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Eagle

Best of the Web: 'United States' to Imperial America: Our Hidden Empire


Empire Files
Sun, 28 Jul 2019 20:49 UTC
empire immerwahr
The global expanse of US military bases is well-known; but it's actual territorial empire is largely hidden. The true map of America is not taught in our schools. Abby Martin interviews history Professor Daniel Immerwahr about his new book, 'How To Hide An Empire,' where he documents the story of our "Greater United States."


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Bullseye

Best of the Web: Not wrong: Trump triples down on criticism of Baltimore democrats - "Disgusting, rat infested mess!"


RT
Sun, 28 Jul 2019 18:00 UTC
West Baltimore
© Reuters / Jim BourgWest Baltimore neighborhood.
President Trump has unleashed a Twitterstorm on Rep. Elijah Cummings, advising the congressman to clean up the "worst" congressional district in the US instead of criticizing the treatment of migrants at the border.

"Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous." President Donald Trump said in his first tweet on Saturday. "His district is considered the Worst in the USA."



Unlike the "clean, efficient and well run" US southern border with Mexico, Maryland's 7th congressional district is just "filthy," the president said.
Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.
Advising the African-American politician to spend more time in Baltimore, Trump spent most of Saturday tweeting footage of the problems faced by Cummings' constituents.

Comment: More Trump:





Baltimore IS a sh*thole.



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Bad Guys

Best of the Web: Pepe Escobar: US and Iran stuck on negotiation Ground Zero

Pepe Escobar
Consortium News
Thu, 25 Jul 2019 12:00 UTC
Hormuz
© FlickrChokepoint: The Strait of Hormuz.
Donald Trump says he's 'okay either way', whether there's war with Iran and Tehran seems to be okay with that too, warns Pepe Escobar.

All bets are off in the geopolitical insanity stakes when we have the President of the United States (POTUS) glibly announcing he could launch a nuclear first strike to end the war in Afghanistan and wipe it "off the face of the earth" in one week. But he'd rather not, so he doesn't have to kill 10 million people.

Apart from the fact that not even a nuclear strike would subdue the legendary fighting spirit of Afghan Pashtuns, the same warped logic - ordering a nuclear first strike as one orders a cheeseburger - could apply to Iran instead of Afghanistan.

Trump once again flip-flopped by declaring that the prospect of a potential war in the Persian Gulf "could go either way, and I'm OK either way it goes," much to the delight of Beltway-related psychopaths who peddle the notion that Iran is begging to be bombed.

Comment: See also:

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NPC

Best of the Web: The Russians hacked our pizza! DHS warns of efforts to divide Americans over pineapple on pizza

Mike Levine
ABC News
Fri, 19 Jul 2019 17:25 UTC
dhs pizza
Department of Homeland Security issues a warning using pineapple pizza.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is warning that Russian agents could seek to further divide Americans by exploiting U.S. passions over whether pineapple belongs on pizza.

It's a cheesy, playful warning -- but it's trying to deliver a serious message. Posted online Wednesday by the department's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the tongue-in-cheek warning aims to help Americans identify and protect against propaganda campaigns from Russia and other foreign adversaries.

After all, the DHS warning says, Russian agents are capable of simultaneously insisting online that "Being anti-pineapple is un-American!" while also pushing out posts saying "Millennials are ruining pizza!"

"Foreign influencers are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to inflame hot button issues in the United States," the new DHS warning says. "They don't do this to win arguments; they want to see us divided."
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Cupcake Pink

Best of the Web: Study: Democrats tend to be LESS tolerant of diversity than Republicans - And the more educated they are, the LESS tolerant they become

Arlie Hochschild
The Guardian
Sun, 21 Jul 2019 10:20 UTC
A new survey found Democrats live with less political diversity despite being more tolerant of it - with startling results
liberal bubble
© Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
In a surprising new national survey, members of each major American political party were asked what they imagined to be the beliefs held by members of the other. The survey asked Democrats: "How many Republicans believe that racism is still a problem in America today?" Democrats guessed 50%. It's actually 79%. The survey asked Republicans how many Democrats believe "most police are bad people". Republicans estimated half; it's really 15%.

