ANNE GARRISON—There are few imaginable solutions beyond the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement, which hasn’t managed to rein in Israel’s aggression so far. Is it foolish to imagine that European nations and/or Israel’s other trading partners would impose sanctions? According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity , the top export destinations for Israeli products are the United States ($24B), China ($3.25B), Hong Kong ($2.89B), Palestine ($2.86B) and India ($2.13B). Israel imports the most products from the United States ($8.56B), China ($5.86B), Switzerland ($4.05B), Germany ($3.8B) and Belgium-Luxembourg ($3.44B).
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The Trump White House is a Chaotic Clown Car Filled with Bozos Who Think They’re Brilliant
DAVE LINDORFF—But the concept didn’t work in Vietnam, which drove the US out. It didn’t work in Iraq, which is now an client state of Iran, it didn’t work in Afghanistan, where the US is still fighting the Taliban 17 years after invading that poorest of countries. Truth to tell, the only time the policy really has worked was against the tiny island nation of Grenada, where the primary resistance to the US armada that assaulted the place was a company of Cuban construction workers working on a new airport. (7000 medals were awarded to US military personnel following that triumphant victory.)
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Pompeo’s Outrageous Speech on Iran
FARHANG JAHANPOUR—This obsession with the past and a deliberate decision to bring about a regime change in Iran will have incalculable costs. Let’s not forget that prior to Iraq war, Paul Wolfowitz, one of the authors of that war, predicted that it would be a “cake walk”, that it “would pay for itself”, and that “US forces would be welcomed with roses”. Fifteen years after that disastrous war, American forces are still operating in that country, and the war which has cost trillions of dollars to US taxpayers has killed and wounded millions of innocent Iraqi people, shattered that country and has given rise to a number of vicious terrorist movements.
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Ken Livingstone forced out of British Labour Party
Livingstone’s decision is an unpardonable retreat in the face of this witch hunt. But the moving force behind his resignation appears to have been Corbyn and his advisors. Corbyn never once came to Livingstone’s defence in the two years since his suspension and many of Corbyn’s allies, including Labour peer Shami Chakrabarti, the former director of Liberty, the civil and humanitarian rights advocacy group, backed the demand for his expulsion.
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AUMF 2018: A “Forever Vote” is on the Move
RENEE PARSONS—The AUMF 2018 would replace AUMF’s 2001 and 2002 which proponents suggest would remove the onerous Constitutional responsibility from a self-proclaimed over-burdened Congress from voting to approve every single separate act of war. While final approval of the AUMF 2018 represents a “Forever Vote,” product of a low vibration consciousness, the ACLU, which should be leading a vigorous national campaign against the proposal, appears absent from the debate.
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The U.S. won’t say ‘genocide’ but cares about Armenian democracy?
MAX PARRY—The Western jingoist narrative would lead you to believe the world ‘sleepwalked’ into World War I, an attempt by the victors rewriting history to claim the moral high-ground of fighting for ‘liberal values.’ In reality, the Allied and Central Powers both consisted of colonialists guilty of various genocides. Furthermore, preparations had been made for decades by the opposing sides with the buildup of their armaments and the development of naval and armed forces to eventually fight over the re-division of the world’s colonies. The war came as no shock at all to the powers that be, but was only a surprise perhaps to the working class who were used as cannon fodder in the industrial scale slaughter of its battlefields.
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Google, drone murder and the military-intelligence-censorship complex
ANDRE DAMON—In March, Google admitted to helping the Pentagon develop artificial intelligence software to identify objects in video recordings captured by drones, within the framework of a program called Project Maven. While Google claims that the technology is not being used to kill people, the letter’s authors note that the system can be easily modified to identify human beings for assassination.
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