VIDEOS

GILBERT DOCTOROW says: “In my reductionist approach, the summit has one driver behind it, namely to put a cap on an arms race that the United States is losing, if it has not already irrevocably lost, and to prevent the adverse shift in the strategic balance against America from getting still worse. The side benefit would be to strike down planned military expenditures budgeted for well over a trillion dollars to modernize the nuclear triad alone. This would thereby free funds for the massive infrastructure investments that Biden is presently trying to push through Congress…”

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—The empire feeds on oppression, exploitation, ignorance, and blood. It is impossible to dominate the planet with a unipolar world order if you don’t use violent force, and the threat of violent force, to uphold that world order. If you’re not strangling people at home and bombing people abroad, then you cannot have an oligarchic empire. Period.

The main rift you see on the leftmost end of the American political spectrum is between people who seek an end to the imperialist murder machine, and people who just want the imperialist murder machine to give them healthcare. The first group faces a very difficult uphill battle to get what it wants. The second group is just masturbating an impossible fantasy.

A wide variety of critics of Marxism-Leninism, beginning with liberals and outright rightwingers and fascists, plus anarchists and libertarians of many stripes, accuse Marxist-Leninists of being inherently “authoritarian”, despotic and tyrannical. Their criticism is usually directed at nations where anti-imperialists have conquered power (Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua, and the “pink tide in Latin America”, Iran, etc.) This is Michael Parenti’s insight on this important issue. 

JOHN HELMER—According to Steenhuis, the US was asked once again “if there is any possibility to take cognizance of the [satellite] data” and for the court to judge the satellite evidence in its verdict. The Dutch request explicitly asked the Americans “to offer the investigating judge, as a judge, the same opportunity as the public prosecutor [Minks] received in August 2016, which was to have the opportunity during an intelligence briefing by the officer of the Director of National Intelligence to see the [satellite] data that are at the basis of this memorandum and to make an official record” [Min 40:49].

The official US reply, dated April 22, 2021, was: “we have concluded that the circumstances and considerations previously described remain unchanged. Thus, regrettably, we are unable to provide assistance beyond that outlined in the memorandum from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence dated 23 August 2016” [Min 41:30].

David Pakman is a liberal who claims that Marxism-Leninism is a failure and has nothing in common with socialism, while utopian socialism, anarchism and “democratic socialism” are fantastic successes. As his evidence he says “Orwell said so”. However, Pakman is not a supporter of any kind of socialism, he merely advocates for those things to steer people away from Marxism.