https://thegrayzone.com/2021/04/08/pentagon-vietnam-military-china-us-war/
By Gareth Porter
Pentagon campaign to recruit Vietnam as military ally against China exposed delusions of US war strategy
After convincing itself Vietnam would grant it access for missile bases against China, the Pentagon got a hard dose of reality.
When the Pentagon began gearing up for a future war with China in 2018, Defense Department officials quickly realized that they needed access to Vietnamese territory for troops armed with missiles to hit Chinese ships in a US-China conflict. So they initiated an aggressive campaign to lobby the Vietnamese government, and even Communist Party officials, in the hope that they would eventually support an agreement to provide them the permission.
But a Grayzone investigation of the Pentagon’s lobbying push in Vietnam shows what a delusional exercise it was from its inception. In a fit of self-deception that highlighted the desperation behind the bid, the US military ignored abundant evidence that Vietnam had no intention of giving up its longstanding, firmly grounded policy of equidistance between the United States and China.
Vietnam as a key base in US war strategy
Between 2010 and 2017, China developed intermediate-range missiles capable of hitting American bases in Japan and South Korea. To counter that threat, the Pentagon and military services began working on a new strategy in which US Marines, accompanied by an array of missiles, would spread out over a network of small, rudimentary bases and move continuously from one base to another...................
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https://mises.org/wire/united-states-has-declared-defeat-two-more-wars
The United States Has Declared Defeat in Two More Wars
President Biden announced last week that he planned to remove all combat troops from Afghanistan by September, which he says will mark the end of what is now a twenty-year war in the central Asian country.
A week earlier, the US and Iraq reaffirmed a deal to withdraw “any remaining combat forces” from Iraq, and to further wind down the US involvement there, which dates back to the 2003 invasion.
In both cases, of course, the stated plans to end military intervention have been framed in polite language designed to make it look like the US is leaving on its own terms—and also to allow the US regime some level of plausibility when it claims “mission accomplished.”
In reality, of course, both Iraq and Afghanistan are just two more wars that the United States has lost in a long list of botched military interventions dating back to Vietnam and Korea. Moreover, these withdrawals signal the....
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https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/05/israel-punishes-media-for-reporting-its-escalation-in-palestine.html
Israel Punishes Media For Reporting Its Escalation In Palestine
Today is Nakba day which commemorates the violent expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes which began 74 years ago and is still continuing.
Just yesterday Fares Akram. Associated Press reporter in Gaza, wrote in a diary about his families expulsion and his life under colonist bombing:
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — On Friday morning, a military airstrike smashed my family’s farm in the northern Gaza Strip into a jagged mass of metal and splintered trees. An Israeli bomb had slammed into the yard, carving a crater into the dirt and leaving rubble in its wake.The conflict, once again, hit home.
The first Gaza war taught me that while our lush citrus grove might offer some breathing space from the congestion and difficulties of city life, it’s no refuge. A previous Israeli airstrike killed my father, Akram al-Ghoul, on January 3, 2009. As fighting raged, he’d insisted on sleeping at the farm to tend to the cattle and chicken, and to nurture the trees.
In all, six of my relatives, three close friends and several colleagues have died in the three bloody wars and countless battles between Israel and Hamas. Each time the violence erupts and I report as a journalist on the people who lost their homes, their children or their lives, the memories creep back. I always think, “That could be me.” When the thundering bombs, buzzing drones and pounding artillery refresh the pain and trigger the old fear, I seek refuge in work.
The Associated Press office is the only place in Gaza City I feel somewhat safe. The Israeli military has the coordinates of the high-rise, so it’s less likely a bomb will bring it crashing down.
Today Fares Akram and Joseph Krauss report:
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets hours after another Israeli air raid on a densely populated refugee camp killed at least 10 Palestinians from an extended family, mostly children, on Saturday.The strike on the high-rise came nearly an hour after the military ordered people to evacuate the 12-story building, which also housed Al-Jazeera, other offices and residential apartments. The strike brought down the entire structure, which collapsed in a gigantic cloud of dust. There was no immediate explanation for why it was attacked.....................
