gate is predicated upon the notion that the Russian Federation possesses both the will and the power to shape politics in America. This assumes that the American nation-state is neither invincible nor its political system exceptional. A contradiction to say the least.


Russia-gate is another myth of American exceptionalism made for and by the American oligarchy. It follows a long history of the American oligarchy’s need to create an “enemy” to vanquish as proof of its racial and economic superiority. Russian meddling in the 2016 elections has not been proven and will never be proven. The mental gymnastics that the US ruling class has performed to prove their own lie are truly astounding to watch. We have heard everything from Russian President Vladimir Putin conspiring with WikiLeaks and Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton to Trump benefitting from $100,000 worth in supposedly Russian purchased advertisements on social media to promote efforts of Black Lives Matter activists and white nationalists alike. It seems that with each passing day, examples of Russian meddling in US politics become only more absurd and detached from reality.

Russia-gate is another myth of American exceptionalism made for and by the American oligarchy. It follows a long history of the American oligarchy’s need to create an “enemy” to vanquish as proof of its racial and economic superiority. Russian meddling in the 2016 elections has not been proven and will never be proven. The mental gymnastics that the US ruling class has performed to prove their own lie are truly astounding to watch. We have heard everything from Russian President Vladimir Putin conspiring with WikiLeaks and Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton to Trump benefitting from $100,000 worth in supposedly Russian purchased advertisements on social media to promote efforts of Black Lives Matter activists and white nationalists alike. It seems that with each passing day, examples of Russian meddling in US politics become only more absurd and detached from reality. That is, unless one could conceive of $100,000 worth in social media ads superseding the most militarized and high-tech surveillance apparatus in human history or the most corporately-controlled, war-thirsty political system in human history.

“The imaginary Russian threat to America is not terrorism or communism, but Russia as a state itself.”

Russia-gate has buried all truth underneath the lie that the US is under attack from Russia. Putin is under every bed and in every wireless router in America. Untold numbers of Russians are hacking into social media accounts and turning the “alt-left” into Russian trolls. Russia has been conveniently positioned as the most dangerous and heinous nation in the world to instill fear and pro-American chauvinism into the minds of struggling workers and poor people. Who better to promote the lies of American exceptionalism than the spooks in the American intelligence services that have been at the vanguard of Russia-gate since day one?

All seventeen intelligence agencies led by the likes of James Clapper and John Brennan coalesced with Hillary Clinton and her big tent of Wall Street donors to spread the Russia-gate lie back in 2016. Russia-gate’s intelligence objectives were always numerous. The first objective was to make Trump’s campaign promise to ease relations with Russia a political impossibility regardless of the orange billionaire’s actual intentions. The second was to politically neuter the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the DNC’s theft of the primary. And the third was to demonize radical and revolutionary forces capable of moving struggling workers and poor people, especially Black people, in the United States away from the two-party system and toward efforts to imagine independent political alternatives. These goals ultimately explain why publications like yours truly have been labeled dupes of Russia and subsequently censored on social media and why the Green Party’s Jill Stein was subject to federal investigation for ties to Russia.

“The mental gymnastics that the US ruling class has performed to prove their own lie are truly astounding to watch.”

American exceptionalism is a potently racist and diseased ideological force that has prevented a public discussion on the consequences of Russia-gate from taking place. We have the Democratic Party and their allies in the intelligence services to thank for this. One can find banners and signs condemning Trump as Putin’s puppet or, homophobically, as “his bitch” at Democratic Party-led demonstrations. Hardline Democrats have expressed outrage over Trump’s mythical connections to Russia but have directed none toward the professional liars leading the campaign. American intelligence agencies are responsible for the COINTELPRO operations that assassinated scores of liberation fighters like Fred Hampton and sent many others like Mumia Abu-Jamal to a life of imprisonment. They are the same liars who told us there were Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) in Iraq and Gaddafi-led genocidal crimes in Libya. These professional liars have led US operations to overthrow over fifty foreign governments around the world in the same number of years, killing millions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America to enrich monopoly capital.