The survey, published by the thinktank More in Common as part of its Hidden Tribes of America project, was based on a sample of more than 2,000 people. One of the study's findings: the wilder a person's guess as to what the other party is thinking, the more likely they are to also personally disparage members of the opposite party as mean, selfish or bad. Not only do the two parties diverge on a great many issues, they also disagree on what they disagree on.

Comment: Take stock of reality, in other words. But is that what happened after 2016? No, they crafted the most spectacularly unhinged political theater in known human history, blaming the leader of a foreign country for losing an election in their own.

The findings in this study probably replicate, to one extent or another, across the globalized 'Western' liberal-cosmopolitan island chain from NYC to London to Paris and beyond. It's not just that the West is divided into two camps, but that one of those camps is a clear minority, dominates the levers of power, and is rendering itself not only irrelevant but a danger to the continuation of human civilization.

Fair play to the Guardian for publishing these findings, which, of course, are devastating for most of its columnists' daily commentary...

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Bullseye

Best of the Web: Destabilizing Pakistan: Bookending Washington's China policy

Tony Cartalucci
New Eastern Outlook
Thu, 25 Jul 2019 12:00 UTC
Balochistan
Much is being said of US activities aimed at China. Recent protests in Hong Kong together with a US-led propaganda campaign aimed at Beijing's attempts to quell a growing terrorist threat in Xinjiang are aimed at pressuring the nation to fall back into line within Washington's enduring unipolar international order.

The latter of these two campaigns in particular - claims of Chinese authoritarianism as Beijing attempts to neutralize US-backed separatists and terrorists in Xinjiang - has also been spun as China "targeting Muslims."

This ignores the fact that one of China's closest and oldest allies in Eurasia is Pakistan - a Muslim-majority nation. It also ignores the fact that in Pakistan, the US is playing the same game aimed at cultivating violent extremism, separatism, violence, division, and even the dissolution of Pakistan's current borders.

Comment: See also:

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Sherlock

Best of the Web: The Jeffrey Epstein case: A rare opportunity to focus

Michael Krieger
Liberty Blitzkrieg
Tue, 23 Jul 2019 03:07 UTC
Epstein/Trivers/Summers
© Screen Shot/Rick Friedman/PolarisJeffrey Epstein with Robert Trivers, Alan Dershowitz, Larry Summers, Harvard 2004
Perhaps, at long last, a serial rapist and pedophile may be brought to justice, more than a dozen years after he was first charged with crimes that have brutalized countless girls and women. But what won't change is this: the cesspool of elites, many of them in New York, who allowed Jeffrey Epstein to flourish with impunity.

For decades, important, influential, "serious" people attended Epstein's dinner parties, rode his private jet, and furthered the fiction that he was some kind of genius hedge-fund billionaire. How do we explain why they looked the other way, or flattered Epstein, even as they must have noticed he was often in the company of a young harem? Easy: They got something in exchange from him, whether it was a free ride on that airborne "Lolita Express," some other form of monetary largesse, entrée into the extravagant celebrity soirées he hosted at his townhouse, or, possibly and harrowingly, a pound or two of female flesh.

~ From the New York Magazine article: Who Was Jeffrey Epstein Calling?
An honest assessment of the current state of American politics and society in general leaves little room for optimism regarding the public's ability to accurately diagnose, much less tackle, our fundamental issues at a root level. A primary reason for this state of affairs boils down to the ease with which the American public is divided against itself and conquered.

Though there are certain issues pretty much everyone can agree on, we simply aren't focusing our collective energy on them or creating the mass movements necessary to address them. Things such as systemic bipartisan corruption, the institutionalization of a two-tier justice system in which the wealthy and powerful are above the law, a broken economy that requires both parents to work and still barely make ends meet, and a military-industrial complex consumed with profits and imperial aggression not national defense. These are just a few of the many issues that should easily unite us against an entrenched power structure, but it is not happening. At least not yet.

