Category Archives: Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

The Largest Military Machine in History Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Military, Uncategorized

Last night, the Senate overwhelmingly approved an $80 billion annual increase in military spending. Trump had asked for just $48 billion.

That $80 billion increase in military spending is enough to have satisfied Bernie Sanders’s campaign promise to make tuition free at public colleges and universities. (You may recall that when Bernie announced his proposal critics from both parties said the idea would bankrupt the country.)

If the Senate’s military package becomes law, U.S. spending on the military would exceed the total spending of America’s next 10 rivals put together.

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America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Race and Ethnicity, Uncategorized • Tags:

Given the recent exchange on anti-Semitism between anarcho-communist Wayne Price, national-anarchist Sean Jobst and myself, this article from Unz Review and the article from Telos posted adjacently offer two diametrically opposed perspectives on US-Israel relations, Zionism, Jewish power and anti-Semitism.

By Philip Giraldi

Unz Review

I spoke recently at a conference on America’s war party where afterwards an elderly gentleman came up to me and asked, “Why doesn’t anyone ever speak honestly about the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room? Nobody has mentioned Israel in this conference and we all know it’s American Jews with all their money and power who are supporting every war in the Middle East for Netanyahu? Shouldn’t we start calling them out and not letting them get away with it?”

It was a question combined with a comment that I have heard many times before and my answer is always the same: any organization that aspires to be heard on foreign policy knows that to touch the live wire of Israel and American Jews guarantees a quick trip to obscurity. Jewish groups and deep pocket individual donors not only control the politicians, they own and run the media and entertainment industries, meaning that no one will hear about or from the offending party ever again. They are particularly sensitive on the issue of so-called “dual loyalty,” particularly as the expression itself is a bit of a sham since it is pretty clear that some of them only have real loyalty to Israel.

Most recently, some pundits, including myself, have been warning of an impending war with Iran. To be sure, the urging to strike Iran comes from many quarters, to include generals in the Administration who always think first in terms of settling problems through force, from a Saudi government obsessed with fear over Iranian hegemony, and, of course, from Israel itself. But what makes the war engine run is provided by American Jews who have taken upon themselves the onerous task of starting a war with a country that does not conceivably threaten the United States. They have been very successful at faking the Iranian threat, so much so that nearly all Republican and most Democratic congressmen as well as much of the media seem to be convinced that Iran needs to be dealt with firmly, most definitely by using the U.S. military, and the sooner the better.

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No, It’s Not the Troops Fault 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Military, Uncategorized
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It is politically inappropriate and strategically counter productive to merely denounce rank and file members of the military as hired goons for the state. One of the most important political occurrences that happened in US history was the success of the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the consequent delegitimization of imperialist wars and military conscription. This success has reduced the US state, the most powerful state in history, to having to fight imperialist wars with armies of indentured servants, mercenaries, and proxy forces. The indentured servants that comprise the state’s official armed forces are largely generated by the economic draft which results from the ongoing impoverishment of poor and working class communities. That’s the reason why the US armed forces are both disproportionately minorities and disproportionately from white working class strongholds like the Rust Belt. The bottom line is that we need our vets for the revolution.

Keith Preston: US wants Ukraine in NATO to encircle Russia Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Press TV. Listen here.

he United States is planning to include Ukraine in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), suggests an American analyst, arguing that the move would separate Moscow and Kiev forever and serve Washington’s ultimate goal of “encircling” Russia.

“The relationship between the US and Russia is bound to be strained because the two nations have entirely different geopolitical interests,” Keith Preston, director of the attackthesystem.com, told Press TV.

“The ambition of the United States, when it comes to Russia, is to encircle Russia and isolate it militarily and politically in the sense of extending the NATO alliance straight up to Russia’s borders so all of the Easter European and Baltic States would be included” in the military pact, he argued.

Russia, on the other hand, is seeking to salvage relations with Ukraine to protect its own geopolitical interests.

“So, essentially, Ukraine as a nation is caught right in the middle in this geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the NATO alliance on the one hand and Russia on the other,” the analyst continued.

Ukraine has applied to join the alliance.

Conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine after people in the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea voted for unification with Russia in March 2014.

