MARGARET KIMBERLEY—The same forces which went after Trump will come after anyone else who is seen as a danger to the system. One cannot argue against the “black identity extremist” designation without also calling into question the intelligence agencies role in politics, even if their work was used against Donald Trump.
AMERICAN STUDIES
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The Left Needs More Critical Debate and Real Discussion, Less Twitter/Facebook Name Calling and Mic Drops
14 minutes readBRUCE DIXON—So-called social media, as Jodi Dean and others have explained for years, is NOT our friend. It’s not even social, except in the sense that it hijacks the social interactions of millions and turns them into private property, into marketing data and makes the owners of that data into billionaires. That’s not good. Even worse, we have allowed the parasitic marketing platforms of communicative capitalism to teach us how to interact with each other.
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DANNY HAIPHONG—The Trump Administration has looked away from the carnage due to its strained relationship with much of the world. Only Trump’s advisor Jared Kushner has made a definitive statement on the matter, calling the protesters “part of the problem” for “provoking violence.” Kushner speaks fluidly in the language of the colonizer. Colonial powers throughout history have used the language of criminality and unruliness of the native population to justify the violent suppression of anti-colonial resistance.
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DIANA JOHNSTONE—Historically, Westernizers in Russia have repeatedly gained influence and then lost out, because their overtures to the West were rebuffed on one pretext or another. (The British geopolitical tradition, based on the timeless dictum divide et impera, has traditionally favored policies to keep the continent divided) This merges easily with the Brzezinski doctrine of maintaining separation between Western Europe as a whole and Russia to maintain U.S. global hegemony. Western rejection of Russia naturally favors a rise of the Slavophiles. It also obliges Russia to look to Eurasia rather than Western Europe. This is happening again.
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The Trump White House is a Chaotic Clown Car Filled with Bozos Who Think They’re Brilliant
18 minutes readDAVE LINDORFF—But the concept didn’t work in Vietnam, which drove the US out. It didn’t work in Iraq, which is now an client state of Iran, it didn’t work in Afghanistan, where the US is still fighting the Taliban 17 years after invading that poorest of countries. Truth to tell, the only time the policy really has worked was against the tiny island nation of Grenada, where the primary resistance to the US armada that assaulted the place was a company of Cuban construction workers working on a new airport. (7000 medals were awarded to US military personnel following that triumphant victory.)