DAVID W PEAR—Carter and Brzezinski were overjoyed that the U.S. would then have the sweet revenge of giving Russia a bloody Vietnam experience. Carter and Brzezinski gave Afghanistan a Vietnam experience too, in which millions of people were destroyed. Once events in Afghanistan were set into motion, then Carter and Brzezinski added gasoline to the inflamed Islamic fanatics with billions of dollars in U.S. military support funneled through Pakistan. Thousands of mercenaries from Arab countries poured into Afghanistan to join the fight and get paid too. They were called “Afghan-Arabs”. The Brzezinski-Carter scheme would be continued under President Reagan and led to the destruction of Afghanistan, the re-subjugation of Afghan women, and millions of Afghan civilian victims of war.
AMERICAN STUDIES
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BILL VAN AUKEN—Given the events unfolding today, the criminal celebration by US and Israeli officials of the embassy move, and the new round of carnage on the Gaza-Israel border, there will be little attention paid to the great world historical questions bound up with Israel’s origins and development, which are inextricably tied to the fate of the working class in the 20th century and the historic crisis of revolutionary leadership.
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STEPHEN LENDMAN—According to Palestinian media, Monday Palestinian casualties include about 800 shot with live rounds (including internally exploding dum dum bullets), around 90 seriously wounded – 65 of them shot in the head and/or neck, about 50 in the chest or back, most others in the legs. Journalists, medical personnel and an ambulance were targeted. Gaza’s Health Ministry called on Egypt to send urgently needed surgeons, intensive care physicians, anesthesiologists, other medical personnel and supplies to deal with the overwhelming casualty toll Gaza can’t handle on its own.
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Lendman’s dispatches: US to Assure North Korea’s Security? New embassy in Jerusalem inauguration, a reckless affront
9 minutes readSTEPHEN LENDMAN—America is thermonuclear armed and dangerous worldwide. Yet it demands North Korea abandon its key deterrent – developed and maintained only because of feared US aggression. Trump administration officials demand more from Pyongyang than it’s likely to accept – dismantlement of its nuclear program entirely, its nukes removed to Oakridge, TN for US-overseen destruction, leaving the DPRK vulnerable to a nation militantly opposed to all sovereign independent governments.
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RAMIN MAZAHERI—Everybody’s got a vanguard party. Democracy is not perfect (only God is), but this does not mean there are not varying degrees of perfection which we can analyse and attain. In the West, your modern-era vanguard – after decades of money-grubbing, back-stabbing, standing on daddy’s rich shoulders, and exploiting those who work for them – is the economic 1%. To add journalistic balance: they also got to be the vanguard via the admirable, ethical business practices of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, the genius of people like Warren Buffett to support the growth of private, abusive monopolies, and the incredible skills of being phony in public by actors like Ronald Reagan…these are whom have been chosen in the West – via both informal and formal democratic consensus – as their vanguard party.