American exceptionalism requires that people in the US forget the atrocities of its government to be truly believed, especially in this time of crisis. The architects of Russia-gate have attempted to place the entirety of what calls itself the left in the US into a permanent political coma by blaming Russia for Trump. Under the spell of Russia-Trump fever, the racist and capitalist rulers of US imperialism can rest comfortably knowing that eight years of Obama-led imperialism -- let alone, the genocidal foundations of the US -- have been forgotten. Indications of deep unrest that occurred under Obama, such as the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Sanders phenomena, have all been blamed on Russia. Trump has been vilified as a product of Russian-backed “alt-left” and “alt-right” insurgency when the reality is that the blame for Trump falls at the feet of the hobbling imperialist system.

“Russia has been conveniently positioned as the most dangerous and heinous nation in the world to instill fear and pro-American chauvinism into the minds of struggling workers and poor people.”

Russia-gate personifies everything that is wrong with narrow, Democratic Party-led anti-Trumpism. Trump has been made into a larger than life character in part because US imperialism needs him in the spotlight. If you can’t get rid of him, use him. Criminalizing Trump as a “Manchurian candidate” of Russia has given US imperialism room to continue its NATO-led war provocations in Eastern Europe, its imperial ventures in Syria, and its incessant war maneuvers toward Iran and Korea. It has also given the ruling class a convenient scapegoat to avoid accountability in the rapid decline in living standards across world. Millions are living half-lives under the threat of racist state-sponsored terror and mass unemployment and underemployment. Billions have no wealth at all. All of this is just fine so long as those pesky Russians stop meddling in US affairs.

Russia-gate is what American exceptionalism looks like in its most desperate state. The ideology makes it easy to fall into the trap of blaming Trump for everything, into calling him a fascist or worse, a Russian, as nearly the entire ruling class has pushed us into doing. It is easy to turn a blind-eye to the bi-partisan consensus on endless war and austerity when you have Putin on the brain. Trump can be labeled a fascist for scapegoating immigrants and blamed for Obama’s immigration policies, as prominent CNN and New York Timesjournalists were caught doing late last month. We can forget the hundreds of years of racist, capitalist oppression inherent to US empire and betray the impoverished masses whose lives are only becoming more imperiled by a system that has nothing to offer but worsening degrees of poverty and war.

“It is easy to turn a blind-eye to the bi-partisan consensus on endless war and austerity when you have Putin on the brain.”

Our commitment must be to the truth. There is no truth to Russia-gate. Russia-gate has muzzled the Black left and pushed the entire left into an even more conservative position than it was prior. Russia-gate has villainized Russia in a period when the world needsthe people of the US to align with Russia and China and whoever else is willing stop endless US wars abroad. Russia-gate has once again exposed why it is so difficult for workers in the US to view themselves as an exploited class even when the system has so obviously failed them. That the ruling class can so easily criminalize Russia as it kills Syrians and lynches Black Americans with impunity only amplifies the urgency of the moment. We must vigilantly struggle to expose Russia-gate as a farce, a farce rooted in the mythology of American exceptionalism. We need more to reject this mythology if we are to participate in the global class war with any hope for victory.

Danny Haiphong is an activist and journalist in the New York City area. He is currently writing a book with Roberto Sirvent entitled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: The Fake News of US Empire. He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com

 


About the author
 Black Agenda Report's  Columnist Danny Haiphong is an Asian activist and political analyst in the New York City area. He can be reached  at  wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com 



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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report 




Russia’s Putin and Israel’s Netanyahu negotiate . . . about what?

BE SURE TO PASS THESE ARTICLES TO FRIENDS AND KIN. A LOT DEPENDS ON THIS. DO YOUR PART.

Ann Garrison, BAR contributor
DATELINE: 06 Jun 2018



“Russia has friendly relations with Israel, and more than a million Russian Jews emigrated to Israel, but Iran is a strategic ally of Russia.”

Last week major state and corporate news outlets reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had met and agreed on removing Iranian troops from Syria and/or Iran’s border with Syria. Then, on June 3rd, Haaretz and other outlets reported that Israel had, for the first time, participated in a NATO “exercise” near the Russian border. I spoke to Rick Sterling, an investigative journalist specializing in Syria, about what could be behind these reports.

