United States – Empire and domestic

Photo by Jiyeon Park on Unsplash Edward Curtin May 19, 2022 Isn’t it always? With the start of World War III by the United States “declaring” war against Russia by its actions in Ukraine, we have entered a time when the end of time has become very possible. I am speaking of nuclear annihilation. I look down at my great-uncle’s gold Elgin pocket watch from the 19th century. His name was John Patrick Whalen, an Irish immigrant to the US who fled England’s colonialist created famine in Ireland. It tells me it is 5:15 PM on April 21, 2022, a date, coincidentally, with a history.  Originally published at Off-Guardian No doubt John looked at his watch on this date in 1898 when the United States, after the USS Maine exploded from within in Havana harbour (a possible false flag attack), declared war on Spain in order to confiscate Spanish territories – Cuba, Puerto Rico,...

Ben Norton May 18, 2022 NATO sees Ukrainians as mere cannon fodder in its imperial proxy war on Russia The US-led NATO military alliance has made it clear that it is willing to fight to the last Ukrainian in order to bleed Russia and advance Western geopolitical interests. In a shockingly blunt admission, The Washington Post acknowledged that some NATO member states want “Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying” in order to prevent Russia from making political gains. Originally published at Globalresearch In an April 5 report on peace talks between Ukraine and Russia, the major US newspaper disclosed that NATO is afraid that Kyiv may give in to some of Moscow’s demands. The Washington Post wrote explicitly: “For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe.” Anonymous...

Richard E. Rubenstein May 17, 2022 Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, it was fair to call the ensuing conflict “Putin’s war.” True, the U.S. and Europe could probably have avoided the invasion by calling a halt to NATO expansion and negotiating seriously with the Russians about key security issues. True, U.S. arms had been pouring into Ukraine since the overthrow of the pro-Russian government there in 2014, and Ukraine was using them to kill pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region. But Putin was still responsible for crossing the line into organized violence. It does matter who shoots first, and he shot first. Originally published at Transcend.org Even so, that is not the end of the discussion. Far from it. At first one could rightfully have called this Putin’s war, but it has now become Joe Biden’s war as well. Consider what has happened so far. The advance...

Diplomatic Security Service conducts a training at the National Cathedral in Washington in 2020. (U.S. State Department) Sam Husseini May 2, 2022 The late U.S. secretary of state’s association with Biden and the Clintons can be seen as a war-making, mutually absolving clique, writes Sam Husseini. It’s fitting that U.S. President Joe Biden and Bill and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should eulogize Madeleine Albright at the mammoth Episcopalian institution calling itself the “National Cathedral.” After all, just last year, Albright eulogized fellow war maker, “trailblazer” and fellow Episcopalian Colin Powell there for his “honesty, dignity, loyalty and an unshakable commitment to his calling and word.”  Albright, Biden and the Clintons covered for each other’s criminal war making — and ultimately, they all enabled and covered for Republican criminality as well. All showed they were capable of murderous deceits.  Originally published at Consortiumnews.com It sparked some measure of attention during the 2020 election,...

Gordon Hahn May 3, 2022 Recent reporting suggests that my sense that Russian President Vladimir Putin had not planned to invade and was instead engaged in coercive diplomacy in massing troops around Ukraine is supported, though not necessarily confirmed by US intelligence, according to a recent report on US pre-war intelligence. The decision to invade and, in particular, to conduct a ‘special military operation’ rather than declare war on Ukraine has led to a prolonged conflict fraught with the risk of escalation and direct NATO involvement. NATO countries are already de jure co-belligerents, bringing — together with Russia — the world to the brink of a world war that could quickly go nuclear. The relevant report notes: “Putin did not make a final decision to invade until just before he launched the attack in February, according to senior current and former U.S. intelligence officials.” “The CIA was saying through January...

May 3, 2022 Andrew J. Bacevich I recently participated in a commemoration of Martin Luther King’s address “Beyond Vietnam — A Time to Break Silence,” originally delivered on April 2, 1967, at New York City’s Riverside Church. King used the occasion to announce his opposition to the ongoing war in Vietnam. Although a long time coming in the eyes of some in the antiwar movement, his decision was one for which he was roundly criticized, even by supporters of the Civil Rights Movement. He was straying out of his prescribed lane, they charged, and needed to get back where he belonged. This year’s 55th anniversary event, also held in Riverside Church’s magnificent sanctuary, featured inspiring Christian music and a thoughtful discussion of King’s remarks. Most powerful of all, however, was a public reading of the address itself. “Beyond Vietnam” contains many famously moving passages. King, for example, cited “the cruel irony of watching Negro...

