Investigative journalist, Max Blumenthal, is the son of Sydney Blumenthal,
Investigative journalist, Max Blumenthal
who is a well-known journalist, Democratic political consultant, as well as an historian who has written a 5-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
Max is an important voice in alternative news media. He is the author of 5 important books, 3 of which I have read — these being Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, The 51 Day War: Ruin and Resistance in Gaza, and The Management of Savagery: How America’s National Security State Fueled the al Qaeda, Isis, and Donald Trump.
Max is also the founder and chief editor of The Grayzone, an alternative, online news site that I follow faithfully. Please note that when I say “alternative news” I mean “much, much more likely to be telling you the actual facts of the situation than any reporter will be telling you on the MSM.”
This story is significant for westerners especially since the US/western media are busy making a very big deal of the fact that Ukrainian president Zelensky is Jewish. Their argument is that Jew could never — no never — be allied with neo-Nazis in his country nor allow them into his government.
Of course, grown ups should know better than to believe such things.
Below is one of Jimmy Dore’s recent conversations with Max. Jimmy does a good job of introducing the issues for discussion during the opening 9 minutes. At the 9:30 mark, Max joins in with further analysis of the role neo-Nazis and fascistic, Ukrainian ethnic nationalism have played in the war with Russia — a conflict that actually began in 2014.
President Biden claims that Russian ground troops have moved into eastern Ukraine, others say that Russian forces remain stationed along the border with orders to remain on alert.
Which story is true? I don’t know, but one thing is certain. The events unfolding along the Russia-Ukraine border are very, very dangerous for all of Europe and the United States.
As a Christian, I believe avoiding war and expanding peace is always the best option. So, once again, as the US media continues the spew the establishment, anti-Russia, anti-Putin party-line, I encourage us all to expand our information horizons.
Below are three analyses of the current crisis going well beyond, and contrary to, the pro-American narrative. Since we may well be looking at another war in Europe, it is imperative for every citizen to be as well-informed as possible.
I hope you’ll take the time to listen to these reports:
The first is by a journalist with the Socialist Workers Party. Ignore the political ad at the end of his report if you choose, but his description of the situation on the ground is very good.
Below is an interview with Ben Aris who was once the Moscow bureau chief for the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. He offers an excellent historical overview and current perspective:
Finally, even though this next interview is 43 minutes long, it is well worth every minute of your time. Aaron Mate interviews Richard Sakwa, professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent.
If only US news media would offer the analysis of people like Aris and Sakwa. But then, mainstream news outlets don’t try to inform us. Their primary purpose is to manipulate us.
I believe that the speaker at my morning worship service was trying to be nonpartisan. And I appreciate that.
But it’s hard to keep our biases in check, especially when they are rarely confronted by someone who sees the world differently.
Hers were showing this morning.
In the opening moments of the sermon, the speaker began to lead a prayer
A person wounded in a bomb blast outside the Kabul airport in Afghanistan on Thursday, Aug. 26, 2021, arrives at a hospital in Kabul. The Pentagon confirmed at least two blasts outside the Kabul airport and said there were a number of casualties. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)
on behalf of the families of the 13 soldiers recently killed by 2 suicide bombers in Afghanistan. She didn’t mention the 170+ Afghan civilians, men, women, and children who died, as well.
Then she included a prayer request for the Christians in Afghanistan who will almost certainly suffer under Taliban rule. I could see people nodding their heads in agreement.
But the real enthusiasm was yet to come.
Finally, she mentioned the need for our nation’s leaders to be directed by
God’s wisdom in their decision-making. Wow. Suddenly, the congregation erupted in applause and loud “amens” rippled throughout the auditorium.
Obviously, the community agreed heartily that THIS was the most essential request — “God, give us leaders with greater wisdom.”
I agree with these words, but I know that the kind of wisdom I was praying for is very, very different from the “wisdom” my fellow church members believe is now lacking in Washington, D.C.
You see, I know my community.
I know that the majority of the folks in my church are devoted consumers of Fox News. Many also watch Christian television, with people like Pat Robertson offering their “religious” views on world events. Consequently, their perspective on world affairs is shaped heavily by these dual propaganda outlets of the Republican party. (CBN news is only Fox News with a smile.)
