Friday, January 31, 2020

US Returns To Ashes of 1945

US Returns To Ashes of 1945

By Finian Cunningham
Information Clearing House
Friday, January 31, 2020

US Vice President Mike Pence used his speech at the Holocaust
memorial last week to bang a war drum at Iran.

It revealed a deplorable lack of dignity and understanding
of the event, despite Pence’s efforts to appear solemn.

But not only that.

It showed too how out of touch the United States – at least its
political leadership – is with the rest of the world and a growing
collective concern among others to ensure international peace.

Maybe that’s why Britain’s Prince Charles appeared to snub Pence,
declining to shake his hand while attending the commemoration of
the Holocaust and 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Charles warmly greeted other dignitaries, including Russian
President Vladimir Putin and France’s Emmanuel Macron.

It was curious how he blanked Pence.

But there again, maybe not that curious.

Pence and the Trump administration seem to be hell-bent
on starting a war with Iran.

A war that would engulf the entire Middle East and possibly
ignite a world conflagration.

Washington’s wanton threats of violence against Iran and its recent
assassination of one of Iran’s top military leaders stands as a
shocking repudiation of international law and the UN Charter.

It’s the kind of conduct more akin to an organized crime syndicate
rather than a supposedly democratic state.

The UN Charter was created in 1945 in the aftermath of the
Second World War precisely to prevent repetition of the worst
conflagration in history and all its barbaric crimes, including
the Nazi Holocaust.

Over 5o million people died in that war, and nearly half of them
belonged to the Soviet Union.

The prevention of war is surely the most onerous responsibility
of the UN Security Council.

Yet the United States is the one power that routinely ignores
international law and the UN Charter to unilaterally launch
wars or military interventions.

Washington’s threats against Iran are, unfortunately, nothing new.

This is standard American practice.

When world leaders addressed the Holocaust memorial held in
Israel last Wednesday it was obvious – albeit implicitly – from their
words that the US has become an isolated rogue state owing to its
inveterate belligerence.

Putin, Macron, Prince Charles and German President Frank-Walter
Steinmeier all invoked the need for collective commitment to
international law and peace.

They implied that such a commitment was the best way to honour
those who were killed in the Holocaust and the Second World War;
the surest way to prevent the barbarity of fascist ideology and
persecution ever to be repeated.

Those speakers one after another denounced the ideology
of demonizing others which fuels hatred and wars.

How pertinent is that to the way Washington routinely demonizes
other nations and foreign leaders?

In sharp contrast, when the American vice president made his
address, his apparent solemnity was contradicted by a blood-
curdling call to arms against Iran, which he accused of being
the “leading state purveyor of anti-semitism”.

Pence urged the whole world “to stand strong against the Islamic
Republic of Iran”, spoken as if he was spitting out the words like
venom.

There is little doubt that Pence was formulating a rationale for
military confrontation with Iran.

That has been the consistent policy of the Trump administration
over the past three years.

It was no surprise that Pence’s speech was in sync with the usual
bellicose rhetoric from Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu towards
Iran. But what was arresting was just how out of sync Pence and
the Trump administration are with the rest the world.

It was an odious spectacle to see Pence don a somber face as
he talked about the victims of the Holocaust, while his own state
wages war against any foreign nation whenever and wherever
Washington deems.

At an event that was supposed to reflect on the horror and evil
of war, Pence showed he had no understanding or self-awareness.

That’s what is perplexing about many American politicians.

They seem ignorant of history (Pence gave no acknowledgement
to the Soviet soldiers who liberated Auschwitz and other death
camps); they are consumed by self-righteousness and arrogance
like a puritan preacher without an ounce of humanity.

Anyone who reflects on the horror of war would surely be
advocating the respect of and adherence to international law,
commitment to peace, and the earnest pursuit of dialogue
and partnership among nations.

Russia’s Putin has repeatedly called for the members of the UN
Security Council to urgently get together in order to guarantee
a multilateral commitment to peace.

Putin has also repeatedly appealed to the United States to
get serious about negotiating renewed arms control treaties.

Washington has ignored those latter calls.

The American national myth, evolved over recent decades since
1945, views itself as “exceptional” from all other nations.

That translates as the US presuming to be “superior” and “above
the law that others are bound by”.

Mike Pence’s menacing words and attitude at the Holocaust
memorial showed a disturbing and pernicious disconnect with
the need for preventing war and genocide.

