VASSAL STATES

PETER HAENSELER—”The world is selling US bonds and America is running out of money – it’s as simple as that. With the oil that the Americans want to steal, they will once again have assets with which to refinance ailing America. Trump was therefore forced to carry out this raid, because otherwise the empty coffers in Washington would blow up in his face. Being a businessman, he even found a way to make his friends in the oil business rich at the same time.
He was also able to rely on the corrupt military and business leaders in Venezuela – even Maduro’s bodyguards abandoned him. The military, probably in consultation with the CIA, shut down its own air defenses to guarantee safe passage for the robber barons.
The parallels with Syria are obvious, with the difference that Assad smelled a rat and had himself flown out by the Russians.”

COL BILL ASTORE—Imagine if Venezuela attacked the U.S. Imagine if President Trump and Melania Trump were seized, and that the Venezuelan attorney general said they would face justice in Venezuela. I’d imagine that nearly all Americans would see this as an act of war, a gross violation of national sovereignty. American vengeance would be swift.

GARY OLSON—A draft of the latest National Defense Strategy (NDS) was leaked to Politico. If implemented, the plan proposes to pivot away from China and prioritize protecting the homeland and the Western Hemisphere. The speed of this proposed change is astonishing and its impact enormously consequential.
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It’s also confounding as its author is none other than Elbridge Colby, the current Deputy Secretary of War. It was Colby who co-wrote the 2018 NDS which unequivocally focused on deterring China and won him praise from neocons in both political parties. Colby, grandson of former CIA Director William Colby, followed this up with a highly influential book, “Strategy of Denial,” in which he advocated turning the U.S. focus toward China and away from Europe and the Middle East.

BRIAN BERLETIC—US policymakers have sought to use Israel as a proxy to provoke a full-scale war with Iran for years. While the US attempts to distance itself from Israeli provocations and atrocities including attacks on embassies and the killing of aid workers, the US is chief in enabling Israeli in continuing to carry out such attacks. – Just as the US created a large-scale conflict in Ukraine to reassert itself over Europe, it is attempting to use conflict to reassert itself in the Middle East and at a minimum prevent the region from uniting and moving out from under Western hegemony. – The window of opportunity for the US and proxies like Israel to fight and win a military conflict against Iran and its allies in the region is quickly closing, thus efforts are being made to provoke such a conflict sooner rather than later.

KARL SANCHEZ—The nature of our situation as citizens of an Outlaw Empire is detailed in many books that discuss the nature of the political system but never go to its cause or how it became that way. That whole story is what I’ve been attempting to compile in my work as a historian over the decades, and I probably finally have enough material to write a major essay on the topic, although new facts are always being uncovered that further prove some facet of the whole story. The problem is to know when to stop compiling facts and start writing. And then there’re contemporary events that I continue to cover that take me away from that project. Writing a long essay is sort of like building a house: you need to make a blueprint to know how to proceed.