Iran Crisis

NADER'S GUESTS TALK ABOUT IRAN

Iran Crisis

(Ralph Nader Radio Hour)

"Ralph talks to Constitutional scholar and Senior Fox News Judicial Analyst, Andrew Napolitano, and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, about the legality and consequences of the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani." 

 * * * * * *

 DEMOCRACY NOW!

JANUARY 6, 2020 FULL SHOW

* * * * * *

 Soleimani’s Death Could Galvanize Shia Coalitions Against One “Foreign Aggressor” — The U.S.

(DN Interview with Professor Narges Bajoghli)

"We begin today’s show with Narges Bajoghli, professor of Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her recent opinion piece for The New York Times is headlined “Suleimani’s Death Changes Nothing for Iran.” She is the author of Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic. And in Baghdad, Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, correspondent for The Guardian newspaper, is back with us. His latest piece is headlined “Iran ends nuclear deal commitments as fallout from Suleimani killing spreads.”

Suleimani’s Death Changes Nothing for Iran

(Narges Bajoghli at the New York Times)

"The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran by the United States was an unprecedented escalation in the 40-year standoff between the two countries. "

American Dystopia

NOAM CHOMSKY INTERVIEW

WITH ROBERT SCHEER

Noam Chomsky: America Has Built a Global Dystopia

(Truthdig.com)

" Scheer: ...I hope everyone listening to this is, obviously, familiar with these books. One, Orwell’s, is very bleak–totalitarian, sadism and so forth of the totalitarian state; and Huxley presents a view that is also a reflection of the work that Noam Chomsky has written about the advertising society, the manipulative society, the consumer society. Manufacturing Consent, the drug effect of sports and consumerism, lulling people into acceptance. And in his letter to Orwell, and by an accident of history, Huxley had been, in 1917, Orwell’s French teacher at Eton, and knew him. And the publisher had sent it to Huxley thinking Huxley would just embrace it. And Huxley said some nice things, but he said: I think you missed the point; it won’t be so overt, because the ruling classes that want to hold on to their power will find that more subtle, manipulative means much more effective. That was Huxley’s rejoinder to Orwell.

Now, your own work has sort of talked about all of it. And when I look at the current situation in the United States now, it seems to me we have an amalgam of these two totalitarian, dystopian models emerging. We, in the words of Neil Postman, we amuse people to death, we distract them; in your writing, you’ve talked about those distractions. But we’re also a militarized state. We have punitive surveillance, and we use the espionage law. We have the boots on the ground; we have 800 bases.

So take it from there. Which–I think we can start with the assumption we have to be concerned about a dystopian future. Which model do you see emerging?

Chomsky: Actually, I could add a third one. The first of this series of dystopian novels was Zamyatin, his book We, around 1920, Russian, gave a very vivid picture of a dystopian society that kind of amalgamates the kinds of pictures that Huxley and Orwell were developing. But we are very clearly moving to a tight surveillance society. There’s interesting work on this: Shoshana Zuboff, whose work you’ve probably seen, a Harvard professor, has a book called, I think, Surveillance Capitalism, which is about the techniques that are being developed to influence, control behavior, control people through the use of modern technology."

You've Never Met A War You Didn't Like

SECULAR TALK

Geraldo Owns Kilmeade: 'You've Never Met A War You Didn't Like!'

(Kyle Kulinski on YouTube)

THE GRAY ZONE

THE GRAY ZONE . COM

The next world war WILL be the war to end all wars, because there won't be much of a world to fight over if we allow it to happen. WWIII will be America's war, the world against US. 

We should change our national symbol from an eagle to a hawk.

* * * * * * *

Iraqi PM reveals Soleimani was on peace mission when assassinated, exploding Trump’s lie of ‘imminent attacks’

The Trump administration claimed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was planning “imminent attacks” on US interests when it assassinated him. That lie was just destroyed, but not before countless corporate media outlets transmitted it to the public.