Ann Garrison: I’d like to go through some of these disparate reports about Russia and Israel one by one, but first, what do you think of Israel’s first ever participation in NATO war games near the Russian border?

Rick Sterling: The head of NATO recently confirmed that NATO would NOT get into a war involving Israel because Israel is not a NATO member. But Israel is a “partner,” and in 2014 the US Congress designated Israel as a “major strategic partner.” So I think Israel may be participating in the war maneuvers to demonstrate that it’s a good partner. Of course, Russia sees the NATO military exercises on its border as provocative. They are countering with their own military exercises, so it’s just a continuation in the wrong direction away from peace and mutual acceptance.

AGOK, now to these reports about negotiations between Russia and Israel. Just before the news that Israel had participated in NATO war games near Russia, Bloomberg News reported that Israel was campaigning to break the alliance between Iran and Russia. What do you think of that?

RS: It’s certainly true that Israel is playing the diplomatic game and trying to drive a wedge between Russia and Iran, but the stories are highly exaggerated. They contain both contradictory information and outright disinformation. Russia has friendly relations with Israel, and more than a million Russian Jews emigrated to Israel. But Iran is a strategic ally of Russia.

AG: On June 2nd, the Times of Israel reported that Israel denies inking a deal with Russia on Iranian withdrawal from Syria. What about that?

RS: Well, I haven't seen any written deal. So what we're going on are media reports, which are spun in different directions. So, number one, I don't know if there was a written agreement. Number two, it's certainly the case that Israel is not only saying that they don't want Iranian militia or advisors anywhere near the border with the Israeli occupied Golan Heights, but also that they want them all out of Syria.

“Israel exaggerates the Iranian involvement in Syria for its own purposes.”

Russia and Syria may have agreed to relocate some of the Iranian advisors or Iranian militias away from the Golan Heights border. There were reports that some of those forces were headed out to eastern Syria to do combat there against ISIS, which continues to hold an important area. But even if Israel is trying to insist that no Iranian advisors or militia be in Syria, I can't see Syria or any sovereign state agreeing to such a demand. Israel exaggerates the Iranian involvement in Syria for its own purposes.

AG: Asharq Al-Aswat reported, also on June 2nd, that Russia and Israel had agreed to keep Iran away from Syria's South.

RS: Asharq Al-Aswat is a Saudi-owned newspaper coming out of London, so the Saudi influence and heavy anti-Iran bias is evident. The one element of this story that may be true is that the US may actually be uncomfortable with any agreement regarding the US forces that control the area around Al Tanf, a Syrian border area with Iraq. That’s the main highway from Baghdad to Damascus, and it’s currently controlled by US military and various armed militants—including former ISIS fighters—who are trained and controlled by the US. The US doesn't want to give that up, but the Syrian foreign minister is not mincing his words. He's saying that all the US forces must leave Syria eventually, and specifically that they should leave that area at the Syria-Iraq border soon.

Al Tanf and the highway between Iraq and Syria is a flashpoint. The US has no right to be there but seems to be digging in while Syria is getting increasingly adamant that they must leave. Things may come to a head there.

AG:  Al Monitor says that Russia is “trying a new playbook to calm the escalation between Israel and Iran.” How about that?

RS: I think that's true. What we've seen emerge in the last several years is that the diplomat in the room is Russia. If you look at what's going on there, the Russian diplomacy is quite impressive and at times quite surprising. Six or eight months ago, the Saudi monarch flew to Moscow for the very first time. Russia brought Iran and Turkey together at the Astana talks, and Russia is trying to soothe the tension and danger of conflict between Israel and Iran. So that story is probably accurate.

AG: Have you seen any reports about negotiations between Russia and Israel on RT, Russia’s state- sponsored English outlet?

RS: I’ve seen some RT coverage, both stories and photographs. They certainly don't put the spin on it that some of the Western and Israeli media do.