It was a disgraceful dishonouring of victims.

Out of sync with the world, the US has returned to the ashes
and lawlessness of 1945.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52919.htm

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

Adam Schiff Is A Dangerous Warmonger

Adam Schiff Is A Dangerous Warmonger

By Liza Featherstone
Information Clearing House
January 28, 2020

Adam Schiff, the liberal hero of impeachment, is a wholly owned
subsidiary of the military-industrial complex and a fervent exponent
of permanent war.

To some Democrats and journalists, Representative Adam Schiff
(D-CA) is a hero. All over the internet, people are thanking him for
defending the Constitution, hoping he’ll run for president someday.

After his performance during this week’s impeachment hearing,
the worship was especially intense; a letter writer to the New
York Times called it, “brilliant” and a, “tour de force” while the
conservative Washington Times made fun of all the blue-checked
Twitter accounts losing their objectivity in ecstatic praise.

As the face of the impeachment effort, especially for liberals
disengaged from the election process, Schiff represents a glimmer
of hope for domestic regime change.

Adam Schiff is a dangerous warmonger and his efforts to fuel
paranoia about Russia only serve to feed that agenda.

He wants a proxy war in Ukraine with Russia and he has
for some time.

Adam Schiff physically resembles a prosperity preacher.

That is to say, he looks like a classic dodgy American salesman,
but with a beatific glow of righteousness.

This creepily wholesome look lends a corny Cold War ambiance
to his constant fulmination about, “The Russians.”

It’s hard not to listen to him without thinking of Allen Ginsberg’s
1956 poem, “America”:

"America, it’s them bad Russians

Them Russians, them Russians and them Chinamen.

And them Russians."

Assuring us that he is aware, actually, of what century this is,
Schiff said in 2015, “Now, we’re not seeing the same bipolar
world we had between communism and capitalism.”

He then added, “But we are seeing a new bipolar world, I think,
where you have democracy versus authoritarianism.”

Schiff has not viewed this as a mere contest of ideas: he constantly
advocated for Obama to impose tougher sanctions on Russia and
give more weapons to Ukraine.

This isn’t the only war Schiff has championed.

He supported the Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya wars, greater
US intervention in Syria, as well as the Saudi war with Yemen
(although he has, in the past year, turned against the latter
adventure, seeming to draw the line at sawing up journalists
with bonesaws — he is a moderate after all, plus very popular
with the media), and he has voted for nearly every possible
increase in the defense budget.

As Jacobin’s own Branko Marcetic observed two years ago, Schiff’s
bellicosity is extensively funded by arms manufacturers and military
contractors.

A Ukrainian arms dealer named Igor Pasternak held a $2,500 per
head fundraiser for Schiff in 2013, as the late Justin Raimondo
reported in a terrific analysis on Antiwar.com in 2017 at a time
when Ukraine was desperately trying to counter the Obama
administration’s disinterest in funding its war with Russia.

Despite that disinterest, the State Department approved some very
profitable dealings for Pasternak in Ukraine after that fundraiser.

And that’s only one example.

In the current cycle, donations from the war industry
have continued to flood his coffers.

Many come from employees of firms with extensive Department of
Defense contracts, including Radiance Technologies and Raytheon.

PACs representing the defense industry also make a robust showing
among Schiff’s contributors, according to data on Open Secrets.org;
companies funneling money to Schiff — sorry, contributing to those
PACs — include Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon,
Radiance, and others, including L3Harris Technologies (which got in
big trouble with the State Department in September and had to pay
$13 million in penalties for illegal arms dealing).

Guess what these companies want?

War with Ukraine.

Why wouldn’t they?

Last October, the United States approved a $39 million sale of anti-
tank missiles to Ukraine, a joint contract between Raytheon and
Lockheed Martin.

The previous year, Ukraine bought $37 million worth of missiles
from the same two companies.

As a missile-maker, Zacks Equity Research has noted, Northrop
Grumman also benefits richly from conflict in Ukraine, as missiles
are heavily used in cross-border wars.

Despite his enthusiastic support for state violence and cozy ties
to the makers of deadly weaponry, Schiff, an Alexander Hamilton
quoting, "Windbag" doesn’t have much crossover appeal to the
sort of people who put, “These Colors Don’t Run” stickers on
their trucks.

