JIM KAVANAUGH—There’s no discussion like this about defense appropriations. An $80 billion increase in military spending, and nary a “how are you going to pay for it” peep from the all the Serious People. You won’t find any purportedly earmarked taxes in a defense bill. All you’ll find is: “the following sums are appropriated.” That’s how it’s “paid for,” no questions asked.
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New York Times’ fraudulent “election plot” dossier escalates anti-Russia hysteria
BILL VAN AUKEN—While they may be attempting to signal that their reporting could bring down Trump, the comparison is as ludicrous as it is self-serving. Mazzetti and Shane have produced a poorly written propaganda potboiler, parroting the unsubstantiated allegations of US intelligence agencies and making the case for the criminal prosecution of Julian Assange for exposing similar crimes. Mazzetti is notorious for his secretly passing to the CIA in 2011—prior to publication—a piece written by Times columnist Maureen Dowd, along with a note reading, “this didn’t come from me… and please delete after you read.” Shane was the author of a 2012 article titled “The moral case for drones,” that attempted to justify the assassination program being run out of the White House that claimed the lives of thousands in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere. The authors are, to put it bluntly, a pair of broken-down hacks, embedded with the US military and intelligence apparatus and held in contempt by serious journalists.
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XI JINPING’S SPEECH AT THE CEREMONY COMMEMORATING THE BICENTENARY OF THE BIRTH OF MARX. CHINA RISING RADIO SINOLAND
JEFF J. BROWN—All my life, when growing up in America and into my professional life into the 21st century, I comfortably lived in a cocoon of Western Big Lie Propaganda. It wasn’t until I came back to China to live and work for the second time, starting in 2010, that I was able to step out of the Matrix and into the pure, white light of truth and reality. If you have read The China Trilogy (http://chinarising.puntopress.com/2017/05/19/the-china-trilogy/), then you have learned as much as I have, as well as traced the steps of my long and at times painful journey to enlightenment.
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Making War on the Planet
JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER—John Bellamy Foster is the editor of Monthly Review and a professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. This is a slightly revised version of an article published on July 24, 2018, on the website of Science for the People and on MR Online. It was written for the Summer 2018 special issue on geoengineering of the new Science for the People, announcing the magazine’s relaunch.
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Putin-Nazi Paranoia
CJ HOPKINS—Anthony DiMaggio’s recent essay in CounterPunch is a prime example of the effect the Putin-Nazi paranoia is having on leftists. According to DiMaggio, Donald Trump, by tweeting mean things about Attorney General Sessions and bombastically threatening The New York Times, is no longer just a normal fascist. He is now officially a “full-on fascist,” or a “real world fascist,” or a super duper fascist! DiMaggio doesn’t have any qualms about the deep state, or rather, the steady state, sabotaging an elected president (or at least pretending to be doing do so in print), because, well, you know, “the stakes are far higher” than mere democracy, what with Hitler in the White House. William Kristol would agree wholeheartedly.
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Medea Benjamin Shows America What Real Resistance Looks Like
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Destroying the war machine fixes everything from climate change to living standards, terrorism, famine, homelessness, mental health, slavery, plus all the horrors that war always necessarily births into the world such as rape, black markets, human trafficking, refugee crises and so on. Not to mention the butchery of humans for profit which is what war is. Putting up resistance by breaking the hypnotic effect of war propaganda works. No one actually wants war apart from a handful of powerful elites who fund these think tanks to weave lies and manipulate truth into stories that will manufacture consent for endless military bloodbaths. Simply using the truth to run interference on these lies and spin is enough.
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William Blum takes on the Washington Post again, in the person of columnist Max Boot, formerly of the Wall Street Journal
BILL BLUM—Keep in mind that a statement from the CIA that Russia interfered in the election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement. Keep in mind that a statement from the FBI that Russia interfered in the election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement. Keep in mind that a statement from the NSA that Russia interfered in the election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement. Keep in mind that a statement from a dozen other US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement.
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