The fundamental fact is that Russia doesn't want to go to war with the US. They realize how dangerous the situation in Syria currently is. They are not going to give up their long-term alliance with Syria, but at the same time, they're doing everything they can to cool things down and avoid a head-on conflict.

AG: OK, so we've gone through just a sample of the wildly disparate reports and commentary about this, but after reading a lot of it, I had the feeling that this is headed toward the Balkanization of Syria, which has been much discussed for a long time. What are your thoughts about that?

RS: Well, that's the reality on the ground right now. Turkey is occupying part of the north. Israel and Israeli-supported terrorists are occupying part of the south. The US and the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) control big swathes of eastern Syria. So Balkanization is already the informal reality on the ground.

In early 2016, John Kerry called it “plan B,” dividing up Syria and partitioning it. He didn't say it quite that explicitly, but he was clearly suggesting that that's where things were headed. Now, in opposition to that, you've got the Syrian government saying that it will not allow partition and that the US has to leave Syria. Both Assad and the Syrian foreign minister are saying that increasingly forcefully. So we'll have to see. At the same time it's dangerous because there's also threatening talk coming from the United States.

“John Kerry called it “plan B,” dividing up Syria and partitioning it.”

The US, Turkey, and Israel are, of course, violating international law codified in the UN Charter by their military presence in Syria, but the Syrian government seems to be taking things step by step with the support of Russia and Iran. Hopefully, progress can be made and the conflict can be wound down. That would certainly be to the benefit of all Americans as well as Syrians and other peoples of the Middle East.

AG: Do you think that Russia is opposed to Balkanization?

RS: Oh, absolutely. They're opposed to it. They saw what happened with the war in Yugoslavia and the split, the separation into smaller, weaker states.

Russia also has its own experience with Western and Saudi-funded terrorism. If you look at a map, Syria is not that far from Russia, so of course they are very concerned with the situation there. They have a big stake in seeing the conflict wind down and a peaceful resolution, remote as that may seem. They're taking the lead in helping to resolve it and working toward reconciliation, which is going to require concessions on the part of Damascus. Russia has explicitly talked about an internationally supervised election in Syria, and hopefully that’s where things will end rather than in World War III.

The question is whether the US and its allies, especially Israel and Saudi Arabia, will give up their goal of “regime change” in Syria. Or will they continue to finance and arm the opposition to further bleed Syria and its allies? The US and allies are prolonging the conflict behind a pretense of humanitarian concern. Meanwhile they ignore obvious travesties such as the Israeli killings at the Gaza border.

AG: And just one more point of clarification regarding the presence of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah in Syria. Their presence is legal, according to international law, because they’re there at the request of the Syrian government. Right?

RS: Yes, that's correct. Russia, Iran, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah are in Syria supporting Syrian sovereignty. The Iranian presence in the West tends to be wildly exaggerated, but they do have militia there. They also have advisors, and they’ve lent economic support to Syria. Both Lebanon and Iran know that their own governments are at risk there.

Of course, it was General Wesley Clark who said, back in 2007, that the US had a hit list of seven countries, and we've already seen several of them overthrown. Lebanon and Iran know they’re on that list. I’m sure they all realize that if the Syrian state is destroyed, if the government there is toppled and chaos reigns as it does in Libya, they’ll be the next targets. So they're there for their own sake and for regional stability, not just to support their ally Syria.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work most often appears in Consortium News . He can be reached at rsterling1@gmail.com. •  Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann@kpfa.org

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Don’t fall for the post-modernist/relativist trap.
The struggle against the system requires lucidity, not narcissistic flim-flam.

 




The MH 17 False Flag, One of Many

BE SURE TO PASS THESE ARTICLES TO FRIENDS AND KIN. A LOT DEPENDS ON THIS. DO YOUR PART.

By Gordon Duff / journal-neo.org

The west is revving up this lie again. Watch out!

1adc94a3bcfeb61c5a0f6a70670006b9

Remains of MH17—showing fighter cannon bullet holes, testimony to the West's sheer villainy.


It was July 17, 2014 and a war was raging in Ukraine between American-backed extremists who had taken Kiev in a bloody coup and purge. A Malaysian Airlines passenger jet with 298 onboard was directed by air traffic controllers themselves controlled by the same bloody regime that had just taken power, toward closed air space.

