Author: Keith Preston
‘I Was In Three Riots In Four Months’ – A 30+ Year Anarchist Journey Reply
Pete invited Keith Preston to return to the show to talk about his 30+ year journey through anarchism.
Keith has devoted much of that time to anarchism’s historical study and hosts the largest pan-archist site on the web, Attack The System. Listen here.
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Link to Richard Grove’s Autonomy Course
Episode 101 – Season 5 with Bellamy Reply
A great interview that covers many topics that are relevant to ATS such as the value of “pan-secessionism” as opposed to “world domination anarchism,”and left-wing authoritarianism. Listen here.
“Since Bellamy was here at the start of The Brilliant project it is great to check in where he is at regarding the things we are talking and thinking about. Obviously Bellamy and I have been having similar experiences in the Anarchist Space over the past few years. This episode is about some dissimilar experiences and what is next with each of us and our respective media projects.”
Trump’s travel ban imposed on nations not subservient to US Reply
US President Donald Trump’s travel ban is based on geopolitical reasons and imposed against countries that refuse to join America’s sphere of influence, says a political analyst in Virginia.
“I noticed that Belarus was included. Belarus is of course another nation that is widely considered to be the equivalent of a rogue state by the United States because they are not subservient to Washington’s objectives,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
“They have refused to be incorporated into the Washington consensus,” Preston told Press TV.
“So some of these nations, it’s likely that there are geopolitical reasons why they were included [in the travel ban list],” he added.Trump administration plans to add seven nations to travel ban list: ReportsThe administration of US President Donald Trump is planning to add seven countries to its travel ban list.
The Trump administration is planning to add seven countries – Belarus, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan and Tanzania – to its travel ban list, US media reports said on Tuesday.
Some countries will face bans only on some visa categories, the Wall Street Journal reported. The list of countries was not final and could yet change, website Politico said.
Trump said in an interview with the Journal that he was considering adding countries to the travel ban, but declined to state which ones.
The move is likely to sour ties between the United States and the countries affected under the expanded ban.
Nigeria, for example, Africa’s largest economy and most populous country, is a US anti-terrorism partner and has a large diaspora residing in the United States.
Under the current version of the ban, citizens of Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, as well as some Venezuelan officials and their relatives are blocked from obtaining a large range of US immigrant and non-immigrant visas.
Citizens of the countries can apply for waivers to the ban, but they are exceedingly rare.
The travel ban to the US has been central to Trump’s immigration policy and his campaign promise to restrict immigration to the US.
During the 2016 presidential race, Trump campaigned for “a total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States on the pretext of preventing terrorist attacks.
Opponents say the ban violates the US Constitution because it discriminates against Muslims and certain nationalities.
Mike Gravel: I'd probably vote Present like Tulsi 1
My take on the Trump impeachment is the same as Mike Gravel’s and Tulsi Gabbard’s. There are many things that are objectionable about Trump (and virtually all other presidents), and calling him out on those things would be justifiable if Congress cared to do so. But the impeachment effort is just a grandstanding partisan exercise that is meaningless because Trump won’t be convicted in the Senate.
In this clip from PRIMO NUTMEG #207, former Democratic US Senator and 2020 Presidential candidate Mike Gravel explains that he would probably also vote “Present” on Donald Trump’s impeachment if he were still in the US Senate, as Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard recently did in the House of Representatives.
Democrats slam Republicans over Trump impeachment rules Reply
Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of the US Congress have slammed the rules of impeachment against President Donald Trump announced by Senate Republicans, saying the process is “rigged” and different from the impeachment of former Democratic President Bill Clinton.
It’s Time to Bring the War Home Again Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
As the dust settles on Donald Trump’s latest high octane game of chicken with the Islamic Republic, an eerie calm seems to have risen like fog from Soleimani’s grave to take its place. But while the whole world exhales, war nerds like myself struggle like David Carradine to find the loop to loosen the belt around our throats. That’s because deep down in our wonky ill-nourished guts we know that this shit is far from over.
Unlike Trump’s usual foreign policy impulses, that seem to be governed more by techno-Tourette’s syndrome and penile insecurity than anything resembling a sane strategy, there is a very sick method to the madness when it comes to his dance with Iran, and that’s because the clumsy footed fuck is dutifully following the same choreography as George W. Bush. The choreography of slow consistent escalation that can only end in the most devastating war the world has seen since the fall of Germany’s Third Reich and the rise of Uncle Sam’s Fourth. Trump may be a pathologically unbalanced wild card on every issue from abortion to bathroom etiquette, but he still takes his marching orders from the same Zionist piggy bank as the neocons he won 2016 mocking.
