IDEOLOGICAL STRUGGLE

DARWIN HOLMSTROM—One would think Israel’s control of U.S. governmental policy might begin to wane after the U.N. determined that Israel was actively engaging in crimes against humanity and the American people are increasingly questioning congressional allegiance to Israel, but AIPAC has found a strange-but-powerful bedfellow: Christian Zionists. Christian Zionists have developed a peculiar interpretation of the Bible, taking to heart obscure and random bits and pieces of scripture that support their Israel-centric worldview. The hardcore among them believe that the Jewish people need to gather in Israel and rebuild the third Jewish temple on the Temple Mount. The first temple was destroyed by the Babylonians and the second temple was destroyed by the Romans. The Christian Zionists believe that building a third Jewish temple on the Temple Mount is a prerequisite for Jesus to come back and rapture them up to heaven.

PETER KOENIG—On 23 January 2018, the United States initiated a coup against President Nicolás Maduro and his Government, by encouraging and fully supporting the “self-proclaimed” opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as interim President. Already days ago he had received the full support of President Trump, and today, in a special televised speech, US Vice-president Mike Pence declared that Venezuela’s Freedom begins with the new interim president, Juan Guaído

JEREMY SCAHILL—The national religion of the United States is American exceptionalism. And we are now in the midst of a grotesque canonization of one of its imperial saints, George Herbert Walker Bush. Every media outlet in this country, every politician, Democrat and Republican, engaged in collective eulogy based on lies — lies about who Bush was, lies about his policies, lies about the mass-killing he oversaw during his life at the highest levels of power in the United States government.

ANDRE DAMON—The editorial begins by alluding to a warning by Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google’s parent company Alphabet, that, in the Times’ words, “in the next 10 to 15 years, the internet would most likely be split in two—one internet led by China and one internet led by the United States.” Schmidt, according to the Times, “did not seem to seriously entertain the possibility that the internet would remain global.” While agreeing with this appraisal, the newspaper adds, “if anything, the flaw in Mr. Schmidt’s thinking is that he too quickly dismisses the European internet that is coalescing around the European Union’s ever-heightening regulation of technology platforms. All signs point to a future with three internets.”

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—Journalist David Sirota has just published an excellent op-ed titled “America’s new aristocracy lives in an accountability-free zone”, which begins with the observation that “Enron executives were among the last politically connected criminals to face any serious consequences for institutionalized fraud.” Sirota goes on to remind readers how there was never any attempt by either mainstream political party to bring accountability to anyone responsible for monstrous offenses ranging from the disastrous invasion of Iraq to the ecocidal manipulations of fossil fuel plutocrats to the Wall Street plundering which led to the 2008 global financial crisis.