CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Giant wars left Europe a mess many years ago, so America rose to the top. Now it’s where many rich and powerful influencers centralize their operations. America is the cattle prod used to compel the world to march along with the interests of western aristocrats. Governments which comply are rewarded with military “protection”, while noncompliant governments are sanctioned and bombed. The Mafia does this also.
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The Callousness of the Corporate Military Empire
PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—They send our young soldiers overseas to occupy countries we have no business ever being in. Peeling away the ‘ onion of truth’ reveals that our military is over there to protect our corporations and our banking cartels, and not for any other reason. So, we kill and get our soldiers killed for no moral purpose but …. keeping this empire empowered! Of course, this all fuels the nourishment of the beast that our Military Corporate Empire has become… whereupon half of our federal taxes goes down that rabbit hole! Is this what Making America great again is all about?
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German Bundestag Committee: Russia’s Syria Campaign is Legal, US Should Leave
A committee of the German Bundestag headed by Die Linke politician Alexander Neu found Russia’s military presence in Syria to be “considered permissible in international law” as the Syrian government requested assistance from Moscow, the ARD public broadcaster’s Tagesschau news service reported on Tuesday.
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The Pentagon’s new mission statement: Neo-colonialism & hegemony unmasked
JOHN WIGHT—Friedman writes: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist – McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.” When it comes right down to it, it really isn’t rocket science. After all, those 800 US military bases in over 70 countries across the world are not there for ornamentation, and certainly not to help make the world safe for democracy.
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Syria: ‘Rebels Played Russian Roulette, and Lost’
Even this far into the Syrian conflict and after many other such weapons seizures throughout the country, analysts and journalists have commented that the sheer numbers of advanced weapons — in most cases obviously externally supplied — are “staggering”. Meanwhile, all of this begs the question: where will all the surviving jihadists currently fleeing the Syrian battlefield go? (assuming Syria-Russia will hit the last major expansive jihadist bastion of Idlib next).
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Three years since Syriza’s referendum on EU austerity in Greece
ALEX LANTIER—In warning the Greek workers about Syriza, the ICFI fought for the building of a revolutionary alternative. The experience of Syriza has underscored that only a return to the traditions of the Bolshevik Party and the October 1917 revolution can provide a viable strategy for the working class. In its statement “ The Political Lessons of Syriza’s Betrayal in Greece ,” the ICFI stressed: … the working class cannot defend itself by electing new, ‘left’ capitalist governments. The only way forward is through a genuinely revolutionary policy, mobilizing the working class in Greece and internationally in struggle. It requires a direct assault on the capitalist class, the confiscation of their wealth, the seizure of the major banks and productive forces, in order to place them under the democratic control of working people, and the creation of workers states across Europe and the world. Such struggles require the building of Marxist parties to offer political leadership to the working class, in ruthless struggle against parties like Syriza.
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Bernard Lewis: The False Prophet of the Big Lie
MARTIN SIEFF— “Either we bring them freedom, or they destroy us,” he memorably wrote about Arab societies. The truth was precisely the opposite. Islamic extremism was only marginal throughout the Sunni Arab world before the Bush administration, urged on by Lewis and his fellow neocons, undertook their colossal project of pulverizing one stable society after another in the name of Lewis’s mythical “freedom.”
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