Author: Keith Preston
Bolton Firing Shows Trump’s Foreign Policy Not Consistent: US Analyst 1
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American political commentator highlighted US President Donald Trump’s inconsistent approach toward foreign affairs, saying the president fired John Bolton to probably develop a “less aggressive stance” than the former US national security adviser.
“Certainly, there is a lack of consistency in the Trump administration when it comes to a variety of matters, including foreign policy,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told Tasnim in an interview.
He added, “Trump likely fired Bolton because the President is inclined toward a less aggressive stance than what Bolton’s supporters would prefer.”
The following is the full text of the interview.
Can Collectivism Work? Reply
Todd Lewis is joined by Keith Preston and Tim Patton to discuss the possibility of collectivism working.
The Race to Depreciate Fiat Currencies Is Accelerating Reply
Mike Gleason, Money Metals Exchange
Metals investors are anxiously awaiting the market’s reaction to next week’s Fed meeting. We may see players in the futures markets move to smash gold and silver prices down to lower support zones in the trading around the Fed’s decision.
But flushing out some more speculative longs and late comers with weak hands would be a healthy development in setting up the next rally.
Those who got left behind in this summer’s big moves in metals markets should certainly consider taking advantage of favorable buying opportunities as they present themselves ahead of a possible seasonal push higher in the sector this fall.
Conventional financial markets could become volatile as uncertainties surrounding America’s economy and political future weigh on investors. We are potentially only one election away from falling into socialism and one quarter’s GDP report away from falling into recession.
Lately, the mainstream media has been fixated on the possibility of the Trump economy heading toward recession.
Yes, at some point there will be a recession. But it’s not here yet. And economic forecasters as a whole have a terrible track record when it comes predicting major turns in the economy.
All the recession talk now spewing from the media is speculative at best – politically calculated at worst. Let’s face it, some anti-Trump partisans in the media are giddy over the potential for a recession to bring down the President’s poll numbers.
That said, we do see signs of an economic slowdown of at least some magnitude. Despite a low official unemployment rate, jobs are being created at the slowest pace since 2011. Corporate earnings growth is also weakening. And GDP growth in the in the second quarter fell from 3% to 2%.
The Bigotry of ‘Hate Speech’ and Facebook Fascism Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
eing a mouthy genderfuck internet personality, I’ve grown accustomed to hearing some pretty caustic shit online and I’ve generally come to except it. After the sixth or seventh time being threatened with gang rape by yet another alt-right troglodyte, the shock runs a little thin. I’ve actually become rather skilled at the digital-jujitsu that’s become a necessity for existing as an openly trans person online. I’ve even made a few hideous friends on the far-right in the process. Generally speaking, most trolls are either childish pranksters or sadistic psychopaths. If you keep a razor sharp tongue and a sense of humor, either one can be handled with relative ease. This isn’t to say that they aren’t despicable human garbage or that words don’t hurt, but there are things far worse than hate speech online and I personally have never felt more dehumanized or offended as a queer person than I have by the way Facebook treated me this past week, all in the name of policing hate speech and patronizing marginalized creatures like myself.
It began as a pretty typical week for a mildly agoraphobic gonzo visionary. Writing, volunteering, therapy, more writing, hyperventilating, more therapy. All through out this literary basket-case existence, I try to keep the handful of my very dearest motherfuckers who follow me online informed and entertained with a withering barrage of foul mouthed snark and incendiary rants. After coming home from an extra soul digging, come-to-Jesus, round of group therapy, still basking in the teary-eyed afterglow of cathartic trans sisterhood, I went to log offline for the night, only to discover that Facebook had banned me for 24 hours. Now usually this kind of authoritarian negative reinforcement would be reason for celebration. I work very hard to upset the normies in the straight world and if you haven’t been suspended from Facebook in this line of work, you’re probably not doing it right. Right? But it wasn’t simply being banned that disgusted me. What really drove the proverbial screws into my thumbs was their excuse. You guessed it, ‘hate speech’. And what heinous thing did I dare post to be deserving of such virtue signalling corporate censorship? I can’t remember the exact words because they dutifully expunged them from my permanent record, but it was something to the effect of-
Keith Preston – Middle-East Conflicts & Domestic Propaganda Reply
An interview with Richard Kary of Revision Media. Listen here.