His impeachment crusade only seems to reinforce Trump’s support
among the faithful.

At the time of this writing, 93 percent of Republicans oppose the
President’s removal from office.

Welcome to the #Resistance.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52903.htm

Friday, January 24, 2020

Ike Was Right

Ike Was Right

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous
rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a
large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total
influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city,
every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We
recognize the imperative need for this development.

Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil,
resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of
our society.” - President Dwight Eisenhower - Farewell Address 1961

By Eric Margolis
Information Clearing House
January 24, 2020

Congress just passed a near trillion dollar military budget at a time
when the United States faces no evident state threats at home or
abroad.

Ike was right.

Illustrating Ike’s prescient warning, Brown University’s respected
Watson Institute just released a major study which found that the
so-called ‘wars on terror’ in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan
have cost US taxpayers $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001.

The extensive study found that over 800,000 people have died
as a result of these military operations, a third of them civilians.

An additional 21 million civilians have been displaced by US military
operations.

According to the Pentagon, these US wars have so far cost each
American taxpayer $7,623 – and that’s a very conservative
estimate.

Most of this money has been quietly added to the US national debt
of over $23 trillion.

Wars on credit hide the true cost and pain from the public.

As President Eisenhower warned, military spending has engulfed
the nation.

A trillion annual military budget represents just about half the
world’s military expenditures.

The Pentagon, which I’ve visited numerous times, is bustling
with activity as if the nation was on a permanent war footing.

The combined US intelligence budget of some $80 billion
is larger than Russia’s total military budget of $63 billion.

US troops, warplanes and naval vessels are stationed around
the globe, including, most lately, across Africa.

And yet every day the media trumpets new ‘threats’ to the US.

Trump is sending more troops to the Mideast while claiming he
wants to reduce America’s powerful military footprint there.

Our military is always in search of new missions.

These operations generate promotions and pay raises,
new equipment and a reason for being.

Back in the day, the Republican Party of President Eisenhower was
a centrist conservative’s party with a broad world view, dedicated
to lower taxes and somewhat smaller government.

It was led by the Rockefellers and educated Easterners with a broad
world view and respect for tradition.

Today’s Republican Party is a collection of rural interests from
flyover country, handmaidens of the military industrial complex
and, most important, militant evangelical Christians who see
the world through the spectrum of the Old Testament.

Israel’s far right has come to dominate American evangelists by
selling them a bill of goods about the End of Days and the Messiah’s
return. Many of these rubes see Trump as a quasi-religious figure.

Mix the religious cultists – about 25% of the US population – with
the farm and Israel lobbies and the mighty military industrial
complex and no wonder the United States has veered off into the
deep waters of irrationality and crusading ardor.

The US can still afford such bizarre behavior thanks to its riches,
magic green dollar, endless supply of credit and a poorly educated,
apathetic public too besotted by sports and TV sitcoms to
understand what’s going on abroad.

All the war party needs is a steady supply of foreign villains
(preferably Muslims) who can be occasionally bombed back
to the early Islamic age.

Americans have largely forgotten George W. Bush’s lurid claims that
Iraqi drones of death were poised to shower poisons on the sleeping
nation.

Even the Soviets never ventured so deep into the sea of absurdity.

The military industrial complex does not care to endanger its gold-
plated F-35 stealth aircraft and $13 billion apiece aircraft carriers
in a real war against real powers.

Instead, the war party likes little wars against weak opponents
who can barely shoot back.

State-run TV networks thrill to such minor scraps with fancy
headlines and martial music.

Think of the glorious little wars against Panama, Grenada, Somalia,
Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya.

Iran looks next.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52883.htm

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

Dear Washington D.C.

Dear Washington D.C.

By The Last Boy In Line
January 22, 2020

Dear Washington D.C.:


Sincerely,

Monday, January 20, 2020

Dear MLK Day

Dear MLK Day

By The Last Boy In Line
Monday, January 20, 2020

Dear MLK Day:


Sincerely,

Saturday, January 18, 2020

Dear President Trump

Dear President Trump

By The Last Boy In Line
January 18, 2020

Dear President Trump:


Sincerely,

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

American Murder

American Murder

By Paul Edwards
Information Clearing House
January 15, 2020

Clausewitz said, “War is the continuation of politics by other
means”, but American Presidents have modified his apothegm.

