Press TV. Listen here.
American political analyst Keith Preston says the North Koreans want to have international economic sanctions lifted against them to follow the Chinese model of economic progress.
Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Thursday while commenting on a statement of US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley who said on Wednesday that Washington would not wait indefinitely for North Korea to make progress on denuclearization.
This is an interesting assessment of what is right and wrong with the United States from an English perspective, written in early 2016 before the election of Trump.
By Sean Gabb
Talking about the future is often a sure recipe for looking like a fool. However obvious it may seem to us, nearly everything that happened in the past was unexpected at the time. I am not aware of anyone in 1639 who believed the Stuart State was about to collapse. Nor do I think anyone in 1788 predicted the occurrence and course of the French Revolution. The course of the Great War repeatedly took all the clever men by surprise. The difficulty with looking ahead is partly that most of the facts are unknown, but partly that the facts already established will be seen out of focus. We always tend to see the world through the twin lenses of unreasonable fear and of wishful thinking. For the world as it is, facts already established provide some correction. For the world as it may be, the only correction is to wait and see.
I will, therefore, not predict the decline of American world power. On the one hand, the country does appear to be in decline. It suffers internally from an increasingly predatory and freakish system of government, and from a national culture that is malign in its values and intrinsically worthless. None of its military interventions in the past quarter century has achieved its stated purpose, and all have been disastrous for the foreign peoples they were supposed to help. The military and diplomatic power of American has declined. It is no longer even clear that the Dollar will keep its hegemony. To put it mildly, the demographic changes now taking place are undermining the equilibrium and cohesiveness of the United States as it has been known since the 1870s.
By Daniel Larison
The American Conservative
Kareem Fahim investigates the war on Yemen’s weirdly static official death toll of 10,000 casualties and finds that it is certainly much higher:
The overall death toll may have reached alarming levels, according to one independent tally. Data collected by ACLED, a group that studies conflicts, puts the death toll at nearly 50,000 people in the period between January 2016 and late July 2018.
That number includes combatants but excludes people not directly killed during the fighting — thousands of civilians who have died of malnutrition or cholera, for instance. Last year, Save the Children estimated that 130 children were dying every day because of “extreme hunger and disease.”
By
Forbes
The reason China is in Africa is simple; to exploit the people and take their resources. It’s the same thing European colonists did during mercantile times, except worse. The corporations owned by the Chinese state are trying to turn Africa into another Chinese continent. They are squeezing Africa for everything it is worth.
This is the view several African politicians have. The Zambian politician Michael Sata was one of them. At least he was before being elected President of Zambia in 2011. He wrote a paper presented to Harvard University in 2007 that said “European colonial exploitation in comparison to Chinese exploitation appears benign, because even though the commercial exploitation was just as bad, the colonial agents also invested in social and economic infrastructure services Chinese investment, on the other hand, is focused on taking out of Africa as much as can be taken out, without any regard to the welfare of the local people.”
By Daniel Larison
The American Conservative
Alex Emmons reports that the Saudis and their allies intended to invade and take over Qatar last year, but pressure from Tillerson prevented this from happening:
The Intercept has learned of a previously unreported episode that stoked the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s anger at Tillerson and that may have played a key role in his removal. In the summer of 2017, several months before the Gulf allies started pushing for his ouster, Tillerson intervened to stop a secret Saudi-led, UAE-backed plan to invade and essentially conquer Qatar, according to one current member of the U.S. intelligence community and two former State Department officials, all of whom declined to be named, citing the sensitivity of the matter.
If this report is correct, it confirms that the Saudis and Emiratis are even more reckless than we already knew them to be.
My latest interview with Tasnim.
“The prospects for the formation of a Middle Eastern Strategic Alliance are hindered by multiple obstacles. There are sharp disagreements between the member states of the (Persian) Gulf Cooperation Council on Iran,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told Tasnim.
He added, “It is unlikely that the proposed member nations of a Middle Eastern Strategic Alliance will find that they share enough common interests and common objectives to make such an alliance viable”.
The following is the full text of the interview.
A must listen. How the supposed “Resistance” obscures US-Saudi genocide in Yemen.
By Randi Nord
Geopolitics Alert
Last year, over one million people contracted cholera in Yemen and over two thousand died.