Trump’s recession Reply
I discuss the state of the US economy. Listen here.
Lyceum Round-Table #2: Problems with Liberalism Reply
Todd Lewis joined by Keith Preston and Swithun Dobson to discuss the problems with liberalism.
Yemen as Arabian Vietnam Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. The last soldiers and agents of the world’s biggest and deadliest empire, fleeing Saigon with their thorned tails between their legs as a rag-tag army of half-starved guerrillas inched closer by the hour. The last Bell helicopters, stuffed to the brim with bourgeois refugees of the fascist Yankee quisling state of South Vietnam, bumbling about before they scatter like highway vultures interrupted by a semi as they attempt to pick the last bone clean on a withering carcass. This was unthinkable just a decade earlier, when LBJ decided to turn a contentious civil war into a full blown holocaust. We had thrown everything but the White House kitchen sink at those yellow commie savages; bombs, napalm, agent orange, near institutionalized campaigns of rape and slaughter. We had turned the jungles of Indochina into a living hell, just a few Pinkville’s shy of a full tilt genocide. But they just kept coming. Tiny men and women in black pajamas with hearts like lions, throwing their malnourished bodies into the guts and gears of the war machine. At the end of the day, the empire’s efforts were all for nothing. Billions of dollars, millions of lives, and the sterling reputation we had built on the myths of the Good War were gone like dust scattered to the wind. Was there a lesson to be learned here? Was anybody but Charlie interested in learning it?
Flash forward some forty years and tragedy repeats itself as farce. This time it’s one of the now hemorrhaging American empire’s dauphins, a dick-swinging desert upstart called Saudi Arabia, that is rapidly finding itself overwhelmed by the unintended consequences of its own private Vietnam. After another gaggle of impoverished peasants called the Houthis decided to take their once regional conflict from the northern mountains of Yemen to the bustling capital of Sanaa, overthrowing yet another fascist Yankee quisling state, Saudi Arabia’s swarthy young princeling, Mohammed bin Salman, decided to show the world what he’s made of by burying his poorest neighbor in American munitions. Like his fellow psychopath, LBJ, MBS threw everything he could get his filthy hands on at these poor people; bombs, drones, white phosphorous, mercenary death squads of African child soldiers, and a crippling naval blockade, all with more than a little help from their friends back in Washington. Hundreds of thousands murdered in cold blood. Even more starved, diseased, malnourished, most of them children. But just four years into this genocidal campaign and it’s all falling apart. That handsome young Lothario in Riyadh is left drowning in the dunes as his “allies” flee the scene of the crime.
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US support for Saudi war in Yemen has become political liability 1
Press TV. Listen here.
The administration of US President Donald Trump is likely to reduce support for Saudi Arabia’s deadly military aggression in Yemen due to the political disadvantages for the US, both domestically and globally, says an American political analyst in Virginia.
“It appears that the Trump administration is trying to rein in the Saudi aggression in Yemen somewhat because it has become an international political liability; it has also become a domestic political liability” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
The shift in policy is also partly due to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, Preston told Press TV on Friday.
“Plus, there’s the fact that the destabilization of Saudi Arabia threatens a lot of American holdings in that particular region, I think that an important motivating factor as well,” he added.
A group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress are making a new effort to end Saudi Arabia’s deadly war against the people of Yemen, amid international outrage over the Saudi regime’s bombing of a Yemeni prison that killed over 100 people.
The lawmakers are seeking to protect an amendment to the annual US defense policy bill, which prohibits the Pentagon from providing the spare parts that Saudi Arabia needs to keep its warplanes, which are mostly US-made, in operational status.
The measure also ends certain forms of intelligence-sharing between Washington and Riyadh.
PressTV-US reaches out to Houthis to end war as Saudi strugglesThe US says it is for the first time in the past years in talks with Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement to end the Saudi-led war against the impoverished country.
Trump has pledged to veto any bills that seek to undermine ties with Saudi Arabia as he did one earlier this year which banned a massive $8 billion arms sale to the kingdom.
Trump and his team have time and again touted Saudi Arabia as an important regional partner, which plays a vital role in keeping Israel secure while being considered a counterweight to Iran.
However, the war on Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of people and caused near-famine conditions in the impoverished country, is drawing international attention.
