Inter-Imperialist Rivalry

Reality Winner Has Been In Jail For A Year. Her Prosecution Is Unfair And Unprecedented

June 5, 2018 By Peter Maass, theintercept.com Educate! Bias, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Russia

Christmas was coming, and Paul Manafort wanted to spend the holiday with his extended family in the Hamptons, where he owns a four-acre estate that has 10 bedrooms, a pool, a tennis court, a basketball court, a putting green, and a guest cottage. But Manafort was under house arrest in northern Virginia. Suspected of colluding with the Russian government, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump had been indicted on a dozen charges involving conspiracy, money laundering, bank fraud, and lying to federal investigators. A lobbyist who became mysteriously wealthy over the years, Manafort avoided jail by posting $10 million in bond, though he was confined to his luxury condo in Alexandria, Virginia.

The New York Times And The Murder That Wasn’t

June 4, 2018 Andre Damon, Wsws.org Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Propaganda, US Imperialism

On Tuesday, the right-wing Ukrainian regime reported that Arkady Babchenko, a Russian journalist living in Kiev and a vocal critic of the Kremlin, had been shot dead in his apartment building. Kiev immediately pointed the finger at Moscow, with Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman declaring that “the Russian totalitarian machine” was responsible for the journalist’s murder. Within minutes, the news flashed across the globe, becoming a lead story in major news outlets in Europe and the United States, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and the BBC. The Mighty Wurlitzer of American propaganda began belching vast amounts of hot air. In every report, the announcement of the murder was accompanied with the conclusion that the Russian government was behind it: that is, the US media outlets announced a murder mystery and its solution simultaneously.

Questioning War Is A Civic Duty. Why Do So Few Do It?

May 24, 2018 By Kevin Basl, Otherwords.org Educate! Class Struggle, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Veterans, Wars and Militarism

“How do you motivate men and women to fight and die for a cause many of them don’t believe in, and whose purpose they can’t articulate?” That’s what Phil Klay, author and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, asks in an essay published this month in The Atlantic. Unfortunately, he points out in a recent New York Times op-ed, “Serious discussion of foreign policy and the military’s role within it is often prohibited” by what he calls “patriotic correctness.” In a well-functioning democracy, Klay argues, citizens must debate and question how their elected officials employ their military, an organization which ought to represent the values of the people. But it seems many Americans remain unconcerned about the wars the United States is currently fighting (at last count, we’re bombing at least 7 countries) though they foot the bill both in tax dollars and lives.

Clashing Visions Of Denuclearization Pose Risk To U.S.-North Korea Summit

May 22, 2018 Gregory Elich, Zoominkorea.org Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, North Korea, Nuclear Weapons

The soaring hopes generated by the recent Inter-Korean Summit are now supplanted by uncertainty, due to North Korea’s suspension of a planned meeting with the South. In the weeks following the summit’s Panmunjom Declaration, North Korea took actions to demonstrate its goodwill and desire for peaceful resolution of differences. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the formal name for North Korea) announced that it would dismantle its underground nuclear test site, culminating in explosions to collapse tunnels, the blocking of entries, and removal of above-ground facilities. Substantial progress has already been made on disabling the site. The DPRK could have waited and made this a negotiable issue in talks with the United States. Instead, it offered the step to the United States ahead of the summit as a confidence-building measure.

The Pentagon Can’t Account For $21 Trillion (That’s Not a Typo)

May 16, 2018 Lee Camp, Truthdig.com Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Pentagon, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

There are certain things the human mind is not meant to do. Our complex brains cannot view the world in infrared, cannot spell words backward during orgasm and cannot really grasp numbers over a few thousand. A few thousand, we can feel and conceptualize. We’ve all been in stadiums with several thousand people. We have an idea of what that looks like (and how sticky the floor gets). But when we get into the millions, we lose it. It becomes a fog of nonsense. Visualizing it feels like trying to hug a memory. We may know what $1 million can buy (and we may want that thing), but you probably don’t know how tall a stack of a million $1 bills is. You probably don’t know how long it takes a minimum-wage employee to make $1 million.

