MoA—Ahhhh. The “Free Syrian Army”, which the U.S. built and supplied with an immense amount of weapons to fight the Syrian government, is “crazy and not reliable”. How come that all the think tankers and ‘journalists’ who for years lauded that ‘army’ never noticed that? The Pentagon finally recognized that it was not possible to hold onto the area without starting a war with its NATO partner Turkey. On Saturday evening Trump gave the order that all U.S. troops shall leave northeast Syria within 30 days. The Secretary of Defense did not resign as his predecessor did over a similar decision but defended the move.

ANDREW BACEVICH—There is blood in the water and frenzied sharks are closing in for the kill. Or so they think. From the time of Donald Trump’s election, American elites have hungered for this moment. At long last, they have the 45th president of the United States cornered. In typically ham-handed fashion, Trump has given his adversaries the very means to destroy him politically. They will not waste the opportunity. Impeachment now — finally, some will say — qualifies as a virtual certainty.

ERIC ZUESSE—The Netherlands Government is resisting an effort by Dutch victims’ families to find out why Ukraine’s Government, on 17 July 2014 — when the Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot down while flying over Ukraine’s civil-war zone — this passenger-plane had been guided by Ukraine’s air-traffic control to fly through, instead of around (as it instructed other airliners), the war-zone.

TERJE MALOY—In 2014, the German journalist and writer Udo Ulfkotte published a book that created a big stir, describing how the journalistic profession is thoroughly corrupt and infiltrated by intelligence services. Although eagerly anticipated by many, the English translation of the book, Bought Journalists, does not seem to be forthcoming anytime soon. So I have made English subtitles and transcribed this still very relevant 2015-lecture for those that are curious about Ulfkotte’s work. It covers many of the subjects described in the book. Udo Ulfkotte died of a heart attack in January 2017, in all likelihood part of the severe medical complications he got from his exposure to German-made chemical weapons supplied to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s

CHRIS HEDGES—It is essential to understand the pathologies of the uber-rich. They have seized total political power. These pathologies inform Donald Trump, his children, the Brett Kavanaughs, and the billionaires who run his administration. The uber-rich cannot see the world from anyone’s perspective but their own. People around them, including the women whom entitled men prey upon, are objects designed to gratify momentary lusts or be manipulated. The uber-rich are almost always amoral. Right. Wrong. Truth. Lies. Justice. Injustice. These concepts are beyond them. Whatever benefits or pleases them is good. What does not must be destroyed.

STEPHANIE McMILLAN—It dominates society economically, ideologically, and politically. It shapes what we think, the ways we spend our time, our moods, our hairstyles, which TV shows we find amusing, whether we prefer popsicles or strawberries, the colors of our t-shirts, who we love, and how we die.

MARGARET KIMBERLEY—But he may have inadvertently undone a crime perpetrated by more well regarded predecessor. The complications present in Syria are the direct result of Barack Obama’s regime change attempt. Using the canard of humanitarian intervention Obama and his cohort in NATO, the gulf monarch states, and Israel conspired to overthrow the Syrian government with the indispensable help of jihadist proxies. The result was the death of half a million people and the displacement of millions more as refugees.

JEFF J. BROWN—Max Parry notes: “I firmly believe the Cold War never really ended if you look in retrospect at the West’s geopolitical moves since the Berlin Wall came down. The breakup of Yugoslavia and the war on Serbia, as you note was Russia’s ally, was part of the expansion of NATO, which on paper no longer serves any purpose since its formation was for the stated purpose of containing the Soviet Union and communism…”

JONATHAN MOWAT—Indicative of the common objective are the comments of the theoreticians of the post modern coup, for example, Dr. Peter Ackerman [pictured above], the author of “Strategic Nonviolent Conflict” (Praeger 1994). Writing in the “National Catholic Reporter” on April 26, 2002, Dr. Ackerman offered the following corrective to Bush’s Axis of Evil speech targeting Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, which he otherwise approved: “It is not true that the only way to ‘take out’ such regimes is through U.S. military action.” Speaking at the “Secretary’s Open Forum” at the State Department on June 29, 2004, in a speech entitled, “Between Hard and Soft Power: The Rise of Civilian-Based Struggle and Democratic Change,” Ackerman elaborated on the concept involved. He proposed that youth movements, such as those used to bring down Serbia, could bring down Iran and North Korea, and could have been used to bring down Iraq—thereby accomplishing all of Bush’s objectives without relying on military means.

R S AHTHION—The NED was created when it was becoming too embarrassing for the CIA to be increasingly involved in sponsoring regime change of reactionary elements of society. As seen in Yugoslavia, the nazi state of Ukraine, the umbrella movement of Hong Kong in 2014 to today. The world has largely come to see Western NGOs as synonymous with Western-backed foreign policy. Probably that’s why Russia did the sensible thing and banned them from their country.