Ever since president Biden initiated our withdrawal from Afghanistan (which, remember, will never entail a complete withdrawal of all special forces, intelligence operatives, and drone strikes), the Republican party and the entire assembly of corporate, cable news outlets have all uniformly condemned Biden’s withdrawal efforts.
More than that, they continually argue that US troops should remain in Afghanistan. But, of course, remaining in Afghanistan means more war, more killing and destruction, more dead Americans, more slaughtered, innocent Afghans.
No doubt, the current withdrawal could have been planned more thoroughly. But it is far from clear that all the blame should fall on Biden’s shoulders. There is more than enough blame to go around, and we ought to be heaping shovel-fulls of it onto the culprits in the Pentagon, the CIA, the State and Defense Departments, the weapons contractors, and the entire military command structure that all perpetuated this $2.35 trillion, 20-year boondoggle of a horror show on the Afghan and American people.
However, I know that the vast majority of the men and women who were enthusiastically applauding for “leaders with divine wisdom” in my worship service this morning were not thinking about the selfishness or the guilt of America’s bloodthirsty military-industrial complex — a complex that enriched itself to the tune of billions of dollars over the past 20 years.
No. They were condemning the president who finally decided “to end” this 20 war.
They were also — knowingly, self-consciously — endorsing the litany of war-mongering media figures now calling for American troops to remain in Afghanistan to keep up the fight.
Implicitly, they were praying for more death and destruction because, rather than thinking with the mind of Christ, they have been thoroughly propagandized and brainwashed by our corporate media whose corporate owners ALL LOVE WAR.
It is always a struggle for me to worship with people who embrace without question (and applaud with both hands) the egocentric brutality of the American Empire with its colonial hubris and penchant for human exploitation.
But I am a part of Christ’s church. So I stay. And I pray in my own way. And I try to talk with others about these things whenever I can. Though few will listen for long.
Not since the days immediately following the Twin Towers attacks on 9/11 has the war in Afghanistan received as much media attention as it is getting today. Now, everyone is for its continuation, or so it seems.
Corporate media war-mongering knows no bounds.
President Biden’s plans to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan has suddenly turned every broadcast journalist into a distressed, hand-wringing, honorary member of Human Rights Watch, fretting and fussing over the future state of an Afghanistan free of American military forces.
Let’s set aside for the moment the fact that US forces will continue to dominate the Afghan landscape (and neighboring Pakistan) with armed drones dropping bombs and missiles into peoples’ homes, a legion of civilian contractors pursuing American business interests, and intelligence operations manipulating the government and assassinating anyone who gets in their way.
Not since music producer Phil Spector’s famous “wall of sound” have I heard such a fully orchestrated, monotonous, uniform wall of repetitious lament from corporate news broadcasters universally expressing, whether explicitly or by implication, their desire to keep US troops in a war overseas.
Never mind that this war – which has always included US attacks in neighboring Pakistan – has dragged on for over 20 years; never mind that the original mission of capturing Osama bin Laden was accomplished long ago; never mind that the recent release of the Afghanistan Papers demonstrates what many have long suspected – that no one in the Pentagon, State, or Defense Departments ever had any hope for the situation’s improvement, much less a military solution to our “why can’t we fix Afghanistan?” query.
Nevertheless, everyone from Fox News to MSNBC is now lamenting president Biden’s “irrational,” even “cowardly” decision to withdraw from Afghanistan.
Suddenly, it appears that American elites actually care about the fate of poor
Army troops returning in December from a deployment to Afghanistan. Credit…John Moore Getty Images
Muslims overseas. Thoughts of a barbaric Taliban regime imposing their version of Sharia law over women and girls is more than suburban coffee table conversations can tolerate.
But the fact of the matter is that the only reason CNN and CBS news anchors now want us all to believe that Afghanistan’s future (sans US group troops) looks so devastatingly bleak, is because these same people have thoroughly and irresponsibly ignored the lives of the Afghan people for nearly 20 years.
Propaganda is not only a matter of spreading misinformation. It also requires withholding inconvenient truths.
Think about it.
How often has the American public been updated, on a regular basis, about the details of what the US presence in Afghanistan has meant for the country’s civilian population?
What about the regular CIA assassinations; murders that can wipe out entire families, including young children?
(Below. Watch “Living Under Drones,” approx. 7 minutes)
No. Only the ignorant or the propagandists will believe that the future suddenly looks bleak for the Afghan people after America “leaves.” The truth is that sharing their country with America’s occupation army has always been a nightmare for the Afghan and Pakistani people.
