RUSSIA DESK

PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—We still live inside of an Amerikan empire that celebrates the super rich and the use of war to control things. Look at how many phony wars were perpetrated since the last real war we were in, that being WW2: Korea ( 1950- 1953) to Vietnam (1961-1973), Dominican Republic (1965), Lebanon (1982), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991), Somalia (1993), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1994), Kosovo (1999), Afghanistan ( 2001-), Iraq ( 2003-) and now Syria ( 2014- ) .Our troops have always been sent into areas we had and have NO business being in! Yet, it seems the suckers… sorry, the voters, don’t seem to care.

PETER KOENIG—Today, in the western world we have lost this concept. The terms of trade are imposed always by the ‘stronger’ partner, the west versus the poorer south – the south where most of the natural resources are lodged. Mother Earth’s assets have been and are coveted by the west – or north – for building and maintaining a lifestyle in luxury, abundance and waste. This trend has lasted for centuries of western colonialism: Exploitation, loot, enslavement, and rape of entire peoples of the Global South by the Global North, to use the current soothing World Bank lingo.

Kerry demanded that the Iraqi leadership force all the aircraft flying from Iran to land and conduct a thorough search of them by the Iraqi police and US intelligence agencies. However, Iran’s influence on Baghdad was even stronger – since the spring of 2012, an Iranian aerial bridge was organized across Iraq, through which Iranian C-130 transport planes regularly transferred weapons and equipment to Syria. And the US could do nothing with this corridor. All they had achieved was a short-term flight ban for the Iranian Air Force, but it lasted only 2 months.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—CNN has published a fascinatingly manipulative and falsehood-laden article titled “25 times Trump was soft on Russia“, in which a lot of strained effort is poured into building the case that the US president is suspiciously loyal to the nation against which he has spent his administration escalating dangerous new cold war aggressions.

RAY McGOVERN—Five years ago, when Ukraine first came into the news, those Americans who thought Ukraine was an island in the Pacific can perhaps be forgiven. That members of the House Intelligence Committee don’t know — or pretend not to know — more accurate information about Ukraine is a scandal, and a consequential one. As Professor Stephen Cohen has warned, if the impeachment process does not deal in objective fact, already high tensions with Russia are likely to become even more dangerous.