(Max Blumenthal at The Gray Zone)

"Soleimani had arrived in Baghdad not to plan attacks on American targets, but to coordinate de-escalation with Saudi Arabia. Indeed, he was killed while on an actual peace mission that could have created political distance between the Gulf monarchy and members of the US-led anti-Iran axis like Israel.

The catastrophic results of Soleimani’s killing recall the Obama administration’s 2016 assassination of Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, a Taliban leader who was eager to negotiate a peaceful end to the US occupation of Afghanistan. Mansur’s death wound up empowering hardline figures in the Taliban who favored a total military victory over the US and triggered an uptick in violence across the country, dooming hopes for a negotiated exit.

Since Soleimani’s assassination, Iraq’s parliament has voted to expel all US troops from the country and Iran’s Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has sworn to exact a “severe revenge” on the “the criminals who have stained their hands with [Soleimani’s] and the other martyrs’ blood…”

Trump, for his part, tweeted a litany of gangster-like threats, promising to destroy Iranian cultural sites if it retaliated and pledging to sanction Iraq “like they’ve never been before” if it ousted US troops."

THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS

  THE AFGHANISTAN PAPERS

(The Washington Post: Afghanistan Papers)

 A secret history of the war

"In a cache of previously unpublished interviews and memos, key insiders reveal what went wrong during the longest armed conflict in U.S. history.

For 18 years, America has been at war in Afghanistan. As part of a government project to understand what went wrong, a federal agency interviewed more than 400 people who had a direct role in the conflict. In those interviews, generals, ambassadors, diplomats and other insiders offered firsthand accounts of the mistakes that have prolonged the war.

The full, unsparing remarks and the identities of many of those who made them have never been made public — until now. After a three-year legal battle, The Washington Post won release of more than 2,000 pages of “Lessons Learned” interviews conducted by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Those interviews reveal there was no consensus on the war’s objectives, let alone how to end the conflict."

 * * * * * 

Part of the Main Stream Media propaganda machine surprisingly reveals important information about the farce that is U.S. foreign policy. The rest of Main Stream Media pretends not to notice.

That war is a racket has been obvious to objective observers of history, and followers of independent journalism for over a hundred years.

Noam Chomsky - The Crimes of U.S. Presidents 
(Interview on YouTube)

* * * * *

Tomgram: William Hartung, Lessons From Battling the Pentagon for Four Decades 
(TomDispatch.com)

"The other day, after a three-year legal struggle, the Washington Post broke a story about a secret Afghan War project of the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Its focus was hundreds of interviews with American figures -- from top officials and generals to lesser actors of every sort -- involved in that misbegotten conflict. The overwhelming conclusion reached in private by the very people who prosecuted that never-ending war: that the American people were eternally lied to and kept out of the loop when it came to the “progress” being made there at any moment since 2002. As the Post put it, “In news conferences and other public appearances, those in charge of the war have followed the same talking points for 18 years. No matter how the war is going -- and especially when it is going badly -- they emphasize how they are making progress.”

I already hear the gasps of TomDispatch readers. Okay, I’m kidding (in a grim sort of way). While it's significant that the Post is doing a six-part series based on those previously hidden interviews, the story is being presented as a kind of Pentagon Papers of the twenty-first century.  After all, it features admissions that the U.S. dumped untold amounts of money into Afghanistan over 18 years to no positive effect whatsoever, creating a staggering kleptocracy and corruption on a titanic scale, while essentially building nothing of value or ever achieving actual “progress” in the war against the Taliban. It was, in a word, all lies (sometimes backed by fake or manipulated statistics), constantly promoted by key government officials and U.S. military commanders one after another after another after another.

TomDispatch is proof, however, that this set of revelations, though interesting, adds up to anything but a Pentagon Papers. If you happened to be reading this site or others like it instead of the Washington Post in these years, just about all of this would already have been obvious to you, a set of commonplace conclusions, discussed repeatedly."

