PAUL ATWOOD—Once Hitler and the top Nazis were gone American elites had to devise a plan to deal with the Soviet Union. One measure that never ever gets notice is that the U.S. and its new intelligence agencies immediately exempted key Nazis from prosecution for war crimes and recruited them to aid in overthrowing Soviet rule. This measure in itself demolished the myth of the U.S. as “arsenal of democracy.” The roster included major rocket scientists and Nazi intelligence officials. One of the first forays involved Ukraine wherein Ukrainians who had aided the Nazis in their invasion of Russia were parachuted back into their country to overthrow the Reds. The current tumult over Ukraine is nothing new.
READ ONCategory: AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
What is “our democracy”?
ERIC LONDON—The intense political infighting between the factions of the ruling class over “Russian interference in our democracy” confirms that there is no constituency for democratic rights within the ruling class. Their abandonment of democratic forms of rule poses a great danger to the working class. The only way to defend democratic rights is through a fight against imperialist war, inequality, and capitalism.
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Big Pharma’s price gouging, unchallenged by the government, is often aggravated by TV ads
This piece is authored by Chris Morris, writing for CNBC, a sort of WSJ online, and therefore there’s not much editorial room to castigate Big Pharma as it deserves, but even Morris manages to say this at the very outset: “As outrageous as the cost of health care can be in the United States, it’s nothing compared to the markup on some prescription medicines. While companies certainly have to recoup their research and development costs and earn a profit for investors — and the exclusive window before a generic version of a drug goes on sale is the optimal time to do so — those prices can sometimes get out of hand.”
Which, again, is putting it very very mildly.
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Surgical Sexist Birth Control: Abortion
FRANK SCOTT—But let’s just stick to the subject of alleged freedom for some women to pay the price in ending life long before it functions as conscious human by, formerly, scraping out their insides with surgical tools while now applying a vacuum cleaner that sucks out the unwanted zygote, or whatever our original form has evolved to by the time she is able to get to a doctor or facility or business to perform the “procedure”.
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The West’s real interest in Chechnya isn’t gay rights
MAX PARRY—Although its population had always been fundamentalist Sunnis and the conflict had already seen the use of brutal terrorist tactics, the secessionist movement gradually descended into a jihadist majority by the Second Chechen War (1999–2000). The cause had initially been mostly nationalist until foreign mujahideen volunteers began to be imported into the rebel forces by the thousands and its character was transformed to Salafism. The Second Chechen War catapulted Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and Russia responded in an uncompromising crackdown on the insurgency.
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Coming Coup Against Trump
FINIAN CUNNINGHAM—Admittedly, Trump has many flaws and much of his foreign policy is in keeping with the usual criminal conduct of American imperialism. But one thing that can be said in his favor is that he is not driven by an irrational Russophobia nor a hellbent determination to have a confrontation with Moscow — unlike many in the US establishment.
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Should Alex Ward be fired by vox.com?
ERIC ZUESSE—The neocon ‘journalist’ Alex Ward, at the neocon ‘news’-site vox.com, criticized U.S. President Donald Trump for having supposedly allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to get away with 7 specific alleged bad things that Ward thinks Trump should have publicly lambasted Putin for during the joint Trump-Putin summit press conference that occurred on June 16th.
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