The West brands the unification as annexation of the territory by Russia. The US and its allies in Europe also accuse Russia of having a major hand in the crisis in eastern Ukraine, an allegation denied by Moscow.

During a news conference on Tuesday, Russian president Vladimir Putin warned Washington against supplying arms to Kiev, arguing that the decision would fuel the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Putin said arming Ukraine will possibly prompt pro-Russia forces to expand their campaign, stressing that the move would not change the situation and would only add to the number of casualties.

The crisis has left over 10,000 people dead and more than a million others displaced, according to the United Nations.

Preston said Washington was also seeking to curb Moscow’s influence in the Middle East through a similar policy.

Two (or More) Sides to Every Story 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags:

A Facebook friend has this to say about North Korea:

HOW IS IT THAT WE DO NOT FIND IT OBSCENE AND REVOLTING that the USA media openly talk about a murderous military invasion of North Korea, for the sole asserted reason that North Korea wants to develop a credible (and obviously needed) nuclear deterrent?

In many decades the most militarily aggressive nations that have nuclear weapons have clearly been the USA and Israel. What country that is in the sights of these two violent nations would not want nuclear weapons as freaking soon as possible? I sure would. This is especially true in light of North Korea’s history (below). Yet we don’t find it obscene that the USA and its media openly talk about murdering the entire nation with a military invasion because it dares to want to have the only military deterrent that could work against USA madness. Insane.

Michael Mac Aodha: “It is some Orwellian “Two Minutes Hate” for us to be freaking out about North Korea. Super brief history: Korea was colonized in 1910 by Japan, liberated by Moscow in August 1945, and went to war with US and the US-backed forces in South Korea in 1951. By 1953 the US Air Force ran out of military targets and started bombing dams to flood rice fields and cause starvation. North Korea has never forgotten, and formally the war has never ended. Until very recently both countries have claimed ALL of Korea. Both countries didn’t join UN until1991. In 1994 NK signed on to the Agreed Framework with US, but Washington dragged its feet while NK upheld their end of the bargain. They gave our government a chance to make peace and we blew it. They know, just like we claim for ourselves, that they have to have nukes to deter and to compel others to have dialog. US opposes banning nukes every year because we don’t want to get rid of our leverage, yet we can’t see that with North Korea, a much weaker and vulnerable country really facing existential threats. We depict them as irrational, hostile boogeymen bent on world domination—an image that more reflects our own government. We are being jingoistic about North Korea. We misunderstand them and are thirsty for blood. US and South Korea just held major military exercises running through plans of overthrowing the North, and Japan’s prime minister is trying to get their constitution rewritten so they can go to war again North Korea. But even USA Today, a conservative newspaper, admits that all they want is (1) guarantees from the US that we want try and overthrow them; (2) to keep their nukes for assurances; (3) lifting of sanctions; (4) removal of US troops from South Korea; and (5) a peace treaty with South Korea. That last one is a significant concession. The North is foregoing their claim to ALL of Korea and is willing to formally recognize them as a sovereign country that they want to have normalized peace relations with. All very reasonable stuff, but look how we’re acting.”

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GOP Congressman: Trump Losing Me on Foreign Policy Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags:

Trump is predictably going neocon on foreign policy, which is to be expected given that the neocon foreign policy perspective represents the consensus both the general elites and their guardians in the Deep State.

By Rep. John J. Duncan, Jr.

The American Conservative

A few days before the 2000 elections, I hosted the Duncan Family Barbecue at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum, which aside from free food, always features bands, choirs, and top names from the Country music and Oldies worlds, drawing upwards of 10,000 people.

Governor George W. Bush, then the Republican Presidential nominee, walked out to the podium to the sound of the University of Tennessee Pep Band. After his speech, I walked him back to his vehicle parked in the bowels of the coliseum, and I told him “Governor, you are going to carry Tennessee.” He replied: “If I do, I will win the election,” and that is exactly what happened.

Later that night, one of my sons said, “Dad, I have never heard you so excited as when you said, “The next President of the United States!” when introducing Gov. Bush. In truth, I was excited, primarily because Gov. Bush said almost every day on the campaign trail that what we needed was a more humble foreign policy and we should not be in the business of nation building.

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TRUMP: My instinct was to pull out of Afghanistan — here’s why I changed my mind Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Military, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Because the consensus of state/ruling class/power elite opinion said so. Duh?

