War with Iran is not what Trump wants 1
Press TV. Listen here.
War with Iran is not what US President Donald Trump wants, says an American author and political analyst in Virginia.
Keith Preston told Press TV in an interview on Thursday that Trump was not in favor of war with Iran.
The author of Attack the System said despite his bellicose language, Trump, who is a businessman, is against war with Iran. “The instincts that I have is that Trump really does not want to have a war with Iran.”
“But I think that he is also basing his opinion on a lot of false information that has been fed to him by various sources within the intelligence services, within his own administration,” he added.
“Something similar happened to President George W. Bush back in the early 2000 where George W. Bush also had limited knowledge or experience with foreign policy issues and international relations, and was simply led to war in Iraq by the people in his administration by Donald Rumsfeld, the former secretary of defense, and by Dick Cheney, the former vice president, ” he stated.
Preston also said that “Trump has zero experience when it comes to foreign policy.”
National Precious Metals Dealer Offers Sound Money Scholarships to Deserving Students Reply
Charlotte, North Carolina (June 5, 2019) – A national precious-metals dealer is teaming up with a sound money policy group to help students pay for the ever-increasing costs of college.
Money Metals Exchange has teamed up with the Sound Money Defense League to offer the Sound Money Scholarship — the first gold-backed scholarship of the modern era. Starting in 2016, these organizations have set aside 100 ounces of physical gold (currently worth more than $130,000) to reward outstanding students who display a thorough understanding of economics, monetary policy, and sound money.
The Sound Money Scholarship is open to high school seniors, undergraduate, and graduate students with an interest in economics, specifically the tradition of the Austrian school. Applicants do not have to be economics majors to be eligible to receive this scholarship.
A Journey Through the Anarchist Subculture Reply
An interesting interview with a fellow that describes a more than 20-year journey through the world of anarchism, communes, intentional communities, and activist culture. Lots of anarchist name-dropping in this.
From The Brilliant. Listen here.
US aims to ease conflict with Iran? Reply
Press TV. Listen here.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent announcement is an effort to ease rising tensions that have sparked fears of a conflict, American author and political commentator Keith Preston says.
In past months, Pompeo was said to be setting the stage for war with Iran.
PressTV-Pompeo preparing for war with Iran: Bush-era officialMike Pompeo is “setting the stage for a war with Iran,” says a Bush-era official, claiming he sees the same pattern that developed ahead of the 2003 war on Iraq.
However, Pompeo seems to be moving in another direction now. He said on Sunday that Washington was now ready for unconditional talks with Iran.
The author of Attack the System believes that some of the Trump administration’s anti-Iran comments, mainly those by Pompeo and the hawkish National Security Adviser John Bolton, have been very extreme and “Trump may be trying to rein those guys in a bit.”
Tulsi Gabbard to Americans: War with Iran would be devastating 2
Guaido renews call for Maduro to step down 1
Trump most pro-Israel US president, can’t broker peace in Mideast Reply
Press TV. Listen here.
Donald Trump is America’s most pro-Israel president and as such, his administration is not capable of mediating peace in the Middle East, argues an American analyst.
Keith Preston, the Virginia-based director of Attackthesystem.com, made the remarks after Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a senior White House adviser, traveled to the Middle East to promote Washington’s so-called “deal of the century,” which seeks to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Keith Preston on Anarchist Societies Reply
Dr. Richard Wolff Debates Labor Theory of Value Marxist vs. Libertarian Debate 2
Dr. Richard Wolff debates libertarian Antony Sammeroff on the Labor Theory of Value on the Lions of Liberty Podcast, hosted by Marc Clair. This is a Marxist economist debating a free market libertarian.
Waiting Out the Landlord’s Clock In Iran Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
Quick hypothetical; Lets say you’ve been living in the same house in the same neighborhood for your whole life, generations in fact. There have been some minor squabbles but for the most part you’ve managed to get along with the neighbors. Then one day, some outside landlord buys the house next door. After several tenants come and go, a real loudmouth thug moves in, making threats, beating his wife and kids. Finally, the bastard truly breaks bad, tares down your fence and declares your backyard to be part of his property. After an epic battle in the courts, he finally returns to his property and eventually gets evicted. ‘Great!’, you think, naturally, and you even help the landlord clean up the place. Everything seems peachy fucking keen for suburbia. And then the landlord moves in.