Just ask the little children who instinctively run in fear every time they imagine a noise overhead because they are terrified of another drone attack.
In the early days of planning in the Oval Office, there was a nanosecond given over to the suggestion that al Qaeda should be treated as an international criminal organization, and that the Twin Towers attack should be viewed as a horrible crime rather than an act of war.
Two possible paths were laid out before president George W. Bush. The first option, with important historical precedent, is explained in a 2006 report, 9/11: Five Years Later. The Forward to this government report explains that: “Before 9/11, combating terrorism was treated largely as a law enforcement problem.”
Not anymore.
President Bush forever changed the US attitude towards “terrorism” – which still remains horribly (and conveniently) ill-defined.
Eager to declare himself “a war president,” George W. Bush acquiesced to the military bureaucracy’s (which naturally includes the weapons manufacturers who have made billions since this war began) insistence that 9/11 be viewed as an act of war requiring a military (rather than an international law-enforcement) response.
The people of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Yemen, AND the United States have all suffered the devastating, inhumane consequences of that egotistical, presidential decision ever since.
Only those who have not been paying attention will now believe that US forces have been protecting Afghan women and children, civilians who will suddenly come under threat by our withdrawal.
Recently Vice President Kamala Harris visited the Central American country of Guatemala, the jumping off point for the folks braving a dangerous overland journey to our southern border.
She wasn’t worried about the risks these people would take in bringing their children to the US. Her motives were purely political, as the Republicans continue to browbeat President Biden over the pressures of (illegal) immigration.
The brutal irony of Harris’ order to Central America was the way it exemplified the history of US/Latin American relations. Once again, the USA is telling those Spanish-speaking southerners what they can and cannot do.
If only the people of Latin America had been able to tell the Americans, “Do not come. Stay home. Leave us alone.”
All of the countries in Central America, and almost all in South America, have been the victims of US-led military coups, US-trained death squads, political assassination’s, CIA interference with their democratically elected governments, and neoliberal economic manipulations that keep them as perpetual debtor states.
For just one example, journalists Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton of The Grayzone have produced a new documentary (approximately 13 minutes long) outlining current US efforts to destabilize the democratically elected Sandinista government in Nicaragua, close neighbor to Guatemala.
It’s called “How US govt-funded media fueled a violent coup in Nicaragua.”
You will never hear these facts from Kamala Harris or American media:
Let’s begin by watching a recent CBN (Christian Broadcast Network) report on the violence unfolding in Israel/Palestine. The reporter is Chris Mitchell who lives in Israel.
As far as I can tell, all the on-screen personnel at CBN are avid Christian Zionists, meaning that they believe Israel is God’s chosen nation now preparing the way for the second coming of Christ.
Let’s start by observing the major points in this report:
The current violence in Jerusalem begins with Hamas rockets launched at Israel from Gaza. Thus, Palestinians are the aggressors. Jews are only defending themselves.
Netanyahu warns the Palestinian “terrorists” that Israel will respond firmly and decisively in self-defense.
Mahmud Abbas (the West Bank leader of Fatah) is the instigator behind all the Palestinian “riots” in Jerusalem
Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah are protesting their home evictions unreasonably because the original Jewish property owners had reached a generous compromise that was then rejected by Mr. Abbas.
Let’s take these points one at a time:
First, CBN adopts the standard storyline of explaining the issues according to something I call APR time. APR time means After Palestinians Respond. It’s as if the Palestinians simply woke up one morning and decided to riot and fire rockets in Israel, just for the fun of it.
Actually, the current violence has its roots in Israel’s unilateral decision, made several weeks ago, to close off the Damascus Gate entrance to the Old City during the Muslim period of Ramadan. The Damascus Gate is the main thoroughfare used by Palestinians going to pray at al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock during Ramadan.
Palestinians naturally took offense at this closure and challenged the decision in the streets. Events have escalated from there.
Second, Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been unable to form a new government since the recent national elections. As a right-wing politician, he knows that the easiest way to gather support is to rally people by fear-mongering over an alleged, national threat. American politicians do it all the time. In Israel, Palestinians serve as the standard, cardboard cutout for the state’s ever-present boogeyman.
Third, Mahmud Abbas is the leader of the Palestinian political party known as Fatah and the head of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. Since the Oslo Accords, the PA has served as the West Bank wing of the Israeli security forces.