* * * * *

 

CHRIS HEDGES

 On Contact: Afghanistan Papers with Spenser Rapone 

On Contact with Chris Hedges (video interview) 

"Chris Hedges talks to Spenser Rapone, former combat veteran and US Army officer, about the Washington Post’s series the ‘Afghanistan Papers’. Drawing on thousands of pages of international government documents about the war in Afghanistan, the series exposes the lies, deceit, mismanagement, waste, corruption, fraud, and failed schemes that both Democratic and Republican administrations pursed in Afghanistan, the longest conflict in US history (18 years and counting), which has claimed tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money."

BONUS VIDEO

 The Afghanistan papers, voter suppression in Wisconsin, digital reputation scrubbing 
 (Redacted Tonight with Lee Camp)

Whistleblower Proves Tulsi RIGHT On Syria & Afghanistan Wars 
(The Jimmy Dore Show)  

AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM

 

DANNY HAIPHONG ON FAKE NEWS

"According to Robert Sirvent and Danny Haiphong, Americans have been exposed to fake news throughout our history—news that slavery is a thing of the past, that we don’t live on stolen land, that wars are fought to spread freedom and democracy, that a rising tide lifts all boats, that prisons keep us safe, and that the police serve and protect.

Thus, the only “news” ever reported by various channels of U.S. empire is the news of American exceptionalism and American innocence. And, as this book will hopefully show, it’s all fake."

American Exceptionalism and American Innocence

* * * * * *

Danny Haiphong's interview with Jimmy Dore was exceptional, genuinely so, not the usual fake narrative we're accustomed to:

How The Ruling Class Implements It’s Agenda with Danny Haiphong 
 (The Jimmy Dore Show - YouTube video)

BERNIE 2020

BERNIE 2020

I started supporting principled independents over the shills in our corporately-controlled political parties after the disastrous Clinton Administration.

 

I liked Bill Clinton initially, I voted for him, but I was also not paying much attention. When I was young I described myself as apolitical; I was a registered Democrat, always voted for Democrats, but considered politics so dull I hardly thought about it. Back in the 80s and 90s I was a perfect dupe. I had picked a team and halfheartedly rooted for them every four years during the U.S. Presidential Super Bowl Shit Show Extravaganza.

 

 I finally started paying attention during the ridiculous Clinton impeachment hearings. Although I've always been strongly opposed to the conservative/right-wing mindset, I now thank the Republican Party for something.

 

  The Republican-led Clinton impeachment circus ignited my political fire. I became aware that the impeachment was over a nonsense issue, instead of far more significant corruption and serious crimes perpetrated by the Clinton Administration, here and abroad. The same is now happening to Trump. There are myriad and tremendously compelling reasons that Trump should be impeached, unfortunately these crimes do not stray from the norm, they are bipartisan crimes. The phone call is weak tea by comparison. The most likely result of the current impeachment circus will be to make Trump more popular.

 

I've been around since the 60s; every administration in my lifetime could have been convicted of war crimes, and violations of The Constitution and their oaths of office. The establishment needs to be voted out and the Constitutional crime of bribery needs to be rationally defined.

* * * BERNIE 2020 * * *

Bernie Sanders is not perfect, his Congressional voting record is very good, but not spotless, and his capitulation to the DNC in 2016 after they screwed him over, though anticipated, was disheartening. The whitewashing of the DNC's systemic election rigging at every level continues to amaze me.

 

I'm a registered Green, so I cannot participate in my state's primaries. Rather than disingenuously registering as a Democrat, I hope there's enough of them with a brain to get Bernie on a ballot I'm permitted to use.

I would have loved a Ralph Nader presidency. Bernie Sanders is sadly not Nader, but he's the very first serious contender for president that excites me. He would be the first Democratic presidential candidate I've voted for since 1996. I even donated to his campaign! If our corrupt media and the DNC successfully suppress the Sanders Campaign, I'm going Green again.

* * * BERNIE 2020 * * *

 

 P.S. I support Bernie knowing that problems in America and throughout the World are not only beyond his ability to solve, they are likely beyond solving, period. But I'd rather encourage a decent guy, than hate a partisan tool.