Cosmic Capitalism: Why The US Wants To Dominate Outer Space

May 16, 2018 By Elliott Gabriel, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Capitalism, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Space, US Imperialism

WASHINGTON – What does the United States do when it’s faced with hegemonic decline, ascendant rivals, and an inability to use its massive military apparatus to turn the tide in favor of its own imperial ambitions without incurring costs that far outweigh the benefits? To paraphrase former First Lady Michelle Obama: When they go low, we go high. In this case, shift the battle to “the final frontier” – outer space — where mining interests suspect that rare mineral resources can be found in abundance and yield massive profits. During his time on the campaign trail and upon coming to power, President Donald Trump issued a stream of statements explicitly calling for a reinvigorated effort to boost the militarization of space.

Killing Gaza

May 15, 2018 Chris Hedges, Truthdig.com Educate! Gaza, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Israel, Palestine

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Israel’s blockade of Gaza—where trapped Palestinians for the past seven weeks have held nonviolent protests along the border fence with Israel, resulting in scores of dead and some 6,000 wounded by Israeli troops—is one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. Yet the horror that is Gaza, where 2 million people live under an Israeli siege without adequate food, housing, work, water and electricity, where the Israeli military routinely uses indiscriminate and disproportionate violence to wound and murder, and where almost no one can escape, is rarely documented. Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen’s powerful new film, “Killing Gaza,” offers an unflinching and moving portrait of a people largely abandoned by the outside world, struggling to endure.

Congress Weighs Indefinite Detention Of Americans

May 15, 2018 Marjorie Cohn, Consortiumnews.com Educate! Congress, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Repression, Wars and Militarism

Under the guise of exercising supervisory power over the president’s ability to use military force, Congress is considering writing Donald Trump a blank check to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens with no criminal charges. Alarmingly, this legislation could permit the president to lock up Americans who dissent against U.S. military policy. The bill that risks conveying this power to the president is the broad new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), S.J.Res.59, that is pending in Congress. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker (R-TN) and Democratic committee member Tim Kaine (VA) introduced the bipartisan bill on April 16, and it has four additional co-sponsors.

Haley, Pence Convey US Message On Venezuela: Only Election Worth Holding Is One That Results In Regime Change

May 14, 2018 By Elliott Gabriel, Mintpressnews.com Educate! Electoral Politics, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, US Imperialism, Venezuela

WASHINGTON – As aggressive neoconservatives increasingly take the helm of the United States foreign policy establishment, Washington’s appetite for “regime change” has only grown. The reinvigorated mood for intervening in the internal affairs of nations who don’t adhere to Washington’s dictates was on full display Tuesday as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley issued the demand that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro step down from office and refrain from holding elections May 20 that he is widely expected to win. “The systematic oppression of the Venezuelan people has become an active threat to the entire region. For the safety and security of all peoples in Latin America, it is time for Maduro to go,” Haley told a conference of the neoliberal Council of the Americas at the State Department.

Will The US Fight Another War-Quagmire For Israel In Iran?

May 14, 2018 Ralph Nader, Nader.org Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Proxy War, Trump Administration

In mid-May, super-war hawks Donald J. Trump (worried about the Mueller investigation), John Bolton, Trump’s new unconfirmed national security advisor, and new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, are likely to pull out of the Iran nuclear accord. This would open the way for Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his Congressional allies to push for armed conflict with Iran. “Don’t do it,” declare our allies, Britain, France, and Germany—signatories to the Iran accord along with China and Russia. “Don’t do it,” say former secretaries of state and secretaries of defense from both Republican and Democratic administrations. “Don’t do it,” says Trump’s own Secretary of Defense, Jim Mattis, and Trump’s chief of staff, General John Kelly. “Don’t do it,” say outspoken former top Israeli national security and intelligence officials berating Netanyahu.