U.S.-backed warplanes belonging to the Saudi coalition launched at least five airstrikes on the Sana’a International Airport. The attacks took place immediately following the departure of UN envoy, Martin Griffith. Griffith had just met with the leader of the Yemeni Ansarullah revolution, Abdulmalik Al-Houthi to discuss the conflict and humanitarian disaster.
The coalition against Yemen has hit Sana’a’s airport over 160 times since the war began despite the fact that the Saudi-imposed blockade forced the airport to shut down. Additional airstrikes on Friday targeted a farm, communication tower, and plastic factory.
By Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
President Donald Trump confirmed back in May that the U.S. will be pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal as well as reimposing a sanctions regime on Tehran.
This far-reaching decision by the White House was taken following Netanyahu’s staged presentation on Iran’s nuclear capabilities based on so-called “sound intelligence”. The accession of Mike Pompeo to the the State Department was also an important factor. His predecessor Rex Tillerson was known to be largely supportive of the US “remaining on board with the Iran JCPOA nuclear deal – along with other P5+1 countries Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia”. According to Stephen Lendman:
Replacing Tillerson with militantly anti-Iran hardliner Pompeo smooths things for Trump to pursue greater hostility toward the Islamic Republic with a key administration official on board with his reckless agenda.
Under the guidance of secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his new national security advisor John Bolton, Trump’s decision points in the direction of military escalation.
Already in December 2017, reports pointed to a so-called “secret plan” to destroy and destabilize Iran, the first step of which would be a color revolution. In this regard, Trump said he would relaunch the economic sanctions regime in mid-May “unless the European powers join Washington in unilaterally rewriting the civil nuclear agreement between Tehran and the world’s great powers.”
This not so secret plan to wage war on Iran has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since the mid-nineties as outlined in my 2010 article below, written eight months prior to the onslaught of the US-NATO led proxy war directed against Syria in March 2011.
It should be noted that there are significant divisions within the US-NATO-Israel coalition largely as a result of Turkey’s rapprochement with Russia and Iran. In turn Turkey is fighting US proxy forces in Northern Syria. Moreover, France has significant interests in Iran’s oil industry.
While the present structure of military alliances (with Turkey sleeping with enemy) does not at this juncture favor the waging of a major military operation against Iran, there are unconfirmed reports that President Trump is currently envisaging a so-called preemptive attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities as early as next month.
US Defense Secretary James Mattis has casually dismissed the reports that the U.S. is contemplating military action against Iran.
Michel Chossudovsky, July 29, 2018
By Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research
August 1, 2010
Humanity is at a dangerous crossroads. War preparations to attack Iran are in “an advanced state of readiness”. Hi tech weapons systems including nuclear warheads are fully deployed.
This military adventure has been on the Pentagon’s drawing board since the mid-1990s. First Iraq, then Iran according to a declassified 1995 US Central Command document.
Escalation is part of the military agenda. While Iran [in 2010], is the next target together with Syria and Lebanon, this strategic military deployment also threatens North Korea, China and Russia.
Since 2005, the US and its allies, including America’s NATO partners and Israel, have been involved in the extensive deployment and stockpiling of advanced weapons systems. The air defense systems of the US, NATO member countries and Israel are fully integrated.
These are the things our anarchist and libertarian friends ought to focused on.
By John Whitehead
Rutherford Institute
“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government, owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
There are those who would have you believe that President Trump is an unwitting victim of the Deep State.
And then there are those who insist that the Deep State is a figment of a conspiratorial mind.
Don’t believe it.
The Deep State—a.k.a. the police state, a.k.a. the military industrial complex, a.k.a. the surveillance state complex—does indeed exist and Trump, far from being its sworn enemy, is its latest tool.
When in doubt, follow the money trail.
It always points the way.
Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought—lock, stock and barrel—and made to dance to the tune of the Deep State.
Even Dwight D. Eisenhower, the retired five-star Army general-turned-president who warned against the disastrous rise of misplaced power by the military industrial complex was complicit in contributing to the build-up of the military’s role in dictating national and international policy.
Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC.
Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump has paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the rest of the Deep State (also referred to as “The 7th Floor Group”) to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.
Press TV interview. Listen here.
The United States has been the biggest violator of human rights since World War ll, directly leading to the death of over 20 million people in the past 70 years, says an American political analyst in Virginia.
