DANNY HAIPHONG—The farcical myths of American exceptionalism such as “free speech” facilitate a mass ignorance of the deadly censorship that Assange’s case represents. Any real leftist movement in the United States would do well to reexamine the material conditions that create the need for censorship and let go of anti-communist and racist stereotypes which only serve to cloud political judgement. While China is certainly a leading economic power, the Communist Party-led state is by no means a military hegemon. That position rests with the United States. The United States possesses the biggest military apparatus in the world by several proportions, one that is used to destroy and plunder the planet with impunity.
HYBRID WARFARE
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The Mainstream and the Margins: Noam Chomsky vs. Michael Parenti
178 minutes readLORENZO—Noam Chomsky is, as anyone reading this knows, a linguist, MIT professor, and the English-speaking world’s foremost radical dissident intellectual. Chomsky’s work in this latter capacity is so well-documented that it’s not necessary to recapitulate too much—however, a few choice high notes include decades of criticism of US foreign policy, some decent commentary on then-President-elect Barack Obama at a time nearly all of the Western commentariat had turned into a deranged Borg-like collective, and producing the second comprehensive study of corporate constraints on the media along with Edward Herman. As co-author of Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky provided a model illuminating the “political economy of the mass media,” and from this research came a great deal of very useful and incisive media criticism on issues like how concision and sound-bites help the status quo and why a journalist can be both genuine and compromised. Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model purports to show how five corporate filters enable the mass media’s owners to ensure that their interests are expressed. In this way, according to the two, democracies manufacture consent through seamlessly delivered propaganda, the way totalitarian societies do so by coercion and force.
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IT IS NOT CHINA, BUT THE WESTERN WORLD THAT SHOULD BE DEFINED AS THE “REAL SICK MAN”
25 minutes readANDRE VLTCHEK-The United States occupies and antagonizes countries and then it punishes them when they try to protect themselves. Israel does the same. And so, do Indonesia, India, and NATO as a block. Turkey is turning into a maniac. Iran, Venezuela and others are screaming, brutalized for absolutely no reason by sanctions and embargoes. Russia is being constantly smeared, just for helping injured nations, in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. I watch all this and I wonder: how much further can all this go? Is all this banditry and idiocy going to go on from now on, and forever accepted as a normalcy?
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MAX PARRY—No one should be fooled into believing that (US) Congress is motivated by anything other than a desire to punish Turkey for making the U.S. look bad while rebuking Trump for deviating from the bipartisan consensus of endless war.
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ANDREW KORYBKO—There is no realistic chance that the Hybrid War on Bolivia will be “peacefully” resolved unless President Morales resigns since the US-backed “opposition” is braying for blood and will do whatever they have to in their pursuit of power. Even if he’s deposed (be it by resigning under pressure or being overthrown by the military), however, there’s no telling whether his mostly indigenous supporters will simply surrender or if they’ll organize to defend the hard-earned rights that they received during his tenure but which are at risk of being rolled back by the “opposition”.