Abbas has no connection to the Hamas party in Gaza. In fact, Hamas considers the PA to be a traitorous organization given its cooperation with the Israeli military.
Mitchell’s claim that Abbas has somehow orchestrated the Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza is ludicrous. Here he reveals that he is not a journalist but a faithful propagandist for the Israeli government.
It is true that Abbas is a corrupt scoundrel who has postponed the West Bank elections. But there is no evidence that he can influence the Palestinians citizens of Israel to take up mass demonstrations to distract from his shenanigans in the West Bank.
That claim makes no sense. Palestinian Israelis cannot vote in the West Bank elections. They don’t have a dog in Abbas’s election fight. He has no influence over them and they have little to no regard for him.
Fourth, Mitchell’s attempt to explain the tensions raised by Palestinian evictions in Sheikh Jarrah is a complete fabrication. Once again, he shows that he works as a tool for the Israeli government. He is not a journalist.
Mr. Mitchell is merely repeating the public relations bulletin handed to him by the Israeli Ministry of Public Affairs.
I shared a document yesterday that explains the actual history of the Sheikh Jarrah evictions, and it has nothing to do with the foolishness repeated by Mr. Mitchell. You can read it here.
The CBN anchorman asks the question, “Why are we not hearing that story in the western media?” The implication is that this is “omission” yet another instance of the western, antisemitic conspiracy against Israel.
In fact, the reason this supposed story has not been mentioned by other western, news outlets is because it is complete balderdash; another Zionist myth fed to gullible, ignorant devotees of Israeli apartheid who will foolishly repeat it for American, Christian Zionist consumption.
Sadly, this fallacious, inaccurate reporting on Israel/Palestine is typical of the “news” made available on Christian broadcasting.
I strongly suggest that my readers not take it seriously. It is NOT a reliable source of accurate information about the world we live in.
Matt Taibbi’s latest article on Joe Biden’s presidency — The Two Faces of Joe Biden — makes two important points with plenty of supporting evidence.
Matt Taibbi
First, all presidents and their administrations lie to us. It’s a fact of life and we all need to remember it.
It is certainly true that Donald Trump set a new bench mark for the volume of pathological lies spewed daily from the Oval Office. But his special gift for dishonesty was only unique in volume not in kind.
Second, now that political partisanship is baked into the DNA of American media outlets, pure propaganda (as opposed to actual investigative reporting) is the established norm in cable and network news.
No matter which stations or networks you watch, you are being lied to much of the time. That, too, is a fact of modern life.
Taibbi lays all of this out in black and white as he explains not only the two-facedness of Joe Biden’s policies, but the eagerness of so-called journalists at places like CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post to carry water for this Democratic administration.
Taibbi gives special attention to those lap-dog stenographers who are enthusiastically describing Biden as America’s new FDR.
Below is an excerpt from Taibbi’s article.
To read the entire piece requires a subscription, but it’s only $5/month and well worth the money:
. . . With a partisan divide wedded to a hyper-concentrated landscape, commercial media companies can now sell almost any narrative they want. They can disappear the past with relative ease, and the present can be pushed whichever way a handful of key decision-makers thinks will sell best with audiences.
In the case of Biden, we’ve seen in the first few months that the upscale, cosmopolitan target audiences of outlets like CNN, the New York Times, and the Washington Post want to believe they’re living through a “radical,” “transformative” presidency, the political antidote to the Trump years. The same crowd of West Wing power-tweeters was leading the charge against “purity” in politics about eight minutes ago.
In fact, in the 2019-2020 primary season, Bernie Sanders was regularlylambasted by the same blue-leaning press outlets for trying to re-imagine F.D.R. through programs with names like the “Green New Deal.” Proposal after proposal that had been directly inspired by F.D.R. was described as too expensive, unrealistic, or a political non-starter heading into a general election.
Now that the real version of that brand of politics has been safely eliminated, a new PR campaign is stressing that Democrats did elect F.D.R. after all. Moreover, a legend is being built that crime-bill signing, PATRIOT-Act inspiring, Iraq-war-humping Joe Biden wanted all along to be a radical progressive, but was held back by the intransigence of the evil Republicans. Is that even remotely true?
