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.”
AMERICAN BRAINWASH
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Silly questions? If China is so powerful, why don’t I, an American, see Chinese influence?
11 minutes readYou don’t see more than 1 million Chinese visitors each year coming to the US? You don’t see all major tourist sites and stores in the US have signs in Chinese language? Each Chinese tourist would spend $6,000-$7,000 in America, imagine how many jobs have been created by that. You don’t do any shopping and see how many goods are imported from China? Do you know that China will purchase about 7,000 Boeing aircraft in the next 20 years (China has already bought thousands of Boeing planes), is there any other country that contributes so much to America’s economy?
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Talks to Glenn Greenwald About the Democratic Party and 2018 Midterms
6 minutes readThe Democratic party challenger (and winner) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks to Glenn Greenwald about the need for Democratic Party reform, her views on immigration and criminal justice reform, her approach to “identity politics,” why she has taken such unusually blunt positions on Israel and Palestine, and the challenges of running against a machine boss politician. Her Democratic opponent, Rep. Joseph Crowley, has been in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1999. It has been 14 years since Crowley has faced a primary challenge, thus receiving the Democratic Party nomination automatically every two years since 2004. Crowley has become the classic New York machine boss, having obtained both his 1990s seat on the New York City Council and his seat in Congress through a combination of dynastic politics and machine favors. But for the people of the 14th Congressional District that Crowley represents — which covers parts of Queens and the Bronx and is 70 percent nonwhite — it means they have had no Democratic Party alternative in this Democratic safe district for more than a decade.
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JOHN WALSH—It is no exaggeration to say that the Singapore Summit is the biggest step toward peace on the Korean Peninsula since President Dwight Eisenhower lived up to his 1952 campaign promise to “go to Korea” and end Truman’s deeply unpopular war, which had claimed millions of Korean lives, 1 million Chinese lives and tens of thousands of American ones. Ike ended that genocidal war, which had slaughtered 20% of the population of North Korea primarily due to bombing and chemical weapons. An armistice was negotiated quickly and so the killing stopped, but a formal treaty of peace proved politically impossible. (Ike, the peacemaker, was criticized by the media for being inarticulate and stupid and for spending too much time on the golf course. And he had a mistress. Sound familiar? But he brought peace.)
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WILL MORROW—With the official ending of net neutrality this month, the financial oligarchy that controls both the search and social media monopolies and internet service providers has further tightened its grip over the freedom of expression on the internet, with ISPs given the prerogative to block and throttle internet content at will.