No one knows when it was first judged--How to put it? Not legal,
no; not moral, no, surely not. Conceiveable..? Permissible..?
--politically safe, for a nation to assassinate a human being,
a foreign enemy.

There is no record of that meeting of our government’s most
powerful men--only such a group could plan so radical an action
when one of them first dared to say, “Suppose we kill him?”

Those souls shocked and wounded by our latest murder, need
to know that meeting was not recent: didn’t happen under
the Suppurating Pustule that infects the White House today,
nor the charming Grand Bullshitter who preceded him, nor
the aphasic buffoon before him.

It was a century ago. There’s no dating it to a particular hit but
it was certainly held before our deviously arranged murder of
Sandino in Nicaragua in 1934.

For the last century the US government has made it its regular
business to execute, or to buy the execution of, men it deemed
geopolitically damned.

There isn’t space here to review the long roster of America’s
secret victims, nor any need for that.

The uninformed need to take their own education in hand or
continue mooing meekly down the chute toward who knows
what end?

Perhaps even their own date with the stungun.

Skipping past our more notorious standard issue deep cover CIA
murders--Lumumba, Che, Allende, Diem--and excepting killings
during phony “police actions” and “incursions”, gets us to the phase
of dedicated, clandestine extermination outfits, to the era of
“terminating with extreme prejudice” by quasi-military units like
the Phoenix Program that murdered thousands of Viet Cong and
NVA.

It was a short step then to creation of specialized military hit
squads.

Navy SEALS with their Osama murder are typical.

In this era of magical tech innovations--GPS wizardry, HUMINT,
SIGINT, IMINT and MASINT--America vaunts the uncanny accuracy
of drones that slaughter wedding parties instead of jihadi honchos,
and Hellfire missiles that maim and eviscerate more peasant
children than diabolized hajjis.

Targeted assassination has, in its current iteration, thrown over the
traces and expanded its lethal reach so that nailing its purported
target is now irrelevant.

Busloads of Yemeni kids will do.

It’s now a case, as a Marine buddy told me in Khe Sanh, of “Kill ‘em
all; let God sort ‘em out.”

It needs to be clear that none of this cowardly murder was done in
the heat of authorized battle.

None of it has come during legally declared war.

These assassinations are just that: murders without
acknowledgment, much less official justification that,
when exposed, are flatly denied by implausible baldfaced
bullshit from our robotic, faux-Christian Mandarins.

Our government always keeps, among its court jongleurs, trained
slugs whose unique sociopathic gift consists in being able to look a
clueless public in the face and solemnly assure them that dog shit
is ice cream.

What is notable about this sordid history is not that it happened,
since this country has foisted the dirtiest, most flagrant deceptions
on the world and its own people as a matter of course for
generations, but this: that from the beginning of our state murder
program enormous effort has gone into keeping the fact of it hidden
or, at least, deniable.

It remained to Jabba, the President, not only to end that charade,
to blow that cover in the Soleimani murder, but also, with idiot
vanity, to celebrate himself as its author.

Quite apart from being astoundingly, stupidly reckless, since The
Empire’s functionaries, military and other, become immediate
potential targets, it is an offence against the laws of nations and
of war.

America, the full rogue state, cares nothing for such laws,
of course, but some quaint nations still do and it puts it in
seriously bad odor with the few suckup lackeys it still may
have despite Trump’s relentless campaign to demean and
alienate them.

Candidates for another “coalition of the willing” to mask America’s
brute adventurism are going to be scarce as bird shit in a cuckoo
clock.

So much for side effects.

This murder of Soleimani was, to cop a line from Hamlet, a “Murder
most foul, as in the best it is, but this most foul, strange, and
unnatural”, because of his history as a once critical American ally.

He, with forces loyal to him, was key in defeating ISIS after our
multi-billion dollar, half-assed, spit-and-baling wire Iraqi Army’s
meltdown and flight.

America murdered no Takfiri barbarian, no crazed, fanatic Jihadi
in him, but a temperate, judicious statesman, and a hero to most
Iranian people.

If the intent was crude, direct provocation of war with Iran,
that intent may now be realized.

With millions of Persians in the streets mourning him and Khamenei
vowing stern vengeance, symbolic rockets are no expression of that
outrage.

If retaliation does come, as it may, the world will know it.

At that point, Trump has to fish or cut bait.