Observe, for instance, the hilarious Ezra Klein editorial that just ran in the New York Times, called “Four Ways to Look at the Radicalism of Joe Biden” (someone actually wrote that headline!):
Before Biden, Democratic presidents designed policy with one eye on attracting Republican votes, or at least mollifying Republican critics. That’s why a third of the 2009 stimulus was made up of tax cuts, why the Affordable Care Act was built atop the Romneycare framework, why President Bill Clinton’s first budget included sharp spending cuts…
Over the past decade, congressional Republicans slowly but completely disabused Democrats of these hopes. The long campaign against the ideological compromise that was the Affordable Care Act is central here…
The result is that Obama, Biden, the key political strategists who advise Biden and almost the entire Democratic congressional caucus simply stopped believing Republicans would ever vote for major Democratic bills.
Question for Ezra: did Obama also accelerate the drone program, expand the surveillance state, and abandon enforcement of white-collar crime to a degree that made John Ashcroft look like Eliot Ness, in a similar effort to reach across the aisle? Or were those Executive Branch behaviors just expressions of unrequited love?
Obama as a presidential candidate in 2008 contrasted himself with Hillary Clinton by insisting he would be the guy to stop kowtowing to special interests. On health care, he was incredibly specific: he would green-light drug re-importation from Canada and allow Medicare to negotiate bulk pharmaceutical prices, insisting also he was a “proponent” of single-payer.
Obama went so far as to do an ad blasting former Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, who went from helping write the ban on Medicare bargaining to going to “work for the pharmaceutical industry making two million dollars a year” at the lobbying group PhRMA.
“Imagine that,” said Obama. “That’s an example of the same old game‐playing in Washington. I don’t want to learn how to play the game better. I want to put an end to the game‐playing.”
The year after this ad ran, Obama was meeting with that same Billy Tauzin in, ironically, the Roosevelt Room of the White House (Tauzin would end up visiting a dozen times). There, they hammered out a deal: Tauzin’s group, PhRMA, would fund a $150 million ad campaign boosting Obama’s health care program, in exchange for the Obama White House agreeing to kill the reimportation idea and leave the ban on Medicare negotiation in place.
Tauzin later described the deal, saying it had been “blessed” by the White House, and emails later released showed a union official who was part of health care bill negotiations explaining how Obama’s White House planned on paying for its PR campaign: “They plan to hit up the ‘bad guys’ for most of the $.”
Obama in other words won a contentious primary against Hillary Clinton by snowing reporters like me into hyping him as the clean hands guy who’d push aside Clintonian transactional politics. Then he turned around a year later and passed his signature program with help from the worst industry actors, paying for it by killing the progressive parts of the plan.
This history — important history — is now being rewritten by people like Klein as an “ideological compromise” inspired by the Obama/Biden White House’s misguided desire to govern with Republican votes. The fact that the Affordable Care Act passed with a grand total of zero such votes is apparently irrelevant, as was Biden’s ignored and erroneous (do we only say “lie” in some cases?) insistence as a candidate last year that he found “Republican votes” for “Obamacare.”. . .
Click here and subscribe to read the entire piece.
Regular readers of this blog know that the Australian journalist Caitlin
Caitlin Johnstone
Johnstone is one of my favorite bloggers.
Even though I cannot share in her atheistic, philosophical humanism, I deeply appreciate her analytical insights into the manipulative corruption at the heart of the American establishment.
I have excerpted her article below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:
A new Twitter post by Secretary of State Tony Blinken reads as follows:
“We will never hesitate to use force when American lives and vital interests are
US Secretary of State, Tony Blinken
at stake, but we will do so only when the objectives are clear and achievable, consistent with our values and laws, and with the American people’s informed consent – together with diplomacy.”
Like pretty much everything ever said by Blinken, and indeed by every US secretary of state, this is an absolute lie.
Firstly, US military force is never used to protect “American lives” in modern times, unless you count the lives of US troops and mercenaries in foreign lands they have no business occupying in the first place. The US military is never used to defend American lives against an invading enemy force; that simply does not happen in our current world order. It is only ever used to protect the agenda of unipolar planetary domination, which would be the “vital interests” which Blinken obliquely refers to above.
