DAVE LINDORFF—This kind of crazy and immoral thinking goes by the name of “coercive diplomacy,” a term coined by the Harvard professor and nuclear strategy theorist Thomas C. Schelling. First developed in the mid-1960s, Schelling’s lunatic theory is now being resurrected thanks to Presidents Obama and Trump and psycho national “security” advisors like Bolton and Pompeo. As Trump is widely quoted as having asked his national security team, “Why do we have nukes if we can’t use them?”
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Can Maduro Emulate Castro and Assad to Keep NATO’s Imperialist Hands Off Venezuela?
GILBERT MERCIER—Nicolas Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez, had in Fidel Castro a source of inspiration and the guidance of a father figure. Chavez, like other neo-Marxists, looked up to Fidel for leading a successful revolution, through military action, which had toppled the corrupt regime of Fulgencio Batista. This regime was not only a docile servant of the US government but was also directly associated with the Mafia’s criminal activities in Cuba in the era of Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky. With Batista’s complicity, American gangsters had turned Cuba into a gambling and prostitution paradise where the US’ unscrupulous rich went to play. Castro shut down the bordello that had become Cuba and proudly rebuilt his island, and he consciously set out to transform Cuba slowly and steadily into a socialist country.
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Hating Neocons Is Becoming Mainstream Again, And It Is Excellent
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—merican Conservative has published an article titled “Why Are These Professional War Peddlers Still Around?“, an excerpt from a book by Fox’s Tucker Carlson, which documents neoconservative thought leaders Max Boot and Bill Kristol’s consistent track record of supporting spectacularly awful US war policies. Carlson goes over the many, many acts of military interventionism which have been pushed for by these two legendary failmeisters, documents what they predicted would happen as the result of that interventionism (freedom, democracy and prosperity) and what actually ended up happening instead (needless death, terrorism and chaos), and marvels at how they both somehow remain in positions of high esteem with high-profile, high-paying jobs. The article was shared today on Twitter by Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna, who commented that Carlson “offers a devastating critique [of] interventionism and shows how much of the foreign policy establishment has failed the American people. There is an emerging, left right coalition of common sense for a foreign policy of restraint.”
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Venezuela Blitz – Part 2: Press Freedom, Sanctions And Oil
DAVID EDWARDS—Since March 2015, a ‘coalition’ of Sunni Arab states led by Saudi Arabia, and supported by the US, Britain and France, has been dropping bombs on neighbouring Yemen. In 2016, the independent journalist Felicity Arbuthnot reported that in one year, 330,000 homes, 648 mosques, 630 schools and institutes and 250 health facilities had been destroyed or damaged. In December 2016, it was reported that more than 10,000 people had died and three million had been displaced in the conflict. According to Patrick Cockburn in the Independent, the death toll now likely exceeds 60,000. In August 2016, Oxfam reported that in excess of 21 million people in Yemen, out of a total population of around 27 million, needed humanitarian aid, more than in any other country. In December 2016, a new study by UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, reported that at least one child was dying every 10 minutes in Yemen. As far as we are aware, nobody in the UK parliament or press has called for the overthrow of the Saudi regime, nor indeed of the UK government, for creating poverty and suffering that far exceeds anything seen in Venezuela.
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