May 2019

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Enthusiastic Trump supporters have been talking a lot lately about the president’s decision to give Attorney General Bill Barr the authority to declassify information regarding the shady origins of the discredited Russiagate hoax, including potentially illicit means used to secure a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign staff. For days online chatter from Trump’s base has been amping up for a huge, cataclysmic bombshell in the same language Russiagaters used to use back before Robert Mueller pissed in their Wheaties.

GEORGE MARLOWE—For all the nauseating glorification of the military by the media and the political establishment, those that serve in the military as cannon fodder are generally economic conscripts looking for a way out of poverty and the chance for a college degree. The reality is that they end up maimed, broken and scarred, with generations of families and friends affected by the trauma. More than 5,500 veterans killed themselves last year, and active-duty military suicides were at an all-time high in 2018. More than 321 of those in active duty in the military killed themselves in 2018, with 138 in the US Army alone.

It’s a David vs Goliath story. A former local newspaper reporter, Robert Stuart, is taking on the British Broadcasting Corporation. Stuart believes that a sensational video story about an alleged atrocity in Syria “was largely, if not entirely, staged.” The BBC would like it all to just go away. But like David, Stuart will not back down or let it go. It has been proposed that the BBC could settle the issue by releasing the raw footage from the event, but they refuse to do this. Why?