A study conducted several years ago by American historian James Lucas reveals that US military forces were directly responsible for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts in 37 nations, said Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com.
In terms of domestic policy, the US government has promoted or at least ignored widespread human rights abuses in the country, including regarding the issues poverty, crime, racism and gun violence, Preston told Press TV on Wednesday.
Former US President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that America has lost its position as the so-called global leader for human rights under President Donald Trump.
“We should be the champion of human rights. We’re a superpower, not based solely on military power; part of that definition should be a commitment to human rights,” Carter said at an event at The Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia.
The most dangerous aspect of the current political situation in the United States is the belligerent attitude of the Trump administration toward Iran, followed by the liberal-left’s belligerence toward Russia.
By Doug Bandow
The American Conservative
Candidate Donald Trump campaigned against Washington’s foolish Middle East wars. President Donald Trump is threatening Tehran with the equivalent of fire and fury. After decades of American attacks on Iran, what Trump should be doing is changing course.
The president erupted against Iran on Twitter earlier this week in an outburst that was even more hysterical than his tirade against North Korea last year. “NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE,” he tweeted. “WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!”
The president sounded like a high school dropout who had just downed a six-pack and was now itching for a brawl. It’s he who should be cautious before enthusiastically threatening to visit death upon another nation and people. After all, as he once acknowledged, the results of U.S. warmongering have been ugly.
Pete Escobar published an article in the Hong Kong press when Trump took office that is a must read for anyone that wants to understand his administration’s approach to foreign policy, particularly US-Russia relations. Read the article here. Virtually everything Trump has done with regard to foreign policy fits with the paradigm described in this article.
The source of the Trump administration’s foreign policy ideas appears to be the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Trump’s foreign policy approach seems to be a move away from the neocon paradigm that has dominated Republican foreign policy approaches since the Reagan period, and a return to the Nixon/Kissinger approach of the Rockefeller Republicans. This is consistent with Trump’s New York background. His administration is moving back toward the Nixon/Kissinger approach and away from the neocon Republican or liberal internationalist (neocon lite) Democratic approaches. He’s been more of a neocon on domestic policy than on international relations, though in a very pragmatic way.
Trump’s economics seem to be the standard right-wing Keynesian approach that has dominated the Republicans since the Reagan period, although on trade he has departed from that a bit (although Reagan did so as well on a selective basis).
My guess is that a lot of folks among the power elite now regard having let the neocons run foreign policy as a mistake, and as having created too many liabilities and are now pushing them to the side. Notice even the neocon mouthpieces at FOX, who have been reluctant Trumpians, are getting upset about the Putin summit. The only exceptions have been Tucker Carlson, the token paleocon on FOX, and Hannity, who only cares about his ratings, and the fact that most of his fans are diehard Trumpians.
Thus far, Trump seems to be pursuing Nixonian detente with Russia for the purpose of reducing the potential for nuclear conflict, expanding the petroleum trade with Russia, containing jihadi terrorism in Central Asia, and wooing Russia away from an alliance with China.
Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
I hate Donald Trump. Every cell in my body rejects that man like a bad virus. Being a genderqueer anarcho-feminist with a functioning conscience, everything I believe in, everything that I have built my foundation of basic human values upon, is in complete and utter opposition to that depraved, misogynistic, xenophobic, orange-nationalist and everything he stands for. His treatment of women, Muslims, and immigrants in particular makes me physically sick. But this week I am not revolted by Trump, I am revolted by his self-righteous opposition and this makes me one very, very, very, pissed off lesbian bitch. No one gets in the way of my own self-righteous hate without getting a fucking taste of it. The Resistance hasn’t seen shit until they’ve fucked with me and when you fuck with detente, you fuck with Comrade Hermit.
Last Monday Donald Trump did something right for a goddamn change. He met with our “enemy” Russian president Vladimir Putin and appears to have taken a legitimate stab at diplomacy. After the meeting he was polite to his guest and registered doubt that Mr. Putin was behind any sort of interference with the 2016 election. He went on to boldly criticize Robert Mueller’s childish reenactment of the Salem Witch Trials for grievously damaging Russo-American relations and recklessly endangering world peace between the worlds foremost nuclear powers. “I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than risk peace in pursuit of politics” he proclaimed in a defiant display of what looked suspiciously like leadership.