Secondly, Blinken’s claim that the Biden administration will never use military force without “the American people’s informed consent” has already been blatantly invalidated by Biden’s airstrikes on Syria last month. The American people never gave their consent to those airstrikes, informed or uninformed. A nation the US invaded (Syria) was bombed because troops are being attacked in a second nation the US invaded (Iraq) on the completely unproven claim that a third country against whom the US is currently waging economic warfare (Iran) supported those attacks. At no time were the people asked for their consent to this, and at no time was any attempt made to ensure that they were informed of the situation before it happened.
Thirdly, US military force is never, ever conducted with the American people’s informed consent. Literally never. Consent is always manufactured for US wars by lies and mass media propaganda, one hundred percent of the time, without exception. The bigger the military operation, the more egregious the deceit used to manufacture consent for it. Even in relatively “peaceful” times when the US is merely raining dozens of bombs and missiles per day on foreign soil, Americans are subject to a nonstop deluge of distorted and outright false narratives about their military and the nations it targets for destruction.
Consent that has been artificially manufactured by propaganda is not informed consent, any more than sex with someone who’s been dosed with rohypnol is consensual sex. US imperialism does not rely on informed consent, it relies on disinformed consent; consent for it is manufactured by disinformation. Informed consent plays no role whatsoever in the use of US military force, nor indeed in any other major aspect of the behavior of the US or its allies.
Every aspect of the US-centralized power alliance is propped up by a relentless deluge of mass-scale psyops. Imperialism, capitalism, electoral politics; consent for all its key pillars is constantly being manufactured by the plutocratic news media, by television, by movies. All of the most influential generators of modern mainstream thought and culture are heavily influenced by a plutocratic class which has a vested interest in keeping power out of the hands of the people.
A few days ago I wrote here about the hypocrisy of US (and Israeli) military exploits in the Middle East. It was titled “A Tale of Two Missile Attacks.”
As I was preparing another post on this unfolding situation, I discovered Caitlin Johnstone’s article covering the same ground, in fine form. Her piece is titled “US Bombs Syria and Ridiculously Claims Self Defense.”
I remain ashamed to be an American today.
I have excerpted her article below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:
On orders of President Biden, the United States has launched an airstrike on a facility in Syria. As of this writing the exact number of killed and injured is unknown, with early reports claiming “a handful” of people were killed.
Rather than doing anything remotely resembling journalism, the western mass media have opted instead to uncritically repeat what they’ve been told about the airstrike by US officials, which is the same as just publishing Pentagon press releases. . .
So we are being told that the United States launched an airstrike on Syria, a nation it invaded and is illegally occupying, because of attacks on “US locations” in Iraq, another nation the US invaded and is illegally occupying. This attack is justified on the basis that the Iraqi fighters were “Iranian-linked”, a claim that is both entirely without evidence and irrelevant to the justification of deadly military force (emphasis mine). And this is somehow being framed in mainstream news publications as a defensive operation.
This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor. It’s the people trying to eject them who are acting defensively. The deaths of US troops and contractors in those countries can only be blamed on the powerful people who sent them there.
The US is just taking it as a given that it has de facto jurisdiction over the nations of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, and that any attempt to interfere in its authority in the region is an unprovoked attack which must be defended against. This is completely backwards and illegitimate. Only through the most perversely warped American supremacist reality tunnels can it look valid to dictate the affairs of sovereign nations on the other side of the planet and respond with violence if anyone in those nations tries to eject them.
It’s illegitimate for the US to be in the Middle East at all. It’s illegitimate for the US to claim to be acting defensively in nations it invaded. It’s illegitimate for the US to act like Iranian-backed fighters aren’t allowed to be in Syria, where they are fighting alongside the Syrian government against ISIS and other extremist militias with the permission of Damascus. It is illegitimate for the US to claim the fighters attacking US personnel in Iraq are controlled by Iran when Iraqis have every reason to want the US out of their country themselves.
Even the official narrative reveals itself as illegitimate from within its own worldview. CNN reports that the site of the airstrike “was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks” in Iraq, and a Reuters/AP report says “Biden administration officials condemned the February 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out.”
This is all so very typical of the American supremacist worldview that is being aggressively shoved down our throats by all western mainstream news media. The US can bomb who it likes, whenever it likes, and when it does it is only ever doing so in self defense, because the entire planet is the property of Washington, DC. It can seize control of entire clusters of nations, and if any of those nations resist in any way they are invading America’s sovereignty. . .