Every step Trump has taken since entering the topographic maze of Pennsylvania Avenue has been tailor made to provoke Iran into the genre of open warfare they have masterfully avoided since their Reagan era bloodbath with Trump’s Middle Eastern counterpart Saddam Hussein. The violation of the Nuclear Deal. The escalation of the Shia genocide in Yemen. The recognition of colonial Jerusalem. The build up of troops to fight our own former proxies in neighboring Iraq. The Gulf of Tonkin games in the Strait of Hormuz. And now the calculated cold blooded murder of Iran’s greatest strategist, the man who designed the Islamic Republic’s cagey Fourth Generation foreign policy which has made a fantastic fool of the nation’s most fearsome foes.
Qassem Soleimani died on his way to peace talks with his Saudi adversaries that Trump himself encouraged. He was shot down in the most chickenshit cowardly ambush our government has thrown since J. Edna plied John Dillinger to the Biograph Theater with a whore in red. There is no going back from this one, kiddies. The dye is cast. The only question left worth asking now is what do we, the few proud anti-imperialists living in the belly of the beast, do about it? How do we prevent World War 3?
Why the Left Fails Reply
Todd Lewis and Keith Preston discuss the failure of the political left in its historic mission of checking private power.
UN urges ‘foreign’ players to stop ‘meddling’ in Libya conflict Reply
The United Nations has urged all “foreign” players to stop “interfering” in the conflict in Libya, just a day before a peace summit in Germany aimed at establishing a permanent ceasefire between the two warring sides in the North African country.
US officials connected to Israel lobby pushed Trump to order Soleimani’s assassination Reply
Press TV. Listen here.
Senior US officials in President Donald Trump’s administration who are “heavily connected” to the Israel lobby and US arms industry pressured Trump to order the assassination of Iranian Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, says a political analyst in Virginia.
“The reason he did that seems to have been due to the influence of his immediate circle of advisers,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
“Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, these were the people who pushed the president towards carrying out the assassination,” Preston told Press TV on Wednesday.
“These are individuals that are heavily connected to the Israeli lobby in the United States; these are individuals that are heavily connected to the American military–industrial complex, which profits heavily from American sales of armaments to Israel and Saudi Arabia,” Preston added.
“More and more, the fingerprints of Israel, and to some degree Saudi Arabia, are on this particular action,” he added.
The US military carried out an airstrike on the direction of Trump at Baghdad’s international airport last Friday, assassinating Soleimani and the second-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, as well as eight other companions.
Early on Wednesday, Iran responded to the assassination, striking the American airbase of Ain al-Assad in Anbar province in western Iraq and another in Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
The Trump administration claims it carried out the assassination to avert an “imminent attack,” which is being faced with growing suspicion and skepticism in the US.
Dozens of countries attending a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday condemned the Trump administration for killing Soleimani, the Middle East’s most prominent anti-terror commander.
A USA Today/Ipsos poll released Thursday found that Americans, by 55%-24%, said they believe the killing of General Soleimani has made the United States less safe, rejecting a fundamental argument the Trump administration has made that the assassination made the US safer.
The poll also found that a majority of those surveyed, by 52%-34%, called Trump’s behavior with Iran “reckless.”
Similarly, a Reuters/Ipsos polling released on Tuesday found that 53 percent of adults in the US disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran, which is an increase of about 9 percentage points from a similar poll that ran in the middle of December.
The US House of Representatives passed a resolution on Thursday to stop Trump from further military action against Iran, rebuking the president days after he ordered the killing of Soleimani and escalated tensions in the region.
If passed by the House and Senate, the measure does not need Trump’s signature to go into effect.
Lyceum Round-Table #8: Defining Right and Left Reply
Soleimani assassination was an act of war, says analyst Reply
Balkans Post
“An act of assassination carried out against a high-ranking official of another state is an act of war,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com, in an interview with the Balkans Post.
Here’s the full transcript of the interview:
Balkans Post: The United States assassinated Iran’s top commander, Qassem Soleimani, in Iraq’s Baghdad on January 3. How do you interpret the assassination and what are its implications for the region?