If his authority is heeded then-- which is not certain--by a military
that much prefers no-risk bullying of weak entities that generate
big money for little blood, and a Congress at once warmongering
and cowardly, the balloon could go up.

If so, speculation is useless beyond one ineluctable reality: the US
will be, at a minimum, badly hurt and the world economy will be
shaken to pieces.

Needless to say, the results of Big Power war would be orders
of magnitude more catastrophic.

Very Serious People, men who make regular appearances on the
MSM-- the PR arm of the Deep State--and their owners who don’t,
are betting that nothing so insane as Great Power war could come
about as a result of this murder and they’re probably right.

It would take an interlocking set of wild errors of judgment
and calculation on the part of the powerful men who control
world order, such as it is, for a major cataclysm to be triggered.

That was the case in 1914, as Tuchman detailed in The Guns Of
August. Men of broad experience and vaunted acumen, in charge
of armies, fleets, and nations, slow marched in their egotism,
arrogance, and wilful rigidity, into the most devastating war in
history, mesmerized by their own folly.

A wag has said that history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes.

Wisdom and sound judgment are not unattainable by men who
value them.

They forever elude the arrogant, the egoist, and the sociopath.

The men and women who now lead us are such people, enlisted by,
and devoted to, our Capitalist rulers, and their voracious quest for
dominion of the world and the acquisition of its wealth that is their
only purpose and goal.

People of this barren, soulless, biophobic creed are incapable
of rational, humane, and life-affirming decisions.

The impending dangers of rape economics, climate change, and
world war do not appear to these defectives as the horrifying,
immanent threats they are.

We are hostage to their inadequacy.

It is not impossible that the murder of Soleimani could result in
a disaster of greater magnitude than did that of the Archduke
Ferdinand, and that we may, in the days ahead, suffer our own
1914 and its dreadful aftermath.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52834.htm

Friday, January 10, 2020

US Foreign Policy By Assassination

US Foreign Policy By Assassination

By Graham E. Fuller
Information Clearing House
January 10, 2020

The United States, through its assassination of top-ranking Iranian
General Qasim Soleimani, has once again opened Pandora’s box in
its conduct of foreign policy.

How long does Washington think it can enjoy unique monopoly over
exercise of these forms of international violence before they are
turned against us?

For a brief period we had a monopoly on the use of military use of
drones—now everybody is doing it and the US can now fall victim as
readily as it uses them against others.

Ditto for cyberattacks, pioneered by the US, but now a weapon
at the disposal of any number of middle sized countries.

Assassination is not, of course, a new tactic in the annals
of wartime.

In what technically we must call “peace-time”—despite the many
wars the US has going at the moment—assassination is a dangerous
tool, especially when used in the conduct of foreign policy against
top-ranking foreign officials.

General Soleimani was not just the commander of al-Quds
military forces.

Far more accurately he should be considered the number two figure
of importance in the entire Iranian ruling structure, and perhaps
the most popular political/military figure in Iran.

Or he could be likened to a National Security Adviser in the US,
or to a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, or any number of US regional
commanders put together.

Mark you, this was a blatantly political assassination, and, in the
calculations of most practitioners of international law it was an
act of war.

One can only imagine the US response to a similar Iranian
assassination of a top US regional commander.

That General Soleimani was a formidable opponent of
the US is beyond question.

His strategy, tactics and policies ran circles around the leaden and
ill-conceived policies and leaders of the US war in Iraq—still ongoing
17 years later and that has already cost the US dearly in its feckless
goal to dominate and master Iraq.

The US has long since lost the geopolitical lead in the
Middle East as a whole—going back decades.

The trembling puffery and outrage on the part of most politicians
and commentators in the US that “Soleimani was responsible for
the deaths of any number of American soldiers in Iraq” reflects
either childish naivete or massive self-delusion about what the
nature of war is all about.

Iran knew it was in the US neocon cross-hairs when the US invaded
Iraq in 2003; the standing joke in the US then was that war with
Iraq is fine, but “real men go to war with Iran.”

The US had fully supported Saddam Hussein’s vicious war against
Iran throughout the 1980s.

It was not surprising then that Iran aided the massive uprising of
Iraqi Sunni and Shi’a forces to resist the US military invasion and
occupation of Iraq—a presence that lacked any legal standing.

Naturally Iran provided advice and weapons to Iraqi guerrillas to
facilitate killing the soldiers of the American occupation, that’s
what war is.