Iran And Syria: Why Regime Change In One Means Regime Change In Both

May 14, 2018 Caitlin Johnstone, Caitlinjohnstone.com Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Iran, Regime Change, Syria

Probably the weirdest, dumbest, most annoying thing about writing on US foreign policy right now is the fact that regime change in Iran and regime change in Syria have been falsely spun into the illusion of two separate issues along partisan lines. People who are more aligned with America’s Democratic Party are a lot more opposed to the overthrow of the Iranian government and a lot more sympathetic to the idea of getting rid of Assad, and with those who are more aligned with the Republican party it’s the exact opposite. Partisan politics turn people into such drooling idiots. Democratic Party-aligned Americans oppose Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran deal because it was Obama’s baby, while Republican-aligned Americans support it for the exact same reason.

Geography Of Imperial Aggression

May 12, 2018 Vijay Prashad, Newsclick.in Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry

I recall walking the halls of the United Nations and being told by concerned diplomats from the Global South that the wrath of the United States was not going to be slaked in the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, US President George W. Bush announced that three countries belonged on his Axis of Evil – Iraq, Iran and North Korea. An illegal US war against Iraq the next year was the opening salvo against this so-called Axis. Threats against Iran and North Korea continued as the fires burned across Iraq. The governments in Tehran and Pyongyang worried about what was to come next. I recall walking the halls of the United Nations and being told by concerned diplomats from the Global South that the wrath of the United States was not going to be slaked in the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. More seemed to be demanded by Washington.

Recipe Concocted For Perpetual War Is A Bitter One

May 12, 2018 Robert Wing and Coleen Rowley, Consortiumnews.com Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Wars and Militarism

Last October marked the 16th anniversary of our unending war – or military occupation – in Afghanistan, the longest conflict on foreign soil in U.S. history. The cost to human lives in our current cycle of U.S.-initiated “perpetual wars” throughout the Middle East and Africa is unthinkably high. It runs well into millions of deaths if one counts – as do the Nuremberg principles of international law – victims of spinoff fighting and sectarian violence that erupt after we destroy governance structures. Also to be counted are other forms of human loss, suffering, illness and early mortality that result from national sanctions, destruction of physical, social and medical infrastructure, loss of homeland, refugee flight, ethnic cleansing, and their psychological after-effects.

Netanyahu’s Recklessness Reaches New Heights

May 7, 2018 Miko Peled, Ahtribune.com Educate! Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Middle East

Thanks to Roman Emperors like Nero and Caligula the bar for madness while leading a nation has been set very high. However, it seems that Benjamin Netanyahu is approaching those very levels of madness and will stop at nothing in order to get his way regarding the Iran nuclear deal. In a latest display of absurd drama Israel disclosed an operation that was just now completed by the Israeli secret intelligence agency, the Mossad, in uncovering thousands of secret documents from the Iranian nuclear archives and bringing them from Tehran to Tel-Aviv. The Mossad as it happens is controlled by the Prime Minister himself. The Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot internet edition, Ynet as well as others just published a story that includes some of the documents for all to see and be impressed.

Imperial Road To Conquest: Peace And Disarmament Agreements

May 2, 2018 Prof. James Petras, Informationclearinghouse.info Educate! disarmament, Imperialism, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry

The means and method are fairly straight forward. World-wide propaganda campaigns which demonize the adversary; the enlistment and collaboration of European and regional allies (England, France, Saudi Arabia and Israel); the recruitment, contracting, training and arming of local and overseas mercenaries dubbed “rebels”, or ‘democrats’; economic sanctions to provoke domestic social tensions and political instability of the government; proposals to negotiate a settlement; negotiations which demand non-reciprocal concessions and which include changes in strategic weapons in exchange for promises to end sanctions, diplomatic recognition and peaceful co-existence. The strategic goal is disarmament in order to facilitate military and political intervention leading up to and beyond defeat, occupation, regime change...

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