RICHARD MEDHURST—Richard debunks the thick fog of lies clouding, as usual, the truth about Iran, and her “democracy with Iranian characteristics.” Iran is actually a socialist and firmly anti-imperialist country.
Default Editor Patrice de Bergeracpas
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CHRIS HEDGES—Liberals like Chris Hedges are almost always extremely efficient and eloquent in their diagnoses of what ails society. In this talk, Hedges provides, for example, a good anatomy of what constitutes the main working parts of the imperialist organism, currently managed by Joe Biden (the collective Biden, not the real, physical Biden). This, Hedges insists, is just an army of professional bureaucrats dedicated to the design and implementation of policies conducive to the perpetuation of a global, deeply undemocratic oligarchic cabal, with HQ in Washington. The problem with Chris is that his analysis does not advance much in the manner of solutions, aside from recommending extra-electoral mass mobilizations (something we certainly agree with). And Chris’s anti-communism and anti-Sovietism do not help matters much, either.
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“The divine right of nations”: Reflections on the Fourth
16 minutes readPATRICK LAWRENCE—We do not have 800–odd military bases around the world, as commentators on these matters usually report. We have military facilities, various sorts of manned and unmanned installations, and bases that come to 800–odd. This is nonetheless well, well more than a sufficiency, as the English say. Northeast Asia, Southeast, Africa, all over Europe (Britain, Germany, Spain, Italy), all over the Pacific, and, of course, up to Western Europe’s border with the Russian Federation. How hollow to celebrate on our Main Streets what our military is up to in all of this. How brazen a gloss on American conduct abroad. Peoria is comfortably distant from Damascus.
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An Ugly War Among Leftist YouTubers Shows Two Common, Toxic Pathologies Plaguing U.S. Politics
12 minutes readGLENN GREENWALD—An incredibly vicious and protracted war is being waged, seemingly with no end in sight, among numerous prominent liberal and left-wing commentators who work primarily on YouTube. The conflict erupted on May 26 when Cenk Uygur — the founder and long-time host of The Young Turks, the largest liberal-left YouTube platform — baselessly and falsely accused independent journalist Aaron Maté of being “paid by the Russians,” while his co-host, Ana Kasparian, spouted innuendo that Maté was “working for” unnamed dictators.
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PAUL EDWARDS—Insofar as it was a gross deception—which it was—this was not intentional. The powerful men who produced it had no dark, nefarious design to inflict an oppressive, exploitative system on their country and their people. They, to a man, it seems, meant well by their lights in the cultural context in which they matured. The flaws, biases, and gross injustices so obvious in it from a current perspective were, in large measure, the prejudices of all European ruling classes of the time and, indeed, the consensus of the most acute, discriminating philosophical minds of the era.