Kiev was using its Russian supplied modern air force on its own citizens. The airliner was being directed on the same path used by SU 25 and SU 27 jets hitting the cities in the Donbass and Lugansk pockets.

The date now is May 25, 2018. BBC and Reuters have just announced that Russia is “liable” for the events of July 17, 2014, based on an investigation no one understands.

Malaysia had asked for an independent investigation but was warned off by the United States, told to keep quiet. I was part of the team Malaysia had sought to investigate the downing of MH 17, along with VT editor, Washington attorney Thomas Mattingly and a group of former FBI agents under ISI Corp.

Instead, the investigation was done by a Dutch group. It is clear, more than clear, that the United States was aware Kiev had down the plane and was leading a coverup, protecting Kiev and planning to use the incident to blame Russia.

Recent events makes this abundantly clear.

Blaming Russia is a way of life in Washington. Let’s look at Ukraine and try to understand what was going on at the time.

You see, when Kiev fell to the neo-Nazi coup, Eastern Ukraine (the "Donbass, with a majority of Russian-speaking citizens) held out, loyal to the pro-Russian elected government.

Calling this a “color revolution,” particularly after the slaughter in Odessa in May 2014, is unsupportable. This was a foreign financed coup using armed and trained terror groups.

Let’s compare Ukraine with Syria, something journalists and academics have avoided doing.

In Kiev, the capital fell to Western backed terrorists. In Syria, the capital of Damascus wasn’t taken and Russia, along with Iran and Hezbollah, have aided Syria in fighting off al Qaeda and ISIS, organizations the world is now realizing are “fake terror groups” hired and funded by the West.

If all of this seems confusing, it should. The difference between terrorists and “freedom fighters” is entirely subjective based on who controls the media. Those who back Kiev not only control the media, but they can guarantee a predetermined outcome to any investigations with “no questions asked.”

By that, of course, we are referring to the controlled press, and they as no questions whatsoever.

War Between Free and Controlled Press


The downing of MH17 triggered an orgy of immediate accusations against Russia and Putin, as planned. Brainwashed and prostituted cartoonists naturally did their part to keep the demonization slanders alive...

Four years ago, an investigative group from Russia Today and Veterans Today looked for solutions to the issue of MH17. We looked at how, but never why or who. Those things are and always have been clear, the issues of motive, the issues of who gains.

The Dutch now claim that Russia had “infiltrated” air defense groups into Ukraine and chose to shoot down a Malaysian airliner for no imaginable reason. That motive, “no imaginable reason,” should be a problem for both governments and the media, not that I use the term “should.”

However, there is evidence, considerable evidence, that MH17 was downed by aircraft. We are going to examine this hypothesis and the reaction to it when it was brought up back in 2014.

Background

The recurrent idea of a ground launched missile, a story originating as propaganda from Kiev, has been a story the mainstream media and Western governments have held to in spite of the total lack of evidence.

Lack of evidence, except for “alternative facts,” backed up by “fake news,” particularly when dealing with false flag terrorism on behalf of Western intelligence agencies, has never been a problem. Selling propaganda while controlling all media is easy.

It also emboldens perpetrators to acts of extreme cruelty and insanity. Calling it anything but that is mincing words. Who shoots down airliners for amusement? I can think of one nation, the United States, ask Iran.

Ukraine’s War and MH17

The media in the West reports nothing of Ukraine. So, when villages are shelled daily and the Kiev regime moves against Donbass and Luhansk, the breakaway republics, there is no reporting. Thus, when recent “findings” accuse Russia, we note two issues:

  1. Ukraine is preparing for an invasion of the breakaway regions despite being signatory to the Minsk peace accords.
  2. The US is in political turmoil with a weakened president turning to “wag the dog” game playing, even to the point of risking global conflict.

The media in the West does report on Ukraine, but the reports are of the Dutch investigation into MH 17. The Dutch are now saying that it was Russian forces that used a surface to air missile, operating from inside “rebel territory,” that shot down the airliner.

