Patrice de Bergeracpas

JAKE JOHNSON—After asserting Iran was also behind a litany of attacks prior to Thursday’s tanker incident—once again without presenting any evidence—Pompeo said that,”Taken as a whole, these unprovoked attacks present a clear threat to international peace and security.” Pompeo—who has a long history of making false claims about Iran—did not take any questions from reporters following his remarks, which were aired live on America’s major television networks. “Mike Pompeo has zero credibility when it comes to Iran,” Jon Rainwater, executive director of Peace Action, told Common Dreams. “He’s long been actively campaigning for a confrontation with Iran. He has a track record of pushing bogus theories with no evidence such as the idea that Iran collaborates closely with al-Qaeda.”

P. GREANVILLE—Editor’s Note: While the antiwar movement in the US is as shamefully dead (or in hiding) as the zombies that inhabit so much of our tv screens, CodePink and Medea Benjamin are the inspiring exception. Indeed, standing barely five feet, Medea Benjamin (nee Susan Benjamin), the onetime Green Party candidate, SDS member, and graduate of Tufts and Columbia, at age 66 projects the image of a frail schoolgirl instead of the indomitable political activist she is known to be. Watching her in action, it’s hard to conceive of a more improbable champion of peace and truth in social and international affairs, or a more relentless shatterer of the patina of “dignified business as usual” so valued by the system managers in the conduct of their criminal affairs than Medea.

As usual, the signature of a false flag attack is written all over, and we must ask: Cui bono? But don’t expect the media whores to explore this obvious angle, as their duty is simply to proovide withering propaganda cover for all imperial crimes.

ANDREW KORYBKO—That said, while the arms trade between the two is excellent, Serbia nevertheless cooperates more closely with NATO than Russia ever since entering into the so-called “Partnership for Peace” framework in 2006. Furthermore, there are obvious limitations to what Russia could do to militarily support Serbia in practically any scenario, but the country’s patriotic masses are easily guided by ruling party-controlled media into exaggerating the importance of the Russian-Serbian Strategic Partnership and imagining that Moscow would directly intervene in the event of worsening clashes in Kosovo despite it remaining on the sidelines during the latest ones when even its own UN official there was attacked by the Albanians.