When the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union dissolved and the
Warsaw Pact disappeared, a few of us argued that the appropriate
response would be to close down NATO and develop a new all-European
peace system and a policy for conflict-handling to replace the
predominantly military security thinking that had dominated during the
First Cold War.
--------------------------------------
Today the NATO member states met and surrender under Donald Trumps attacks. 2018 - 1968. What historic date and event is to remember? 1968 Breschnew kissed the Czecho-Slowakian Alexander Dubcek. Shortly afterwards the USSR and her allied Warsaw countries were to invade the CSSR and break down the unwanted politics of the Pargue Spring.
The danger of repetition, this time by the American warmonger Trump, isn't acute at the moment. But forms of war have changed. As the US will destroy Iran not primarily by bombs, as it did in Irak, the economic measures and the instrumentalisations of some oppositional groups will bring the desired results. The goal is – war.
The political pressure put on Germany, especially concerning the direct pipeline from Russia to Germany, will weaken not only Germany but Europe. Trump and his hawks are clearly war oriented. Europe is divided and weak, has no will and vision and gives in. The European Union behaves like the dog who is listening (and obeying) to his master's voice.
Most mass media support the American vision and continue to fabricate fake news and falsifications of historical facts. The goal is – war.
Old men, experienced, mature and war oriented, orchestrate war, and the masses follow willingly. Quite different to the cultural concept of "Dead Poets Society" they do not indulge in art, but in destruction, annihilation. War is not only a big business. War is the fulfillment of their deep lying drives: to strike, to kill, to conquer, to reign by war.
After the attacks by France, the United Kingdom, and the US against Syria, which were based on the unproven assertions, that the Assad-Regime had employed once again chemical weapons against its own people. In rapid speed the vassals and satelite states of the US acknowledged this "fact" - without questioning the credibility of the power who notoriously used and uses desinformation and fabricated propaganda to cover their actions. The official program is: believe it. Believe it, as we believed the facts about weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein, the most prominent falsity of the US.
If the credibility of the embedded mass media is questioned, the critics are denounced as Anti-semitic war mongers, as stupid American haters, as agents of Moscow. "Lügenpresse" ist wrong by the simple fact that many of the Right or extreme Right share this view. No, the embedded press is right and correct, the tasks of the US are necessary and human, Israel is a democracy and not to be criticized - unless one is an Anti-semite, a Neonazi or agent of Moscow.
This simple world view justifies any action. "Any" includes any form of war. The right is with the power and the power is with the US. Join in or be destroyed, put out of action, of life, of future because the future is with the US. The "friends" of the US are eager to play their part in this war game, especially Great Britain and France. The Germans, these re-educated non-people built by non-persons, leave it by words so far, but underwrite any action in the name of dignity and freedom. They have learned their lessons and have converted into dogs, who listen to their master's voice, and who lick their boots.
If one consults the quality press in Germany or Switzerland, one doesn't finde one critical question oder comment on the maneuver which coins the Western politics. The situation in the UK or US is almost the same; but at least some media show a kind of independence and display criticism.
Theresa May faces anger over Syria raids as Trump declares ‘mission accomplished’
UK opposition leaders insist that parliament should have been consulted before airstrikes
John Bolton’s Extremism Is Perfectly Aligned With the Most Bellicose Israeli Policies
Whether
he consciously puts Israel’s interests first or whether he believes
they are identical to US interests doesn’t really matter—the outcome is
the same.
Most of us who grow up in the United States learn a reassuring
narrative of ever-expanding tolerance. Yes, the country’s birth was
tainted with the original sin of slavery, but Lincoln freed the slaves,
the Supreme Court desegregated schools, and we finally elected a black
president. The Founding Fathers may have all been men, but in their
wisdom they created a constitution that would later allow women to gain
the vote. And now the legal definition of marriage has broadened to
include gays and lesbians. We are, it appears, an increasingly inclusive
nation.
But a parallel, much darker river runs through American
history. The Know Nothing Party of the 1850s viciously attacked
Catholics and immigrants. Eugenics enthusiasts of the early twentieth
century warned about the nation’s gene pool being polluted by ex-slaves,
the feeble minded, and newcomers of inferior races. In the 1930s, 16
million Americans regularly listened to the anti-Semitic radio rants of
Father Charles E. Coughlin.
