MATTHEW EHRET—As historian Anton Chaitkin recently reported: “Lemnitzer had displayed what his faction viewed as his qualifications for this role back in August 1960, when, as Army chief of staff, he announced that the Army was all ready to “restore order” in the United States after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union—to bring back normalcy just as the military does after a flood or a riot”
US EXCEPTIONALISM
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One Quarter of the World’s Population is Under US Sanction
22 minutes readALAN MACLEOD—The United States has long had a fractious relationship with the UN, constantly using its veto power to sink progressive legislation that would weaken its military, cultural or economic hegemony. In 2017, the U.S. formally pulled out of the UN’s scientific and cultural organization, UNESCO, in response to the group admitting Palestine. American sanctions are not popular at all in the world; in November, for instance, the UN voted 187-3 (U.S., Israel, Brazil) to condemn Washington’s embargo on Cuba. It was the twenty-eighth consecutive year with vote totals varying little from year to year.
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More Bits On The Corona Crisis: US Proves Its Exceptionalism
89 minutes readMoA—The U.S. is providing the world with another example of its great exceptionalism. In a few days it will have the greatest number of Covid-19 cases and the greatest number of casualties of the disease. It will also have spent the greatest amount of money on the crisis with the smallest part of it going to the people who need it. It is not a nice picture and it makes me sad. The more than two trillion dollar the lobbyists told Congress to put into their 800+ pages relief bill will mostly go to very rich people. It is corporate socialism – a bailout for investors and managers.
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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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Cold War, Coronavirus, And The Illusion Of Control
19 minutes readCAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The illusion of control is also at play in the psychological dance the public does with these climbing escalations against both China and Russia. If people had a sane attitude toward mounting aggressions between nuclear powers the whole planet would be screaming at them to cease and de-escalate immediately, but because we got lucky in the last cold war between the US and the Soviet Union people assume the whole thing is perfectly well controlled and there’s no real danger like there is in a hot war.