Chris Hedges April 28, 2022 The coterie of neocons and liberal interventionists who orchestrated two decades of military fiascos in the Middle East and who have never been held to account are now stoking a suicidal war with Russia. Originally posted on Sheer Post homepage on April 11th, 2020, here The same cabal of warmongering pundits, foreign policy specialists and government officials, year after year, debacle after debacle, smugly dodge responsibility for the military fiascos they orchestrate. They are protean, shifting adroitly with the political winds, moving from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party and then back again, mutating from cold warriors to neocons to liberal interventionists. Pseudo intellectuals, they exude a cloying Ivy League snobbery as they sell perpetual fear, perpetual war, and a racist worldview, where the lesser breeds of the earth only understand violence.  They are pimps of war, puppets of the Pentagon, a state within...

Photo: GT Martin Jacques April 16, 2022 The overwhelming assumption in the West is that the world, with a few exceptions, is strongly opposed to Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. The West itself, including the great majority of Europe, seems to be of one voice in its condemnation. But worldwide the picture is rather more complicated. In the UN General Assembly on March 3, while 141 countries condemned Russia’s invasion and called for an immediate withdrawal, 35 countries abstained and five voted against. In the recent vote to exclude Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, 93 countries voted in favour, 58 abstained and 24 were against.  Originally published at Global Times in China While there are clearly deep misgivings on the part of many countries about Russia’s actions, there is also widespread concern about the stance of the US. The most interesting, and potentially by far the most significant...

Edward Kienholz, “Portable War Memorial,” 1968  Sabir Shah April 14, 2022 The US Has Been at war for more than 92 percent of the time The American history of overt and covert foreign interventions dates back to 1811, when it had invaded Chile, just a year after this South American country had gained independence from Spain. Research conducted by the “Jang Group and Geo Television Network” reveals that the United States has been at war for about 225 of the 243 years since its inception in 1776. While the number of US foreign military interventions had stood at 188 till 2017, the world super power was found involved in 117 “partisan electoral interventions” between 1946 and 2000 or around one of every nine ballot exercises held since Second World War. Originally posted on The News International in Pakistan on January 9th, 2020 This means that the United States has been...

John Pilger April 5, 2022 Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened. Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain. On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, Marshall McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now. Originally published by EurasiaReview on February 19, 2022 But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream. The great editor David Bowman, author of The Captive Press, called this “a defenestration of all who refuse to follow a line and to swallow the unpalatable and are brave”....

Edward Curtin April 5, 2022 Oliver Stone Documents the Past to Illuminate the Present The timing of the early March 2022 release of this digital streaming documentary could not be more auspicious.  For anyone wanting to understand how we arrived at a new Cold War with the second Irish-Catholic Democratic president in US history, Joseph Biden, spewing belligerent absurdities about Ukraine, Russia, and Vladimir Putin, and leading a charge toward a World War III that could easily turn nuclear, the aggregated factual details in this series of why President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the CIA and its minions is essential history that illuminates current events. Originally published at Off-Guardian While Kennedy was the last US president to genuinely seek peace at the cost of his life, his successors have all been lackeys in love with war and in full awareness that the promotion of war and the military-industrial...

Maidan protests in 2014 in Kiev. GENYA SAVILOV / AFP – Getty Images Bryce Greene March 29, 2022 The history of U.S. involvement in Ukraine is rarely analyzed by corporate media. The desire to open Ukraine to finance capital, the 2014 U.S. backed coup, and the drive to expand NATO all played a role in creating the current crisis. As tensions began to rise over Ukraine, US media produced a stream of articles attempting to explain the situation with headlines like “Ukraine Explained” (New York Times, 12/8/21 ) and “What You Need to Know About Tensions Between Ukraine and Russia” (Washington Post, 11/26/21 ). Sidebars would have notes that tried to provide context for the current headlines. But to truly understand this crisis, you would need to know much more than what these articles offered. These “explainer” pieces are emblematic of Ukraine coverage in the rest of corporate media, which almost universally gave a pro-Western...