Новости за 17.04.2018

This happened 3 hours ago. Wolf Blitzer can't believe his ears ...  he does his best to argue the other side, saying well, France and UK joined the bombing, so it must true, ... you aren't suggesting everyone was wrong or something? - are you suggesting the president had bad intelligence? - but Paul isn't buying.

Wayne Madsen is an excellent DC-based investigative reporter whom we admire, and we have carried many of his stories on RI. You can see the archive here.

Friday night, April 13, in conjunction with Great Britain and France, President Donald Trump ordered an attack on Syria. And the unleashed war hawks were elated. Just to cite one example, Sebastian Gorka (who had been in the administration last year during the first Syrian “false flag” operation) literally proclaimed the coming of the Eschaton and America’s “divine role” to set right everything that is wrong in the world.

Over the weekend, President Trump celebrated firing more than 100 missiles into Syria by Tweeting, “Mission Accomplished!” They say if you cannot learn from history you are condemned to repeat it. So I guess we are repeating it.

I wonder how many people, not just Americans but those in other countries, have come to the conclusion that the United States today is a less free and less aware society than the societies in the dystopian novels of the 20th century or in movies such as The Matrix and V for Vendetta. Just as people in the dystopian novels had no idea of their real situation, few Americans do either.

We wrote earlier today about how Jamie Kirchik is a fine specimen of the atrocious neocon propaganda machine, and his interview with Tucker Carlson yesterday. Let's take a closer look at the agenda he pushes and how he shamelessly, brazenly lies.

Blumenthal published this article in October of 2016 in his webzine, Alternet. We re-publish it here because of its haunting relevance to recent events in Syria.

In the spring of 2003 when the US and UK commenced their illegal invasion of Iraq, there was no Wikileaks, a free man called Julian Assange was someone no one had heard of, alt-media did not exist and nor did social media as it is understood today.

Throughout the 20th century, the US ability to project power and dominate global geopolitics was, to a large extent, based on the general perception that the US was the most powerful military force in the world. In most cases, the mere threat of this military prowess was enough to 'get things done' the American, or Western, way. The maintenance of the widespread belief in US military preeminence is therefore extremely important to the US establishment, and any event that might expose a different reality is to be avoided at all costs. Читать дальше...

Editor's note: An excellent interview with a very serious thinker about geopolitics, energy, and politics. This is a treat.

The White House took roughly a week to retaliate against the Syrian regime for a gas attack on a rebel-held city as Trump was distracted by the FBI's raid on the home, hotel and office of his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, the ongoing negotiations over Nafta and his burgeoning war against Amazon.

There has been some speculation that last week's Syria bombing was deliberately scheduled for AFTER Tucker Carlson's show on Friday evening. It ends at 9pm, and the bombings literally started at 9.30. Carlson is only on weeknights, so this would give the war gang a full 48 hours respite before the onslaught of the 1-man demolition crew that Carlson has become.

The United States and a number of its Western partners have expressed their great apprehension regarding the rapid growth in Russian arms exports to a number of longstanding Western military clients, and in particular to the proliferation of advanced anti aircraft weapons and anti access area denial (A2AD) weapons systems which seriously threaten Western strategic interests.

It is a marvel to me how many Western Christians support the actions of their Governments as they “take action” against the Syrian Government. If they are aware at all of the huge Christian population in Syria (which many are not), they somehow believe that the Assad Government is the biggest threat to these Christians, and that their own Western Governments are the heroes of the hour, stepping in with their courageous stance and their pinpoint missiles to save the day.

The author is a prominent American social critic, blogger, and podcaster, and one of our all-time favorite pessimists. We carry his articles regularly on RI. His writing on Russia-gate has been highly entertaining.