Keith Preston: The assassination of General Soleimani is a very serious matter that has had the effect of significantly escalating the tensions between the United States and Iran. An act of assassination carried out against a high-ranking official of another state is an act of war. The question that remains involves the matter of what the United States was trying to achieve from a strategic perspective by carrying out the assassination. It would appear that the United States is trying to escalate conflict within Iraq, and between Iraq and Iran. The United States does not want a unified Iraq that is friendly toward Iran. Nor does the United States want an Iraq where the Shi’a have significant amounts of influence. Instead, the United States prefers a Sunni-dominated Iraq as was the case during the era of Saddam Hussein. The popular mobilization units that were attacked by the United States were engaged in counterinsurgency operations against ISIS and other Takfiri groups. The United States would prefer that Iraq return to its former state of civil war rather than have a Shi’a-led Iraq that is friendly to Iran, and included within the resistance axis.
Trannies with Guns: Because Enough is Enough! 1
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
I need to buy a gun. I can’t state it any simpler than that. It’s something I’ve needed for sometime and I seem to feel like I need it a little more each day. The gun doesn’t have to be fancy or high tech. I don’t need some AR hunting rifle in drag or one of those phallic three digit magnum monstrosities. I need something basic and reliable. Maybe a .38 or .45 wheel gun. Something just powerful enough to put an irate cis-male down in two shots or less. I’ve always wanted a gun but I never felt like I really needed one until recently, about four years ago to be exact, right around the time I came out as a trans person. Now, as my fluctuating gender continues to veer further and further towards the feminine end of the spectrum, I’ve come to understand the stone-cold necessity for the Second Amendment more clearly than I ever have before. So I’ll say it once more with feeling, dearest motherfuckers, to really drive the point home, I need a fucking gun.
Those are the thoughts that swing through my dizzy skull every time I hear another horror story about some trans or gender-bending individual being slaughtered for the high crime of living outside the closet. I’ve been having these thoughts a lot lately, 22 times in the last year to be exact. That’s how many trans murders occurred in 2019 that we know of and that doesn’t even include the girls killed in police custody. I wish I could say that this is an anomaly, but it’s not. According to the American Medical Association, it’s a goddamn epidemic. At least 157 of my people have been slaughtered since 2013, right around the time the Christian White, I mean Right, switched gears from the now dated practice of fag-bashing to that new national pastime of tranny-stomping, and I say ‘at least’ before that staggering headcount because most transgender murder victims still go unreported or misgendered. The police can’t seem to help themselves, even in death they spit on us.
And this is why gun control is a steaming sack of elitist bullshit. When you tell people to give up their guns, you’re really telling them to trust the cops. This might work smashingly for billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and the bougie brats in March For Our Lives, but for marginalized people like myself, it’s a fucking slap in the face. As I mentioned above, pigs kill trannies. Just ask Layleen Polanco, who was found dead in her cell at Rikers this year. Or Johana Medina, who was only released from one of ICE’s fine concentration camps just in time to die in the ER from untreated medical problems.
Tulsi Gabbard Exclusive: How I tried to stop Trump's Iran actions Reply
Some pretty good insights into how “democracy” actually works: The “people’s representatives” receive their marching orders from the overlords of the empire, which they are then expected to rubber stamp.
How Our Government Is Trying To Gaslight Us into A War With Iran Reply
Lawrence Wilkerson on Trump's Iran aggression: same neocon lies, new target Reply
A great interview with Colin Powell’s former chief of staff.
Pushback with Aaron Maté As millions of Iranians mourn the US murder of Qassem Soleimani, ex-Bush administration official Col. Lawrence Wilkerson discuses the parallels between Bush’s war on Iraq and Trump’s campaign against Iran; the history of US shunning diplomacy with Tehran; and how an addiction to war drives US foreign policy. Guest: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell. Currently a distinguished professor at the College of William and Mary. Support Pushback at Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/aaronmate Pushback on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pushbackshow Aaron Maté on Twitter: https://twitter.com/aaronjmate
Sympathy For Soleimani Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
A preemptive strike, that’s what white people call terrorism, and that’s apparently what transpired this Thursday on the tarmac of the Baghdad International Airport. A preemptive drone strike, ordered by our president, murdered General Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s most important military figure, alongside six others including the commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Unit, a legally recognized part of Iraq’s military. This was not an attack on a military operation. These men were meeting to attend a funeral for victims of another American terrorist attack earlier in the week. This was an act of extreme cowardice. This was a war crime. But most importantly, this was indeed a calculated act of war against two sovereign nations, a week in the making.