A United Nations report released Tuesday said the US, UK and France may be complicit in war crimes in Yemen by arming and providing intelligence and logistics support to the Saudi-led coalition that starves civilians as a war tactic.
The report by a UN panel of experts accused the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of killing Yemeni civilians in air raids and deliberately denying them food in a country facing famine.
Saudi Arabia ‘such a pariah state on the international level’ Reply
Press TV. Listen here.
Saudi Arabia’s devastating war against Yemen since 2015 has made it “a pariah state” in the world, says an American political analyst in Virginia.
Riyadh’s war as well as its involvement in the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi have made Saudi Arabia very unpopular in the United States too, resulting in a new push in Congress to end the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com, told Press TV on Tuesday.
Now, “members of the United States Congress are trying to rein in the Trump administration’s policies towards Saudi Arabia.”
“The Trump administration has become extremely supportive of the Saudi government because of the relationship that exists between the two countries in terms of arms sales, in terms of the petroleum industry, in terms of geopolitical interests and other things.”
“Because of the fact that Saudi Arabia has become such a pariah state on the international level, because of what’s going on in Yemen, and because of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi in particular,” Riyadh has become “very unpopular in the United States,” he added.
PressTV-US lawmakers launch new bid to end Saudi war on YemenA bipartisan group of lawmakers in the US Congress say they are frustrated with Saudi Arabia’s deadly war against the people of Yemen and want to end it.
A group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress are making a new effort to end Saudi Arabia’s deadly war against the people of Yemen, amid international outrage over the Saudi regime’s bombing of a Yemeni prison that killed over 100 people.
The lawmakers are seeking to protect an amendment to the annual US defense policy bill, which prohibits the Pentagon from providing the spare parts that Saudi Arabia needs to keep its warplanes, which are mostly US-made, in operational status.
The measure also ends certain forms of intelligence-sharing between Washington and Riyadh.
The amendment, first presented by Democratic Representative Ro Khanna of California, has already been adopted by the House of Representatives in its version of the military authorization bill, and now the bipartisan group, which features members of both chambers of Congress, are trying to prevent the amendment’s omission.
US President Donald Trump has pledged to veto any bills that seek to undermine ties with Saudi Arabia as he did one earlier this year which banned a massive $8 billion arms sale to the kingdom.
Trump and his team have time and again touted Saudi Arabia as an important regional partner, which plays a vital role in keeping Israel secure while being considered a counterweight to Iran.
However, the war on Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of people and caused near-famine conditions in the impoverished country, is drawing international attention.
A United Nations report released Tuesday said the US, UK and France may be complicit in war crimes in Yemen by arming and providing intelligence and logistics support to the Saudi-led coalition that starves civilians as a war tactic.
The report by a UN panel of experts accused the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of killing Yemeni civilians in air raids and deliberately denying them food in a country facing famine.
Hezbollah says targets Israeli military vehicle, all crews killed, injured 1
Any War on Terror is Bullshit 3
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
The saying goes that the greatest trick the devil ever played was fooling the world that he doesn’t exist. I’ve long said that the greatest trick the state ever played was fooling the world that only its existence could keep the devil at bay. The devil in this case being a constantly evolving crop of scapegoats often labeled terrorists. Then again the Old Testament interpretation of the devil has always been the ultimate scapegoat. Lucifer’s great crime was trying to mimic god’s omnipotence with a failed coup. God cast the rebellious angel out of heaven but allowed him to continue to play god in hell because his existence served as the ultimate excuse for god’s unlimited power. My childhood priest, Father Foster, probably wouldn’t agree with this interpretation, but as a budding young anarchist, this is the way the tale sounded to me. The devil’s very existence was defined by god and god in turn needed the devil to justify his power. And this is what I see when I look at the issue of terrorism.
Terrorist attacks aren’t prevalent in peaceful nations. No one’s blowing up Lichtenstein. It’s violence that perpetuates violence. So it only seems natural to me that America, a state with an epic reputation for violence, both at home and abroad, should become a magnet for copycat killers. The United States makes over a hundred attempts to wack Fidel Castro and Lee Harvey Oswald guns down the president. The United States turns the jungles of Vietnam into a massive killing field and Charles Whitman turns the University of Texas into a free fire zone. The United States burns a compound full of women and children alive in Waco and Timothy McVeigh blows the Murray Building to smithereens. The United States hollows out a skyscraper in Serbia with hellfire missiles and our former client in the Balkans, Osama bin Laden, takes down two towers with hijacked commercial airliners. The United States wipes out an entire village in Yemen with a Navy Seal death squad and a white nationalist dressed in Navy Seal cosplay turns himself into a one man death squad and wipes out a bustling Walmart full of brown civilians.