. . . This sort of nonsense is why it’s so important to prioritize opposition to western imperialism. World warmongering and domination is the front upon which all the most egregious evils inflicted by the powerful take place, and it plays such a crucial role in upholding the power structures we are up against. Without endless war, the oligarchic empire which is the cause of so much of our suffering cannot function, and must give way to something else. If you’re looking to throw sand in the gears of the machine, anti-imperialism is your most efficacious path toward that end, and should therefore be your priority.
This past Monday evening, the Iraqi city of Erbil was hit by a rocket attack that
A rocket explodes in the streets of Erbil, Iraq
killed one US contractor and injured eight others, as well as one US service member.
Naturally, US spokespersons are up in arms threatening retaliation “at a time of our own choosing,” to quote the president. This has been a leading news story in the American press (see here, here, here, etc.)
The issue right now is that US officials have yet to identify the perpetrators.
Of course, their ignorance does not stop those same officials from pointing fingers at Iran (read the articles highlighted above). Naturally, no one in the American press has the courage to push back or ask questions like:
If you have evidence of Iran’s guilt show it to us. You have yet to produce anything.
It seems far too convenient for you to accuse Iran while you are also pressuring them to accept your unreasonable terms for reentering the JCPOA nuclear treaty.
Of course, Iran mightbe responsible. Or it might not. If it is responsible, the fact that president Trump assassinated Iran’s Commander of Iranian military
Iranians mourn Qassim Suleimani
forces, Qassim Suleimani, certainly gives them good reason to strike back at the US.
Imagine how the US would respond if Iran launched a drone strike and assassinated the the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, the leader of all US armed forces, on American soil. I don’t think I need to elaborate, except to point out that Iran has remained amazingly restrained.
On the other hand, the rocket may also have been launched by any one of a number of Iraqi militias.
The vast majority of the Iraqi people are Shia Muslims, as are the majority of Iranians. Most Iraqis have more reason to identify with Iranian opposition against the United States than they do to sympathize with America.
After all, the Iraqi government has repeatedly told US officials that they want American forces OUT of their country. Yet, the US continues to ignore these demands.
While there have been Iraqi protests against Iranian actions in Iraq, there have been far more popular protests against the American presence in Iraq. The people want the US out of their country just as much as the government does.
So, perhaps the recent rocket attack was the work of an Iraqi militia showing their displeasure with American forces remaining in their country?
This is an equally valid conjecture, perhaps even more so, yet American’s will
Iraqi crowds demand US withdrawal from their country
never hear about this possibility in US news coverage. No, Iran is the current US whipping boy. So, whether with evidence or without, Iran will continue to be demonized in the American press.
But that is only half of the story.
Another rocket attack occurred in Syria only a few days prior, but this attack received minimal coverage by the US press. More than that, US officials have not offered a word of condemnation because these missiles were launched from Israel.
Israeli sources report that nine pro-Syrian government personnel were killed. Syrian sources report that three Syrians and four Iranians were killed in the attack. And we must remember that whatever Iranian forces are fighting on the ground in Syria, they are in Syria at the government’s invitation to help Syria combat US aggression.
Actually, this was the third Israeli missile attack in ten days. How much US coverage did Israel’s offensive actions receive? Very little.
Attacking its neighbors is standard Israeli operating procedure.
Israel has bombed Syria for years, with impunity. Israel even boasts about its
The US never objects to these attacks because Israel shares the US goals of overthrowing the Syrian government. And both nations have black-balled Syria and Iran as dangerous enemies.
So, let me get this straight.
Israel can attack whomever it wants whenever it wants, with US support (and media silence).
The United States can continue forcefully to occupy whatever nation it wants for as long as it wants, despite the fact that both the national government and the majority of the population repeatedly demand that the US withdraw its forces.
However, Iran and Syria remain the “bad guys” who deserve to be punished — primarily for refusing to accept US/Israeli unilateral demands.
Meanwhile, any attack, no matter how small and ineffectual, against US (or Israeli) forces is decried as a horrible crime deserving the harshest punishment.
This is the Tale of Two Missile Attacks. One by Israel. The other by who knows who.
It is the story of American (and Israeli) Empire. It is ugly and unjust. It is a wicked abuse of power that ought to be condemned by every follower of Jesus Christ around the world.
Yet, the majority of America’s evangelical Christians will faithfully cheer on the bloodshed.
today. Now, everyone is for its continuation, or so it seems.
After all, the Iraqi government has repeatedly told US officials that 
