AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

T. MEYSSAN—In order to implement the USA Patriot Act, a new department was created, the Homeland Security Department, which brings together various existing agencies. It has a political police force capable of spying on any citizen. According to the Washington Post, which revealed this in 2011, it has hired 835,000 civil servants, 112,000 of whom are secretly employed [9], making the United States the most Orwellian country on the planet. The way this department works was revealed in 2013 by Edward Snowden. Snowden not only provided information about the NSA’s foreign eavesdropping system, but also about domestic mass surveillance in the US. He now lives as a political refugee in Russia. This system, although less documented, is gradually spreading to all Western states, through the ’Five Eyes’ [10]and Nato.

DENNIS RICHES—We can thank Stalin and the Soviet people for their sacrifice and their victory over fascism. They defeated the German army in Stalingrad, liberated Auschwitz and marched into Berlin for the final victory. If not for them, the world would have had to accept a Nazi empire with a nuclear arsenal ruling over Eurasia and continuing with its programs of slave labor and genocide. It is impossible to know what it might have done with nuclear weapons, either as a deterrent or as tools for aggression, but based on its record of brutality, it is not a pleasant thing to ponder.

As the 20-year war in Afghanistan officially came to an end, President Joe Biden justified US military withdrawal in an address to the nation on Aug. 31: “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.” While these remarks suggest a potential reckoning with the longstanding US policy of imperialist intervention around the world, increased US sanctions on Cuba demonstrate that such intervention persists in the form of economic warfare. From the dire strain US sanctions have put on the Cuban economy to the corporate media frenzy that exploited protests in Cuba this summer as a justification for interventionist “regime change,” it is clear that efforts by the US to “remake other countries” are not ending any time soon.

After nearly 20 years of fighting against the US in Afghanistan, the victorious Taliban posed with captured American gear at the Kabul airport, held a mock funeral for NATO in Khost, and flew a Black Hawk helicopter over Kandahar.

The last US troops left the Hamid Karzai International Airport on Monday, just before the clock struck midnight local time. On Tuesday morning, Taliban fighters strolled through the airport they now controlled, littered with debris, posing for photos with the captured vehicles, aircraft and equipment.  

RICHARD SANDERS—BRD was first spawned in 1985 by pro-NATO, anti-Soviet East European émigré groups in Toronto whose founding leaders were riddled with fascist collaborators, SS veterans, Holocaust perpetrators, and top officials of Nazi puppet regimes. In 2009, Liberal MP (Ontario’s former NDP premier) Bob Rae’s pro-BRD motion received all-party support in Parliament. Cda’s fascist-rooted groups have never been closer to power! The most egregious of them represent the far-right Ukrainian diaspora with which Freeland was worked for 30+ years.