The real issue here is the intramural rivalry within the global-capitalist empire, with the Eastern axis, especially China, but also Russia and Iran, wanting to develop Afghanistan for the BRICS, while the Western axis wants to retain Afghanistan for itself.

As I have said all along, Trump is a Nixon-Rockefeller moderate Republican, who takes his foreign policy cues from Kissinger, and not a “Nazi,” “fascist,” “Alt-Right,” or even “Alt-Lite.” What this shows is that presidential politics is a waste of time, and that sensible people need to forget all about this Red/Blue nonsense just as they need to forget about the Nazi/Antifa nonsense.

Putin seems to me to wish to create a Eurasian alliance against the Atlanticist axis with what would amount to a restored Russian empire as the leadership of an Eastern axis of this kind. It’s essentially happening in the form of the growing relationship between the BRICS, the Shia block and the Global South. Putin is pretty much following the National-Bolshevik playbook, even if he doesn’t call it that, with Alexander Dugin playing the role of the Russian Kissinger. I wrote about the possibility of such a development in the early to mid 2000s and it seems to be happening at present, This is beneficial because it creates an intramural rift and accelerated division in the global capitalist empire led by the G20.  Just as it is a desirable state of affairs for the domestic regime to be divided into the Red and Blue Teams, thereby limiting the maneuverability of the state, so is is desired for the global plutocracy to be divided into the Western axis and Eastern axis.

By Maxwell Tani

Business Insider

After repeatedly criticizing the war in Afghanistan for years, President Donald Trump in a primetime speech Monday night said he was increasing the US military presence in the country.

In an address to military members in Virginia, Trump said he sympathized with Americans who were “weary of war without victory” and said he shared “the American people’s frustration” with a “foreign policy that has spent too much time, energy, money, and most importantly lives trying to rebuild countries in our own image.”

He also acknowledged the reversal in his decision to increase the American troop presence in a country he had previously called for the US to exit.

“My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts, but all of my life I heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office,” Trump said.

The Alt-Right: Just One More Set of Imperialist Stooges? Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Derrick Broze has some common sense observations on why the alt-right has become worthless as an opposition force in North America:

“This is the dude you altright wannabe libertarians worship? This horrible man who ordered the deaths of thousands? This is the guy you like to invoke when you talk about throwing people out of helicopters? sad.

“On 11 September 1973 the combined Chilean Armed Forces (the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Carabineros) overthrew Allende’s government in a coup, during which the presidential palace, La Moneda, was shelled and Allende committed suicide.

Here Pinochet and Kissinger smile and enjoy each others company.”

August 18 at 7:15pm ·

On 11 September 1973 the combined Chilean Armed Forces (the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Carabineros) overthrew Allende’s government in a coup, during which the presidential palace, La Moneda, was shelled and Allende committed suicide.
Here Pinochet and Kissinger smile and enjoy each others company.

Which will it be: Unequivocal support for Israel or our First Amendment rights? Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Police State/Civil Liberties, Uncategorized • Tags:

If this legislation is enacted, it will be one of the most severe curtailments of political freedom in the United States’ history. And yet our right-wing “anti-Zionists” and our left-wing “anti-imperialists” are wasting time fighting over statues.

By Justine McCabe, CT Viewpoints

An alarming paradox has taken shape in legislation before Congress:  Our representatives would violate Americans’ First Amendment rights in order to protect the State of Israel.

This draconian legislation is H.R. 1697/S. 720, the “Israel Anti-Boycott Act,” is a proposed law that could harshly penalize the free speech of Americans who support the international Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

By amending existing laws (Export Administration act of 1979 and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945), this bill would prohibit Americans from supporting BDS against Israel, as an ally of the U.S.  This would include barring an American from promoting boycotts of Israel’s illegal settlements and their products, as well as even requesting information about BDS.  Beyond muzzling our constitutional right to speak freely, express political opinions, the punishments themselves are extreme: minimal civil penalty of $250,000 and maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

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This piece of pro-Israel legislation is a serious threat to free speech Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Law/Justice, Police State/Civil Liberties, Uncategorized

I can’t think of any time since the conspiracy trials of the late 1960s and early 1970s that there has been an effort to attack political freedom on this magnitude and in such a direct manner.