Russia not only denies this, but states that the missiles that the Dutch claim were used had been out of service for years. Russia also asserts that they never stationed air defenses inside the breakaway republics and that the Dutch story is part of a propaganda offensive.

Thus, we question why this “edited and expanded” report from “the Dutch,” wrought with wild conspiracy theories and propaganda, why now?


More western propaganda. Literally a pack of warmongering liars. The Brits led the hysteria parade.

Context
It is vital to look at MH 17 in light of newly accepted norms. In 2014, it was considered “conspiracy theory” to assert that a government, be it the US or nations such as Israel, might purposefully kill civilians or stage imaginary terror attacks to justify acts of military aggression as “self defense” or “retaliation.”

Today it is generally accepted that not only is false flag terrorism, state sponsored, used but that is the “go to” strategy used by the US, Israel, Britain, France and Saudi Arabia.

In this light, particularly after the controversy over a series of incidents, the Skripal “poisoning” in Britain and the “White Helmets” role in staging Syrian gas attacks, MH 17 must be revisited taking into account that shooting down a civilian airliner is something factions within Ukraine or even the US are not only capable of but more than willing to do as well.

The SU 25 Dilemma

On July 17, 2017, a Malaysian Airlines plane crashed with 298 on board in Eastern Ukraine. It had been rerouted over a combat region by air traffic controllers in Kiev, according to a Spanish air traffic controller named “Carlos.”

Soon afterward, a media smear campaign against this individual began, claiming Russia paid him to lie. Part of his story was that two Su25 aircraft operated by the Kiev regime had trailed the Malaysian airlines Boeing.

Quashing this story, the SU25 account and anyone who examines or reports on it, has, as we will see, become a mission of utmost importance.

Radar Evidence Withheld

The US, operating an onshore AGEGIS radar system when went “live” in 2013 (which the US now denies as well) could have confirmed or disproven any claims. The US has chosen not to release any information, not from AEGIS ships, including the USS Donald Cook, which was on station at the time, and their onshore system, which had previously been stationed in New Jersey after 9/11 to protect the American capitol from cruise missile attacks.

The US felt the AEGIS system and its Raytheon built partner system on two giant aerostat balloons, was no longer needed to protect the US. This decision, in itself, is minimally bizarre at best.

With “Carlos” smeared and running for his life from Western intelligence agencies, Google Corporation began scrubbing all data on the Su25 aircraft from the Internet. New articles were put up claiming the SU25 couldn’t have flown high enough to shoot down an airliner. Those articles were fake and based on a configuration for the SU25 that had no pilot oxygen system, something they failed to mention.

Lack of sufficient oxygen made high altitude flight impossible, of course, but the real issue of MH 17 being downed in air combat is much more complicated.

This has been the major controversy, one suppressed, one censored and one that opens doors to wider controversy.

Radar Spoofing and Terrorism

The following excerpt is taken from a Russia Today investigation featuring this author along with Russian pilots who flew the SU 25 in combat.

“Electronic countermeasure pods are no longer reliable source of information, so anyone who says the radar has identified a SU-25 aircraft in the MH17 tragedy is trying to mislead people, Gordon Duff, senior editor of Veterans Today newspaper, told RT.

RT: Though the preliminary results of the investigation into the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine won’t be known until July new theories of what happened appear every day. One claim is that the Boeing was brought down by an SU-25 fighter jet. But its chief designer has now told German media that’s impossible, because it can’t fly high enough. What do you make of that?

Gordon Duff: The claim that it was an SU-25 is unsupportable. Since 2010, NATO has begun using electronic countermeasure pods. They are designed by Raytheon and BAE Systems. When attached to an aircraft, an SU-27, an SU-29 maybe even an F-15, these allow the backscattering – that is when you use radar, and this is what was said the radar identified as two SU-25 aircraft. Well these pods that attach to any plane can make a plane look like an SU-25 when it’s not an SU-25 or a flock of birds or anything else. It’s a new version of poor man’s stealth…It’s called radar spoofing, so with radar spoofing anyone who says they have identified an aircraft by radar is trying to mislead people because that’s no longer a reliable way of dealing with things.