Suddenly, this brash wealthy landlord is building shit up, putting up new outbuildings and sheds near the property line, erecting tall steel fences with razor wire. Suddenly, it dawns on you that the last tenant wasn’t the problem, you were, and the last tenant was only removed because he wasn’t trouble enough for you. And the threats start up again. Local street kids who you’ve helped out in the past are declared gangs and you get blamed for running them. The landlord accuses you of possessing certain weapons that your neighbors have and freely flaunt but you’ve never showed any interest in. Finally, after dealing with years of threats, you sign a deal with the landlord promising to stop procuring these fictional weapons if the landlord backs off. Things calm down for a tip. Then the landlord pulls out of the deal and shit gets nuts again.
Iran slams as politically-motivated France’s extradition of Iranian engineer to US Reply
Trump denies accusations of ‘cover up’ Reply
Pledging Allegiance to the Divided States of America 4
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will-Antonio Gramsci
When the individual’s behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to “drop out”, “turn on”, and “tune in.”-Timothy Leary
America, the indispensable nation. That old jingoistic canard gets tossed around like confetti in this country, while the rest of the world rolls their collective eyes and crack their collective knuckles. According to patriotic lore, America is some beige, color-blind, miracle designed by the greatest white philosophers since Socrates to free the world from its backwards indigenous ways with the magic of global capitalism. Naturally, this is all bullshit. The kind of sad pep-talk a date-rapist gives himself in the mirror before showering his glamour muscles in Axe body spray. There is absolutely nothing miraculous about America but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t exceptional.
America is an exceptionally cruel experiment in the outer reaches of colonial social engineering. We are a nation defined by the two greatest holocausts in recorded history, spanning three continents and an entire hemisphere. America as we know it was founded by an ambitious collection of European super-colonialists who found themselves and their nations increasingly depleted of the wealth they accumulated from the Crusades. So they traveled the seas in search of greener pastures to irrigate with more dark-skinned blood. They found their sainted killing fields of Shangri-La in the New World and with the superiority of their steel, they decided to take the Americas by force and slaughter anyone who stood in their way. But with an entire hemisphere half empty of its indigenous inhabitants, these European overlords found themselves with too much work for their feeble bourgeois fingers to handle, so they filled their new colonies with shiploads of slaves pilfered from the jungles of Africa to build a nation on their scarred shoulders, murdering millions more in the process and permanently hobbling another entire continent.
Iran’s Rejection of Washington Consensus Main Reason behind US Pressures Reply
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – An American political analyst said Iran’s pursuit of independent policy and its refusal to be incorporated into the Washington Consensus are the main reasons behind the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against it.
“The objective of these officials is to continue to carry out a longstanding plan that was developed in the 1990s by the leadership of the neoconservative movement which has controlled US foreign policy in the Middle East for decades. The plan has always been to eliminate independent nations in the region that refuse to be incorporated into the Washington Consensus that was developed at the end of the Cold War. The idea behind the Washington Consensus is that the United States should be the de facto world government that rules on a unipolar basis, and that nations that refuse to be incorporated into the American empire should be subjugated or destroyed,” Keith Preston, the chief editor and director of attackthesystem.com, told the Tasnim news agency in an interview.
US targets Huawei again Reply
My thoughts on the “trade war” with China. Watch here.
This week US president Donald Trump declared a national emergency over IT threats. Trumps long awaited executive order forbids U.S. companies from purchasing telecommunications equipment manufactured by firms posing a “national security risk”.
French police deployed in Paris as Yellow Vest protests held for 27th weekend Reply
Is Bolton’s War With Iran Becoming A Reality? Reply
I really doubt that a President Hillary Clinton would have been any less aggressive when it comes to Iran or Venezuela. She has been rhetorically belligerent against Iran, voted for the Iraq war when she was in the Senate and was the architect of the Libyan war, US backing of the jihadis in Syria, and an attempted coup in Honduras when she was Secretary of State. Bolton seems to be an especially unhinged character, but policies typically represent the consensus of the ruling class, not the perspective of any single official or office-holder.