Comment: See also:

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Black Magic

Best of the Web: The Leftist lens: Words are 'violence,' and violence is 'justice'

James Lindsay
Quillette
Mon, 22 Jul 2019 01:15 UTC
painting stone thrower
Featured image: "Stones" (2003), by Joy Garnett (oil on canvas).
Responding to news that journalist Andy Ngo had been beaten by antifa protestors in Portland last month, a woman named Charlotte Clymer tweeted that "Ngo intentionally provokes people on the left to drive his content. Being attacked today on video taken by an actual journalist (because Ngo is definitely not) is the greatest thing that could have happened to his career. You know it. I know it. He knows it. We all know it. Violence is completely wrong, and I find it sad and weak to allow a sniveling weasel like Andy Ngo to get under one's skin like this, but I'm also not going to pretend this wasn't Ngo's goal from the start. I mean, let's cut the shit here. This is what they do."

Who is Charlotte Clymer? She is an activist who works at the Human Rights Campaign, America's "largest LGBTQ civil rights organization," which supposedly "envision[s] a world where LGBTQ people are ensured equality at home, at work [and] in every community." Andy Ngo, who has written for Quillette, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and other publications, happens to be gay. So this is where we are right now: A staffer for a human-rights organization dedicated to helping gay people is publicly cheering the beating of a gay man. This should raise an eyebrow.

Comment:

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Caesar

Best of the Web: Oliver Stone interviews Putin on War & Peace, why 'the Ukraine' is actually Russia, and the '2 percent factor'


Kremlin.ru
Fri, 19 Jul 2019 11:44 UTC
putin oliver stone
Vladimir Putin answered questions from American film director, screenwriter and producer Oliver Stone, parts of which were included in his new documentary, Revealing Ukraine. The interview was recorded on June 19, 2019 in the Kremlin. Here is the complete transcript...

Oliver Stone: So, I interviewed Mr Medvedchuk [leader of a Ukrainian opposition party]. It was in Monte Carlo. He gave us a very interesting interview. He gave us his view of the Ukraine. I gather that you're close with him.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: I would not say that we are very close but we know each other well. He was President Kuchma's Chief of Staff, and it was in this capacity at the time that he asked me to take part in the christening of his daughter. According to Russian Orthodox tradition, you can't refuse such a request.

Oliver Stone: Oh, you cannot refuse it?

I thought it was a big honour for you to be the godfather of his daughter.

Vladimir Putin: It is always a great honour to be a godfather.

Oliver Stone: Well, how many children are you godfather to?

Vladimir Putin: I will not give a number but several people.

Oliver Stone: Wow. Is it like a hundred or three hundred?
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Play

Best of the Web: Oliver Stone's interviews with Russian and Italian media on new documentary 'Revealing Ukraine' (banned in Ukraine)


Vesti News
Sat, 13 Jul 2019 11:18 UTC
oliver stone revealing ukraine
Putting an end to the war in Donbass and telling the truth about the events of 2014 in Ukraine. These were Oliver Stone's goals when he was making his new film. The movie was recently presented at a film festival in Italy, where it won an award. In an interview with Eugeny Popov of Russia 1 earlier this month, Oliver Stone shared the issues he reveals through the prism of the Ukrainian crisis.


Comment: As far as we know, Revealing Ukraine has since been aired on Russian TV channel Russia 1. When it becomes available for general release, we'll publish it on Sott.net.

Here's the official trailer:

And a link to its official website.

Stone is not actually the director of this documentary, though he managed the interviews. The director is a Ukrainian man, but that didn't stop the Ukies from firing a grenade launcher at the Ukrainian TV station that had been scheduled to air the documentary first. The station shelved its plan to air it, and that'll probably be the last it's heard of in Ukraine.

Such is the applicability of Western 'democracy' in that country.

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