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https://taibbi.substack.com/p/reporters-once-challenged-the-spy
Reporters Once Challenged the Spy State. Now, They're Agents of It
News companies are pioneering a new brand of vigilante reporting, partnering with spy agencies they once oversaw
| Matt Taibbi | May 11 |
What a difference a decade makes.
Just over ten years ago, on July 25, 2010, Wikileaks released 75,000 secret U.S. military reports involving the war in Afghanistan. The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel helped release the documents, which were devastating to America’s intelligence community and military, revealing systemic abuses that included civilian massacres and an assassination squad, TF 373, whose existence the United States kept “protected” even from its allies.
The Afghan War logs came out at the beginning of a historic stretch of true oppositional journalism, when outlets like Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, The New York Times, and others partnered with sites like Wikileaks. Official secrets were exposed on a scale not seen since the Church Committee hearings of the seventies, as reporters pored through 250,000 American diplomatic cables, secret files about every detainee at Guantanamo Bay, and hundreds of thousands of additional documents about everything from the Iraq war to coverups of environmental catastrophes, among other things helping trigger the “Arab Spring.”......
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https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/visualizing-key-generation-defining-events-us-history
Looking back at history is a necessity when trying to understand what the future may hold.
Using insights from our Generational Power Index 2021 report, along with survey data from Pew Research in 2016, Visual Capitalist's Iman Ghosh identified some key milestones for each cohort, to understand how these events helped shape each generation’s unique perspectives.
Quick Context on Generational Definitions
Before diving in, it’s important to clarify which generations we’ve included in our research, along with their age and birth year ranges.................................
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https://dissidentvoice.org/2021/05/how-the-government-keeps-experimenting-on-its-citizens/
How the Government Keeps Experimenting on Its Citizens
From Mind Control to Viruses
They were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don’t recognize them for what they are until it’s too late.
— Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
The U.S. government, in its pursuit of so-called monsters, has itself become a monster.
This is not a new development, nor is it a revelation.
This is a government that has in recent decades unleashed untold horrors upon the world—including its own citizenry—in the name of global conquest, the acquisition of greater wealth, scientific experimentation, and technological advances, all packaged in the guise of the greater good.
Mind you, there is no greater good when the government is involved. There is only greater greed for money and power.
Unfortunately, the public has become so easily distracted by the political spectacle out of Washington, DC, that they are altogether oblivious to the grisly experiments, barbaric behavior and inhumane conditions that have become synonymous with the U.S. government.
These horrors have been meted out against humans and animals alike. For all intents and purposes, “we the people” have become lab rats in the government’s secret experiments.
Fifty years from now, we may well find out the whole sordid truth behind this COVID-19 pandemic. However, this isn’t intended to be a debate over whether COVID-19 is a legitimate health crisis or a manufactured threat. It is merely to acknowledge that such crises can—and are—manipulated by governments in order to expand their powers...............
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Van Morrison’s Political Songs — First He Opposed the Coronavirus Crackdowns, Now the Media is His Target
Written by
Van Morrison, with some help from fellow marquee musician Eric Clapton, has used his talent as a songwriter and singer to challenge via songs
coronavirus crackdowns. Now, in a new song, Morrison focuses his
criticism on the media and its practice of pushing a party line to the
exclusion of contrary opinions and refuting information.
Such
big money media behavior is something we have experienced for over a
year with the repeated promulgating of stories encouraging extreme
coronavirus fear and promoting a slew of authoritarian actions taken in
the name of countering coronavirus.
Morrison’s new song challenging the media is called “They Own the Media.” It starts with the following lyrics:
They tell us that ignorance is bliss
I guess for those that control the media it is
They own the media
They control the stories we are told
If you ever try to go against them
You will be ignored....................
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https://dissidentvoice.org/2021/05/bbc-free-media-and-julian-assange/
BBC, Free Media, and Julian Assange
A video in which Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev is interviewed by Orla Guerin has resurfaced; the interview took place in November 2020. (The BBC version.)
Revealing is what is not seen in the BBC version. When Aliyev held up the mirror to Guerin’s “accusation” that there was no free media in Azerbaijan, the BBC responded by censoring Aliyev’s reference to Assange..........
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