The previous Friday, rockets struck an American base in Iraq, killing a single American mercenary. This is a crime that remains unsolved, but the Trump Administration wasted zero time blaming it on Iran via their alleged proxies in the PMU. No evidence given, no evidence required. An American soldier of fortune died in Shia country, which is the greenlight Trump has been looking for to shithouse Iran since Sheldon Adelson payed him to do so in 2016. I suspect that Sheldon’s friends back in occupied Jerusalem may be the ones truly responsible for this convenient attack, but that’s just a hunch from a stalwart anti-Zionist with too much time on her hands. Take it with a grain of salt.
This attack set into motion a procession of tit for tat escalations that ended with the assassination of a man so revered by his people that a response is all but a forgone conclusion whether Iran wants it or not. Their hands are tied. Meanwhile, thousands of American troops prepare to re-flood the scarred battleground of America’s greatest imperial blunder, as the shitheads of American cable news take turns telling facetious horror stories about the extra-judicially murdered Soleimani. If you were dense enough to take these morons at their libel, you would be forced to come to the conclusion that the general was some kind of blood drinking Sith lord. But who was he really, to us and his people?
The Anarchist Era Collective’s Statement on the Assassination of an Iranian State Terrorist Reply
An interesting statement from an Iranian anarchist group that more or less takes a “pox on all their houses” perspective. Read here.
“Qasem Soleimani has long tormented the people and we congratulate the survivors of his crimes in the Middle East, particularly Syria, Iraq and Yemen. And while we are glad for the death of this war criminal, we declare our strong opposition to the possibility of a state war (between US state terrorism and Iranian state terrorism)
Hours ago, Qasem Soleimani, one of the top military officials of the Iranian government who was responsible for the Middle East, was killed on the direct order of Donald Trump in Baghdad
Qasem Soleimani was a genocidal man that has killed thousands of men, women, and children in the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. He lead sieges for Assad and recruited Afghan refugees in Iran, many of them children, to die in the Syrian civil war. This state assassination was carried out by the United States in the obvious interest of Donald Trump’s election and what was done has not been and will not be in the interests of the people in the Middle East
Despite much commotion and controversy made by the Islamic regime over its security and intelligence capabilities, we see that in fact this regime is not capable of maintaining its most important transnational force and Qasem Soleimani was assassinated as soon as the US decided to remove him
On the one hand, the viciousness of the criminal Islamic regime became more apparent and on the other hand, it further showed the corrupt nature of US state terrorism, which does not care about the lives of their own nor those of the people in the Middle East—otherwise these Iranian state terrorists could have been easily hunted down over the years
We reiterate that the contemporary Middle East is shaped by wars, massacres, displacement, and famine because of religious fanatics and terrorists on the one hand and the interference of international capitalists and backers (Eastern and Western Imperialism) on the other
We hope all of these religious terrorists are killed as soon as possible and these murderous state governments will be destroyed so that the people of the Middle East live again in peace and prosperity.”
America is exiting the world stage. Who replaces it? 4
This discussion makes an interesting argument that multipolarity will create a world order where France rather than Germany is dominant in Europe, Turkey rather than Russia in Central Asia, Japan rather than China in East Asia, and Argentina rather than Brazil in Latin America. Not sure I agree but an interesting perspective.
The Agonist: Winter Edition 1
A new issue of the paleoconservative journal The Agonist is now available with a lead article from yours truly. Read the entire edition online here.
Iran, Russia, China Countering US Influence in Region: American Analyst Reply
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The joint naval drills of Iran, Russia and China in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman were aimed at countering US influence in the region, an American political analyst said.
“The three countries appear to have as their primary objectives the protection of the security of these routes, and countering the influence of the US in the region,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told Tasnim in an interview.
Washington Prefers to Continue Its Occupation of Iraq: US Expert 1
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American Middle East expert described the recent US attacks on positions of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units as a “clear violation” of the Arab country’s sovereignty, adding that Washington prefers to continue its occupation of Iraq.
“This (the attack on PMU bases) was a clear violation of Iraq’s sovereignty. However, it isn’t surprising because I would never expect the United States to uphold any of its treaties or agreements with other countries. And Washington has no respect for the sovereignty of other countries because they’re currently maintaining illegal military bases in Syria,” Randi Nord told Tasnim.
She added, “Clearly, Washington is willing to put its own allies and even troops at risk to send a message and continue its occupation of Iraq.”