The US has supported any number of guerrilla forces around the
world to fight against enemies and regimes we don’t like, starting
with military aid, training, intelligence, joint missions, etc., as
we have seen most recently in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

There is precious little ground for US moral outrage in all of
this—unless one simply assumes, as the US usually does—that
America by definition represents the “moral cause,” the
“good guys,” and has a god-given right to intervene anywhere
and everywhere in the name of freedom, democracy or human
rights or to protect whatever it is.

When it comes to lives lost, the US of course has itself been
responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Iraq as well
as generation of massive internal and external refugee flows.

Yet we convince ourselves that killing others in the name of the
US cause is OK, but anyone resisting, or actually killing Americans
represents an outrage.

Let’s at least have a little sophistication here about the nature
of war and conflict and drop the double standards.

It’s chastening to recall that even during the Cold War the US and
the Soviet Union, by at least tacit agreement, avoided assassination
of significant enemy leaders—although the US did try repeatedly to
assassinate Fidel Castro, among other leaders of smaller hostile
states.

So does Washington really want to open the floodgates to a new
policy—to the assassination of top-ranking officials in countries
we dislike?

Next thing we know, everybody can play.

For that matter, Israel already leads the world in conducting
political assassinations according to an Israeli scholar.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180730-israels-mossad-
leads-assassinations-in-the-world

The assassination of General Soleimani also revealed Washington’s
continuing assumption of a right to violate the sovereignty of any
country in the world if it deems it in its interest to do so.

And this time Iraq will surely expel all US troops from Iraq
in response to this violation.

Not that withdrawal of US troops from this war, ill-conceived from
the start, is necessarily a bad thing from the perspective of many,
but it surely represents an ignominious end to a failing, pointless,
and brutal invasion that Washington had actually believed would
swing Iraq over into the “pro-US column” as an ally of the US in
the Middle East.

Such naivete further reflects another American deeply cherished
assumption that countries with semi-democratic political systems
will automatically be pro-American.

Has nobody ever heard of national interests?

Or do we believe that US interests globally are now basically
coterminous with the global interests of all peoples (deep down)?

A still bigger issue is at stake here.

The US is has increasingly come to be regarded with dismay by
any number of friends and “allies” for its demand of support for
its dangerous and ill-conceived international policies, threats
and wars.

To sign on to the US global security vision is to have to sign
on to policies many countries are very uncomfortable with.

They are not ready to support US routinely hostile policies towards
Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and many others. Nor are they ready to
lend the automatic support to Israel that Washington demands.

This growing reluctance of one-time friends and allies has grown
under Trump, but goes back at the very least to George W. Bush
and the Global War on Terror—“you’re either with us or against us.”

No one in Europe and few in the world supported Washington’s
tearing up of the nuclear treaty with Iran, nor do they support
the crushing sanctions the US has imposed upon Iran since then
for which it demands compliance.

Increasingly Europe and other “allies” no longer find it comfortable
to be allied with a US whose foreign policies are obsessively
focussed on identification of enemies and where we expect our
allies to fall into line—starting before the US invasion of Iraq.

This latest act of “foreign policy by assassination” will be
largely rejected by most in the world.

Only a few craven Gulf kings and princes—and Israel—will
applaud it.

And worst of all, the US has now taken one more giant step
towards convincing the world that the US has indeed become
a “Rogue Nation” no longer willing to follow the rules of
international law and procedure—and wisdom—that it claims
to lead.

Fewer and fewer countries anywhere are going to sign up for war or
searches for “alliances” that can be turned against Russia or China.

Indeed, as the era of US global dominance is drawing to an end
it looks like the US is taking the process very, very hard indeed.

It may soon deprive itself of most influence and respect if policies
like the assassinations of top leaders of countries we don’t like
become the new US norm.


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52821.htm

Monday, January 6, 2020

Dear President Trump

Dear President Trump

By The Last Boy In Line
Monday, January 6, 2020

Dear President Trump:


Sincerely,

Friday, January 3, 2020

Dear United States of America

Dear United States of America

By The Last Boy In Line
Friday, January 3, 2019

Dear United States of America:


Sincerely,

Wednesday, January 1, 2020

Dear 2020

Dear 2020

By The Last Boy In Line
January 1, 2020

Dear 2020:


Sincerely,