By David Cole and Faiz Shakir

Washington Post

David Cole is national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Faiz Shakir is national political director of the ACLU.

The right to boycott has a long history in the United States, from the American Revolution to Martin Luther King Jr.’s Montgomery bus boycott to the campaign for divestment from businesses serving apartheid South Africa. Nowadays we celebrate those efforts. But precisely because boycotts are such a powerful form of expression, governments have long sought to interfere with them — from King George III to the police in Alabama, and now to the U.S. Congress.

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Henry Kissinger warns destroying Isis could lead to ‘Iranian radical empire’ Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy • Tags: , ,

Kissinger is almost enough to make me think there might be something to David Icke’s alien lizard people theory.

This man is one of the biggest scumbags the United States as a nation ever produced, but I’ve always appreciated his Machiavellian candor. If only all ruling class/power elite operatives were so forthcoming.

By Shehab Khan

The Independent

henry-kissinger.jpg

Henry Kissinger has warned that destroying Isis could lead to an “Iranian radical empire”.

The former diplomat has suggested that once Isis is defeated, if Iran occupies the free territory, the result could lead to the emergence of a new empire.

The 94-year-old, who was the Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon, also spoke about the complications of taking sides in Middle Eastern conflicts.

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Keith Preston: Wahhabi Ideology behind Shiite Genocide in Saudi Town Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Tasnim News Agency

کیث پرستون

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American political analyst described the extremist Wahhabi ideology dominant in Saudi Arabia as a driving force behind the killings of Shiites in the kingdom’s besieged town of Awamiyah in the Qatif region.

“The Wahhabi ideology is very convenient for the Saudis because while the Saudi regime is primarily motivated by geopolitical concerns, and expanding its own political influence in the region, the Wahhabi ideology creates a pretext for these massacres of the Shiite people in Yemen and Qatif,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told the Tasnim news agency.

 

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Pentagon study declares American empire is ‘collapsing’ 1

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

By Nafeez Ahmad

Medium.Com

An extraordinary new Pentagon study has concluded that the U.S.-backed international order established after World War 2 is “fraying” and may even be “collapsing”, leading the United States to lose its position of “primacy” in world affairs.

The solution proposed to protect U.S. power in this new “post-primacy” environment is, however, more of the same: more surveillance, more propaganda (“strategic manipulation of perceptions”) and more military expansionism.

The document concludes that the world has entered a fundamentally new phase of transformation in which U.S. power is in decline, international order is unravelling, and the authority of governments everywhere is crumbling.

Having lost its past status of “pre-eminence”, the U.S. now inhabits a dangerous, unpredictable “post-primacy” world, whose defining feature is “resistance to authority”.

Danger comes not just from great power rivals like Russia and China, both portrayed as rapidly growing threats to American interests, but also from the increasing risk of “Arab Spring”-style events. These will erupt not just in the Middle East, but all over the world, potentially undermining trust in incumbent governments for the foreseeable future.

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Some Reflections on Anti-Zionism Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized • Tags:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51CkxBIxKmL._AC_UL320_SR214,320_.jpg

By Keith Preston

It is fashionable in many of the political circles that I travel in to attribute a range of problems involving international relations, along with other concerns, to “Zionism.” Used in these contexts, Zionism has two meanings, i.e. the state-nationalism of the Israeli regime itself, and the network of Jewish ethno-nationalist supporters of Israel throughout the Jewish diaspora. At times, the critiques of Zionist power represented by these perspectives overlap with traditional anti-Semitic views concerning a supposed “Jewish conspiracy” to undermine civilization by doing all kinds of bad things (The Daily Stormer, Stormfront, and, more articulately, Counter-Currents perspective).

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Left, Right And The Russian Connection: An Interview With Alexander Reid Ross And Eric Draitser Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right

It’s interesting to compare this article with the Caleb Maupin piece. Maupin represents the authoritarian Stalinist Left, while Draister and Reid-Ross represent the authoritarian neo-Marxist/SJW/Antifa Left that is presently being coopted by hammer and sicklers (predominantly Maoists and Trotskyists). The principal different between the two camps seems to be that the Maupin circle continues to hold to the pro-Russian line of Western Communists during the Cold War, which means they have largely and ironically adopted the Duginist narrative regarding international relations, and have maintained a more authentically pro-working class orientation, which means they are less dismissive of the concerns raised by the populist right. The neo-Marxists have adopted an anti-Russian line, which puts them in the middle between neoliberalism and Eurasianism, and continues to emphasize identity politics in opposition to working class populism.