The most notorious of all the currents
in this dark river has been the Ku Klux Klan. It flourished first in
the South after the Civil War, lynching and terrorizing
African-Americans who tried to vote, and then gradually disbanded in the
early 1870s under pressure from the federal government. After a long
spell of quiescence, it reemerged into national prominence in the 1920s,
reaching an all-time peak membership in 1924—a year, incidentally, that
saw the dedication of various Confederate memorials, including the
Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, whose planned removal
was the pretext for the “Unite the Right” rally there in August.
Take Away Trump’s Blank Check for Endless War You can also write a letter to the editor to demand the removal of Confederate statues, and join a campaign to take economic power from Wall Street and give it back to communities. NationAction
Keep the Blame Where It Belongs In the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville, too many media outlets used headlines that implied that both sides were at fault. Leslie Savan
byJeffrey St. Clair, COUNTERPUNCH, August 18, 2017
We’ve have entered the time of mock outrage. The press was shocked
that armed neo-Nazis were marching through the streets of
Charlottesville shouting “Blood and Soil” and “Jews will not replace
us!” Republicans were aghast that many of these thugs were wearing
Trump’s red “Make America Great Again” caps. Democrats were indignant
that Republicans didn’t call for Trump’s head on a platter. Everyone
felt very good about how bad they felt.
In this national psychodrama, Trump plays the role of the Great Revealer.
A rather strange article from the radical magazine Counterpunch, Aug. 7, 2017
The Instability of Britain and the US: How Do We Come Back From This?
Current political battles are so intense that they mask crucial
long-term developments: Britain and America both look much more unstable
today than they have done at any time since the Second World War. Some
weakening of Anglo-Saxon dominance on the world stage had been expected
in the wake of the Iraq war in 2003 and the financial crisis in 2008,
but suddenly both powers feel as if they are starting to implode.
The pros and cons of Brexit are furiously debated in Britain, usually
with the point at issue being the ultimate political and economic
outcome of leaving the EU. But two important negative consequences are
already with us: Britain is far more divided than it used to be and the
Government is entirely preoccupied with Brexit to the exclusion of
anything else. Brexit is like the tremors of an earthquake that shake
apart weak and vulnerable points in British society, state and nation.
There’s something really wrong with “Public” Broadcasting System “NewsHour” host and Council on Foreign Relations member Judy Woodruff.
Nearly every weekday night she participates in the corporate state
media’s elevation of the dubious, politically motivated charge that the
ridiculous Insane Clown President Donald Trump is a Russian agent who
stole the 2016 presidential election in collusion with the Kremlin.
There’s no shortage of other and terrible things to cover, God knows.
The list of horrors that deserve lead-story status from one night to the
next is daunting. I could fill pages listing them, including things
like these: Read forward at COUNTERPUNCH
Election Con 2016: New Evidence Demolishes the Myth of Trump’s “Blue-Collar” Populism
Posted By
Anthony DiMaggio
On
Since Trump’s election win, mainstream commentators have repeated the
claim that his rise to power reflects the growing disillusionment of
the working class. For just a few examples of these claims, see The Atlantic: “The Billionaire Candidate and His Blue-Collar Following,” the New York Times: “What Donald Trump Might Do for Working-Class Families,” and the Washington Post: “Rallying Blue-Collar Workers in Cincinnati, Trump Blames Democrats for Obstructing his Agenda.”
The claim that Trump is a supporter of blue-collar workers is
accepted by much of the progressive-left as well. As the narrative goes,
working class Americans rose up with a vengeance to reject the
neoliberal policies of the Democratic Party, in favor of Trump’s
promises to “make America Great Again” by returning manufacturing jobs
to the U.S. This characterization of Trump voters is at times
accompanied by a whitewashing or downplaying of Trump’s right-wing,
bigoted, white nationalist policies. After all, if the public is
primarily concerned with growing economic insecurity among the masses,
then bigoted positions on social issues must play a relatively small
role, if any, in motivating Trump voters.
Rethinking 1984 and Brave New World by Henry A. Giroux Monthly Review, Volume 69, Issue 01 (May 2017)
Trump’s ascendancy in U.S. politics has made visible a plague of deep seated civic illiteracy, a corrupt political system, and a contempt for reason that has been decades in the making; it also points to the withering of civic attachments, the decline of public life, and the use of violence and fear to shock and numb everyday people. Galvanizing his base of true-believers in post-election rallies, the country witnesses how politics is transformed into a spectacle of fear, divisions, and disinformation. Under President Trump the scourge of twentieth-century fascism has returned as neo-fascism, not only in the menacing plague of populist rallies, fear-mongering, hate, and humiliation, but also in an emboldened culture of war, militarization, and violence that looms over society like a rising storm.
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