Press TV. Listen here.
US President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade policy with China and Europe is a “double-edged sword,” bolstering domestic manufacturing and narrowing the trade deficit while hitting the American consumer with rising prices, says an analyst.
“Tariffs on imports have multiple economic effects and depending on what kind of economic values you assign to a particular policy, they can be beneficial or they could be negative,” Keith Preston, chief editor and director of AttacktheSystem.com, said in an interview. More…
GILAD ATZMON – New Left, ID politics & Tyranny of Correctness: What is Left? @ Second International N-AM Conference in UK,June 23-24 2018 More info : http://www.national-anarchist.net FIND US ON FACEBOOK!
This is actually a very incomplete list. It only includes acts of imperialist aggression by the USA since 1945, and the many, many examples from before that, and it’s not even a complete list of the post-’45 examples.
“Plenty folk say they are outraged over Russia possibly interfering in US elections, jeeze fancy any country doing that.
But it does seem Clinton received $400,000,000.00 secretly from a Russian businessman.
Now folk are outraged Trump questions the stories told him by CIA, FBI, It would take a very special kind of special stupid to trust them, and even greater stupid to argue they are trustable.
The bankers owned media sure have folks suckered into what they are told they should think, without any thinking involved.
As if anyone would interfere in another peoples country.” -Russell Malcolm
Two medieval feudal-theocratic monarchies and an apartheid state are now among the world’s top Top 10 most powerful nations, made possible by the American Empire.
By Sinead Baker
Business Insider
Some common sense comments from Tom Woods on the anti-Russia hysteria.
“The hysteria over the Trump-Putin summit is astonishing.
There really is a Deep State, and it’s normally pretty subtle. The subtlety is all gone now.
It’s nonstop, round-the-clock hysteria. No president has ever been on the receiving end of this much unhinged abuse — even when they’ve richly deserved it.
With Trump, I find myself criticizing him when all the respectables are cheering him (as in the case of the Syria strike), and (sometimes) defending him when all the respectables are attacking him.
The respectables brought us Afghanistan, the Iraq war, the destruction of Libya, the destruction of federalism, an unpayable debt, the housing bubble, and 1001 other monstrosities. That doesn’t mean they’re always wrong, but, well, it almost does.
In an interview with Rand Paul, Wolf Blitzer demanded to know if the Kentucky senator trusted U.S. intelligence agencies.
Well, this much I know: there’d be far fewer dead people in the world if Wolf Blitzer hadn’t trusted U.S. intelligence agencies.
Trump’s foreign policy leaves plenty to be desired, needless to say. But he does utter important truths from time to time, and they send the creeps, spooks, and profiteers who benefit from mindless bellicosity into fits of apoplexy.
It’s interesting how so many right-leaning folks get it right on Russia, only to lose their minds on China. Um, um, Tucker, China has exactly one military base outside it’s national borders (in East Africa). The USA has hundreds. No need to sweat. Much ado is always made about the supposed power of China’s GDP, but China has a large GDP relative only to it’s massive population. The same is true of India. India’s GDP is the third largest in the world that of China or the United States relative to purchasing power parity. Like China, India is also a nuclear armed power. Does anyone seriously think India is a threat to US global hegemony?
An interview with Sputnik. Listen here.
NATO nations have agreed to satisfy the US demand to increase defense spending.
This is what US President – Donald Trump – said at a press conference in Brussels during the second day of the NATO summit.
President Trump reiterated his earlier request for doubling defense spending target, saying that four per cent of gross domestic product was – quote – the right number.
Radio Sputnik discussed Trump’s calls to NATO allies to increase defense spending to 4 % of GDP with Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com.
My recent talk on the role of the US Civil War as pivotal event in the building of the modern American Empire, and a prototype for the “total wars” in the 20th century. Listen here. My talk starts at 56:30.
Rebel Yell 20180609 319: The Asheville Forum
This is Rebel Yell – a Southern Nationalist podcast of the Alt-Right. I’m your host Musonius Rufus. Joining me are my cohosts Mencken’s Ghost and Ryan McMahon. For our 100th episode of Rebel Yell, we present talks from Identity Dixie’s second conference.
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