By Curt Mills
The National Interest
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Depending on the day, and depending on who you ask, this is Ambassador John Bolton’s moment of ultimate triumph—or it’s the national security advisor’s moment of final overreach.
Two sources familiar with the matter tell me President Donald Trump’s rumbustious National Security Council chief is headed for the exits, having flown too close to the sun on his regime change efforts for Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. “Hearing that Trump wants him out,” a former senior administration official told me.
But is he? For Bolton, it’s full steam ahead: reportedly commissioning a prospective Pentagon plan for an enormous deployment to the region in the event of an Iranian attack. And for his part, the president has poured cold water on talk of a Bolton ouster.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Depending on the day, and depending on who you ask, this is Ambassador John Bolton’s moment of ultimate triumph—or it’s the national security advisor’s moment of final overreach.
Two sources familiar with the matter tell me President Donald Trump’s rumbustious National Security Council chief is headed for the exits, having flown too close to the sun on his regime change efforts for Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. “Hearing that Trump wants him out,” a former senior administration official told me.
But is he? For Bolton, it’s full steam ahead: reportedly commissioning a prospective Pentagon plan for an enormous deployment to the region in the event of an Iranian attack. And for his part, the president has poured cold water on talk of a Bolton ouster.
Smash All Dogmas: Overcoming the Addiction to Ideology 7
By Keith Preston
Originally published in Tribes Magazine
Perhaps one of the most curious features of modernity is the way in which ideologies have replaced religions as a principal source of contentiousness. During the era of the nineteenth century, when the intellectual revolution of the Enlightenment was being institutionalized, a few perceptive thinkers recognized that the “death of God” did not mean the death of dogma. In 1844, Max Stirner noted that “our atheists are pious people,” an acknowledgment that humanism and liberalism had replaced Christianity as the religion of the intellectual elite. Similarly, Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Parable of the Madman” was rooted in the recognition of the consequences of the loss of faith, its metaphysical underpinnings, and its derivative traditions.
“What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882)
The era of the twentieth century revealed that the Age of Faith gave way not to an Age of Reason, as Voltaire or Thomas Paine would have hoped for, but to an Age of Ideology. What were the great conflicts of the twentieth century, whether the two world wars or the Cold War, but wars of ideology that paralleled or exceeded the great wars of religion that had taken place during previous centuries?
Many different ideologies abound in the same manner that many different religious sects can be identified. Ideologies are typically grouped into the categories of Left and Right. The Left is thought to favor equality, progress, and universality, and leftists include liberals, progressives, socialists, social democrats, communists, left-libertarians, and left-anarchists. The Right is thought to favor hierarchy, tradition, and the particular, and rightists include conservatives, reactionaries, traditionalists, monarchists, right-libertarians, fascists, and national socialists. There are also a range of ideologies that defy the left/right model such as nationalism, populism, environmentalism, regionalism, feminism, and third positionism.
Iran’s “Crime” of Merely Existing Reply
Yemeni military says it has carried out major operation against Saudi targets Reply
Trump’s War In Venezuela Could Be Che’s Revenge 1
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
Che Guevara had a dream. After decades of chasing the American Empire into guerrilla street fights from Guatemala to the Congo, Che dreamed of drawing that dreadful beast into an unwinnable quagmire on the graves of its first victims in the heart of Latin America, the treacherous mountain forests of Bolivia where the Conquistadors first struck it rich with Indio silver. Che dreamed of revenge for centuries of violence, of rape, genocide and colonialism. He dreamed of creating another Vietnam in the Western Hemisphere that would spread across Uncle Sam’s indentured colonies and liberate his people, all of his people, from Tierra del Fuego to Tijuana and beyond. Che chased this Quixotic dream into the rugged highlands of Bolivia in 1966 where he got more than he bargained for. Less than a year later he would be dead at the hands of a CIA death squad. But his dream remained, festering just beneath the flesh of a thousand banana republics.