I may be something of a wonk when it comes to mass violence, it’s a peculiar hobby that goes back to my peculiar Catholic childhood, but I take very little pride when I tell you that I could quite literally go on like this all fucking day. As Malcolm X astutely observed about the Kennedy Assassination, these are all simply tragic cases of the chickens coming home to roost.
Rope-A-Dope: How Red Flag Laws Will Eliminate Us Both 3
By Natasha Maria
An awful tragedy occurs, a shooting, a riot, a brawl, and as usual we hear the immediate cry, “Won’t the government do something to stop this?”
Yes, yes it will, in fact it wants you to beg them to.
Whether it be a mass shooting, or a riot in the streets, both are symptoms of a dysfunctional and neurotic society. The causes of such are deserving of multiple papers and discussions. The response though…that is the rub these days, that is what we must reassess.
-To the Right-
Whether an innocent journalist gets beat down, stores get windows broken, or a man gets a metal lock to the skull, the right are quick to call Antifa a ‘terrorist organization’. This is inconvenient for me I assure you. I consider myself to the right, and have done my fair share of talking smack about Antifa and enjoying their many failures. Nonetheless, the right must put their partisan anger aside and look at the bigger picture. Supporting legally categorizing Antifa as a ‘terrorist organization’ is not just shooting yourself in the foot, it is sawing off your whole leg. Of course Trump and the GOP support this, whipping the right into a frenzy, ‘do something to stop these masked thugs!’ Yes, do something alright, place yourself into a circular firing squad, having your enemy shot and you along with him.
-To the Left-
Let’s complete the circle. Mass shootings are horrific and unacceptable. It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the myriad of possible things that could be done to prevent or remedy what is causing this psychotic malfunction in society. Many of the shooters have had ‘manifestos’ which have espoused half-done White Nationalist-like thought. Again, Democrats and their constingency cry, “White Nationalism is the new terrorist threat!” And again, people are whipped into a frenzy, preaching that these dissident rightists must be labeled a ‘terrorist organization’ and handled as such. The latest, and most threatening development from this, is the idea of a ‘Red Flag Law’.
How vague, how flexible, how convenient. A man deported over ‘anti-American’ social media posts, or another jailed for social media posts that sounded ‘threatening’. Under such type laws, left or right, dissidence will be deemed a threat to the establishment, categorized as terrorism, and swiftly eliminated. It’s definition of dissidence will be flexible, and why shouldn’t it be? Both left and right have supported this flexibility.
US war in Afghanistan has become a ‘political liability’ Reply
Press TV. Listen here.
The 18-year US war in Afghanistan has become a “political liability” for the administration of President Donald Trump and is growing more unpopular in the United States, says an American political analyst in Virginia.
“Americans increasingly are in favor of withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan,” said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
The US military “is trying to pull out gradually without giving the appearance of having been defeated; American policy makers do not want to view themselves as having lost the war in Afghanistan,” Preston told Press TV on Thursday.
“I suspect that what they want to do is maintain a puppet government in Afghanistan that will most likely continue in the same way that the current government has, which is essentially an American puppet,” he added.
Trump said Thursday that the US plans to reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan from 14,000 to 8,600 and then will determine further drawdowns.
In an interview with Fox News, Trump said the US will keep a troop presence in Afghanistan even if Washington reaches an agreement with the Taliban.
“We’re going down to 8,600 [troops] and then we make a determination from there,” the US president said. “We’re always going to have a presence.”
PressTV-Trump: Some troops to stay even after Taliban dealPresident Trump says the US will keep 8,600 troops in Afghanistan even if it strikes a peace deal with the Taliban.
Trump has repeatedly advocated for bringing US troops back from Afghanistan, putting him at odds with hawkish Republican lawmakers like Senator Lindsey Graham.
US officials have held several rounds of direct negotiations with the Taliban to pull out American forces in exchange for concessions. The militant group says it does not recognize the government in Kabul.