If I could go on with the SU-25, the claimed service ceiling is based on the oxygen’s supply in the aircraft. Now there is a claim that this plane will only work to 22,000 feet. At the end of the WWII a German ME-262 would fly at 40,000 feet. A P-51 Mustang propeller plane flew at 44,000 feet. The SU-25 was developed as an analogue of the A-10 Thunderbolt, an American attack plane. The planes have almost identical performance except that the SU-25 is faster and more powerful. The A-10 Thunderbolt has a service ceiling of 45,000 feet. The US estimates the absolute ceiling, which is a different term, of the SU-25. And we don’t know whether the SU-25 was involved at all, we are only taking people’s word and people we don’t trust. But the absolute ceiling for the plane is 52,000 feet.

READ MORE: Could SU-25 fighter jet down a Boeing? Former pilots speak out on MH17 claims

RT:Do you agree with the statement that “many more factors indicate that the Boeing 777 was hit by a ground-to-air missile that was launched from a Buk missile system”? How much technical expertise would it take to fire a Buk launcher?

GD: We’ve looked at this. I had an investigating team, examiners, which included aircraft investigation experts from the US including from the FAA, the FBI and from the Airline Pilots Association. I also had one of our air traffic and air operational officers…with the Central Intelligence Agency look at this. And one of the things we settled is that in the middle of the day if this were a Buk missile the contrail would have been seen for 50 miles. The contrail itself would have been photographed by thousands of people; it would have been on Instagram, Twitter, all over YouTube. And no one saw it. You can’t fire a missile and on a flat area in a middle of the day leaving a smoke trail into the air and having everyone not see it. There is no reliable information supporting that it was a Buk missile fired by anyone. And then additionally we have a limited amount of information that NATO and the Dutch investigators have released, forensic information, and that is contradicted by other experts that have looked at things. We don’t have reliable information to deal with but the least possible thing, the one thing we can write off immediately – it wasn’t a ground-to-air missile because you simply can’t fire a missile in the middle of the day without thousands and thousands of people seeing it and filming it with camera phones.”

Killing this Story

This interview alone, which included statements from Russian pilots, caused a major backlash, including a fake investigation by “Prison Planet Investigation Services,” paid for, we learned, by the Bronfman organization, a Canadian based liquor conglomerate with ties to organized crime and Israeli intelligence. “Prison Planet” is also known, we learned, as “Stratfor,” called the “shadow CIA,” and is part of the InfoWars organization.

Prison Planet and InfoWars, for years, continually claimed Russia was operating military training camps inside the US and, at one time, claimed Russia had 20,000 troops planning to overthrow the US. Then, out of nowhere, they changed sides. From the Los Angeles Times, March 21, 2017:“FBI’s Russian-influence probe includes a look at Breitbart, InfoWars news sites . (McClatchy)

But this report focuses on the FBI looking into right-wing websites like Breitbart and InfoWars to see if they played any role last year in a Russian cyber operation that dramatically widened the reach of news stories that favored Trump’s presidential bid.”

The investigation accused Veterans Today of being owned by a Panama based crime cartel and laundering millions in Russian financing. A subsequent FBI and DHS investigation, based on these assertions, found them fraudulent.

Where the Evidence Really Leads

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]ne thing is totally clear, MH 17 is a false flag operation planned by Western intelligence agencies to block Russian aid to the areas of Ukraine that have continued to hold out after what we may now freely call a Nato “military takeover.”

Ukraine had been doing poorly on the ground, with high losses and low military morale. The false flag attack was intended to justify NATO military aid to the, well let’s use the term, “breakaway region.” After all, it is Kiev that left Ukraine. This was not an acceptable transition of power, it was a military takeover. That much is clear today.

One direction was ignored, more than than quashed, evidence seized and suppressed. Josef Resch is a private investigator who has asserted he has had evidence that MH 17 is a false flag. From Sputnik News 2016:

“German and Swiss authorities have confiscated documents from private detective Josef Resch, who has been conducting his own investigation of the 2014 crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, Dutch officials and media said Tuesday.