By Yoav Mitvin

Mint Press News

Traditional Russian Matreskas depicting Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump displayed in a shop in Moscow. Nov. 8, 2016. (AP/Pavel Golovkin)

NEW YORK (Interview) —Neoliberal capitalism has failed the vast majority of Americans. It has increased inequality, fostered austerity, destroyed the environment and fomented wars.

Reactionary right-wing politics have largely succeeded in filling this ideological vacuum, embodied by the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States of America.

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Syria, Linda Sarsour & The New Left & New Right 2

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Left and Right

Caleb Maupin is a Stalinist associated with the Workers World Party, but I agree with every word of this. I could have written this article. It’s refreshing to see a leftist who takes their anti-imperialism seriously.

By Caleb Maupin

Mint Press News

Women's march organizer, Linda Sarsour. (Photo: still from #InequalityIs: Linda Sarsour on inequality and race and religion)

For many people in the west, the traditional political compass seems broken, and “left” and “right” are almost indistinguishable in a confused political mess. The controversy surrounding the Arab-American figure now embraced by the Democratic Party, Linda Sarsour, illustrates this perfectly.

In Syria, it is very clear who the “right” and the “left” are. The “right” is the group of Wahabbi fanatics that seek to overthrow the Syrian government. The stated goal of many, if not all, of the different groups working to overthrow the Syrian government, is to end religious freedom and establish a government in Syria similar to that of Saudi Arabia.

Fanatics from across the region and the world are pouring in for a fanatical crusade to bring the Syrian government down. The western capitalist powers, the USA, France, Britain, etc. have all enthusiastically backed this campaign, which would replace a Baath Socialist government rooted in the region’s anti-imperialist struggles, with a pro-western, Saudi-style regime. Weapons, funding, supplies, and propaganda from the western capitalist powers are all being unleashed to support the right-wing anti-government forces in Syria.

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Keith Preston: Trump’s policies making US more isolated from allies Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Uncategorized

Press TV. Listen here.

US President Donald Trump’s “protectionist” policies on trade, climate change and a host of other issues will further isolate the US from its traditional allies and the rest of the world, says an American analyst.

Keith Preston, director of the AttacktheSystem.org, said the annual G20 summit provided an outlook into the future of Washington’s ties with its allies under Trump.

During Friday’s meeting, there were tough clashes with the US and even talk of a possible transatlantic trade war. The tensions were a result of Trump’s sharp break with previous US policies.

Trump’s isolation was more evident on the issue of trade. The Trump administration has proposed imposing high tariffs on steel and other imported goods from several major trading partners.

European officials at the summit reacted harshly, threatening to retaliate with their own tariffs.

“It is clear that the Trump administration is trying to distance itself from some of the policies that were pursued by previous administrations,” Preston told Press TV on Sunday.

Pointing to Trump’s opposition to the Paris climate deal endorsed by former President Barack Obama, the analyst noted that Trump was representing the faction of US politicians that did not believe in “human-created” climate change.

That is why, he argued, we are seeing a deepening difference of opinion between Trump and other world leaders on climate change and a range of other issues.

“So this actually has some potential to create something of a shift in the power balance on an international level, where the United States can find itself entirely isolated,” Preston further argued.

The same holds true for trade, Preston said, arguing that Trump’s “protectionist” mindset was prompting “retaliatory trade deals” from its allies.

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Trump has repeatedly accused the EU, Japan, China and Mexico of abusing trade agreements and exporting more to the US than they import from it.

The new Republican president has also called for renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a trade deal between the US, Canada and Mexico.

In a clear rebuke to Washington, Japan and the European Union announced a major free trade deal to create the world’s largest open economic zone on the eve of this year’s G20 summit on Thursday.

“So the impact of the policies that the Trump administration is pursuing in these areas would have the effect of separating the United States from not only other G20 nations… but also the traditional military allies of the United States,” Preston concluded.