The Taliban said on Wednesday it was close to a “final agreement” with US officials on a deal that would see American forces withdraw from Afghanistan in exchange for a pledge that the country would not become a haven for other militant groups.
The US invaded Afghanistan to overthrow the ruling Taliban regime. US troops were first sent to Afghanistan after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
American forces have since remained bogged down in Afghanistan through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now, Donald Trump.
Iran’s Foreign Minister: US serious threat to internation system Reply
Reflections on Class Conflict Reply
By Keith Preston
I think class is real, and that class conflict is real. The Marxists have a lot of insight into that but I don’t agree with them that class is the determining factor in everything. Vilfredo Pareto had a pretty good critique of the Marxist perspective.
“In Pareto’s view, the Marxist emphasis on the historical struggle between the unpropertied working class — the proletariat — and the property-owning capitalist class is skewed and terribly misleading. History is indeed full of conflict, but the proletariat-capitalist struggle is merely one of many and by no means the most historically important. As Pareto explains:
‘The class struggle, to which Marx has specially drawn attention, is a real factor, the tokens of which are to be found on every page of history. But the struggle is not confined only to two classes: the proletariat and the capitalist; it occurs between an infinite number of groups with different interests, and above all between the elites contending for power. The existence of these groups may vary in duration, they may be based on permanent or more or less temporary characteristics. In the most savage peoples, and perhaps in all, sex determines two of these groups. The oppression of which the proletariat complains, or had cause to complain of, is as nothing in comparison with that which the women of the Australian aborigines suffer. Characteristics to a greater or lesser degree real — nationality, religion, race, language, etc. — may give rise to these groups. In our own day [i.e. 1902] the struggle of the Czechs and the Germans in Bohemia is more intense than that of the proletariat and the capitalists in England.’
Marx’s ideology represents merely an attempt, Pareto believes, to supplant one ruling elite with another, despite Marxist promises to the contrary:
‘The socialists of our own day have clearly perceived that the revolution at the end of the eighteenth century led merely to the bourgeoisie’s taking the place of the old elite. They exaggerate a good deal the burden of oppression imposed by the new masters, but they do sincerely believe that a new elite of politicians will stand by their promises better than those which have come and gone up to the present day. All revolutionaries proclaim, in turn, that previous revolutions have ultimately ended up by deceiving the people; it is their revolution alone which is the true revolution. “All previous historical movements” declared the Communist Manifesto of 1848, “were movements of minorities or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.” Unfortunately this true revolution, which is to bring men an unmixed happiness, is only a deceptive mirage that never becomes a reality. It is akin to the golden age of the millenarians: forever awaited, it is forever lost in the mists of the future, forever eluding its devotees just when they think they have it.”
The Marxist idea that the working class is a universal monolith, or that the proletariat everywhere has the same interests, is mistaken. Also the “workers vs capitalists” class conflict isn’t the only class conflict. Today, upper-middle class vs upper-class conflict, working-class vs professional class, upper proletariat vs lower proletariat, petite bourgeois vs wage laborers, “respectable poor” vs the lumpenproletariat are all just as common forms of class conflict.
The “Who’s Most Oppressed?” Pissing Contest Reply
I would emphasize two main points with this stuff. First, it needs to be recognized that capitalism, communism, and fascism are merely different points on the same triangle, whichever one of these one happens to view the most favorably. Second, the red/blue left/right cultural civil war is a matter of localized conflicts between localized tribes, whichever tribe one belongs to and whichever sides one prefers.
There are many different philosophies, movements, cultures, ideologies, and historical currents that are compatible with, overlap with, or resemble anarchist ideas. There are plenty of what I call “people of the anarchist book” anarchists, “doctrine of the anonymous anarchist” anarchists, or situational/tactical anarchists. Also, fairly significant actual anarchist movements have existed in some surprising places like Russia, China, and Korea in spite of the autocratic traditions of those places.
The main two things I’m interested in are voluntaryism and scale. The larger states become, the larger the populations they dominate, the more imperialistic they become (depending on a variety of factors like wealth and technology). In a post-globalization world, a PC social democratic micronation like Iceland, a communist island like Cuba, or a fascist city-state like Singapore would be acceptable or least tolerable. But we wouldn’t want any of these to become the EU or the modern USA, the USSR, or the Third Reich.