Investigators believe that some of the documents seized after last week’s raid on the detective’s home in Bad Schwartau, northern Germany, may shed light on the circumstances of the tragedy. Some of the papers are said to be “explosive” and could help determine the culprits.

According to De Telegraaf daily, the German detective began his own probe two months after the catastrophe, and has received some $19 million for his investigations. His generous clients remain unknown.

‘We are hoping to get some information about this. That’s why the raids at his home were carried out,” the spokesman for the prosecution service, Wim De Bruin, told AFP.

The contents of Resch’s safe-deposit box in a bank in Zurich, Switzerland, were also inspected.

“We don’t actually know what was in the box. The Swiss judge must now decide if its contents can be handed over to Dutch officials,” the spokesman said.

He added that it is possible that the detective may have been in contact with the culprits.’”

Much more was suppressed than the contents of Resch’s files. There was another private German investigation that found evidence of both air to air missiles and air to air cannon fire on the wreckage of MH 17. Their published evidence was compelling and, of course, ignored and scrubbed from the Internet.

Additional evidence presented by a Canadian aircraft “watcher” group that tracked a high performance aircraft from Azerbaijan to the area of the MH 17 crash, vectoring directly to “incident” site, has been suppressed also. It has been known for years that Azerbaijan allows Israeli drones and, according to defectors from the Azeri military, Israeli F 15s as well, to operate from their bases. From Veterans Today 2015:

“Saturday, August 23, Colonel James Hanke appeared on Iranian television to discuss the downing of the drone and to answer questions. During that interview, Hanke, editor for Veterans Today and former Attaché to Israel, highest ranking American operational intelligence officer ever to address an Iranian audience, denied US involvement in the attack.

‘The US simply doesn’t have the ability to launch drones from ships in the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean or from bases in the region. Everything is seen, observed and tracked, everything accountable and, at this moment in time, American and Israeli interests are far from in alignment. I suggest you ‘look to the north’ for the party responsible.’

Of course, Hanke, as he later explained to me, meant Azerbaijan. It was Hanke who helped identify two former Soviet fighter bases in Azerbaijan, as early as 2010, as a clandestine Israeli air base. In 2012, two Azerbaijani officers, defecting to Iran, reported of Israeli operations there including a drone base to be used against Iran.

Azerbaijan issued a formal apology but as reported by Republican Guard air defense command, the recent provocation did, as first reported by Hanke, originate from Azerbaijan.”

An F15 is capable of acting as air control and mission planning, based on its advance long range radar. Israel has been a major supporter of the Kiev regime and has send IDF forces to Ukraine to train militias and even participate in combat in support of Kiev.

Conclusion

MH 17 is simply another false flag operation, this one aimed at Russia as have so many recently. Russia’s foreign ministry has begun addressing false flag terrorism and the US policy of staging terror attacks to blame on others after years of standing by silently.

This, of course, is a byproduct of Trump’s “wide open mouth” policy of attacking fake news and opening up possibilities that now seem to have turned against him. Trump not only has followed Obama’s policies against Russia, he has ramped them up notch after notch, using fake news, fake accusations and acts of real fake terrorism.

Now Trump is arming Ukraine to war on its own people, something that will draw Russia in to stop the slaughter. MH 17 and the fake Dutch report is a ploy to frighten Russia off.

I don’t think it takes a genius to figure this out.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
 Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of  Veterans Today. Gordon has a legion of detractors who accuse him of all sorts of things—anti-semitism, pro-Russian, pro-Iranian, not being a professional journalist (whatever that means in the age of citizens bloggers), being "anti-American", etc.., etc., but the point is that what matters is not the establishment credentials an information provider may have, but the veracity of the content he distributes. The mainstream media is crammed with guys with fancy degrees from the Ivy League, J-schools and careers in the most "distinguished" papers and television venues, but all they do is pack the people's mind with filthy lies, 24/7. They are radioactive presstitutes. Give us citizen bloggers and journalists any day. 

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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found

In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” — acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump — a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all. Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report