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The justifications are always the same.  We are moving into territory for security reasons. We are creating a temporary buffer zone from which tactical advantage can be gained against potential dangers.  Then, over time, these buffers become strategic fixtures, de facto real estate seizures and annexations.  Israel now finds itself in what was a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights, and Turkey is established in parts of northern Syria, keeping a watchful eye on Kurdish militants.

Since October 7 last year, Israel’s response to the attacks by Hamas has been one of sledgehammers and chisels, a conscious attempt to …

The American police state has become America’s new crime boss.

Thirty years after then-President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act into law, its legacy of mass incarceration, police militarization, and over-criminalization continues to haunt us.

It has become the gift that America can’t seem to return.

We are now suffering the blowback from the triple threats of the Crime Bill: police militarization, a warrior mindset that has police viewing the rest of the citizenry as enemy combatants, and law enforcement training that teaches cops to shoot first and ask questions later.

Too often, that “triple threat” also manifests …

For most of the time since its 1946 independence from France, Syria has resisted all attempts to make it a vassal state. It has paid dearly, as a target of subversion, war, occupation and the most onerous economic sanctions in the world, for its anti-imperialism and anti-Zionism, its support for resistance to the occupation of Palestine and its participation in the Axis of Resistance, consisting of the Palestinian resistance groups, Hezbollah, Syria, the Iraqi resistance, Iran, and Yemen (Ansarallah), as well as allied countries and movements in the Arab, Muslim and anti-imperialist world. In this axis, Syria has been a …

The national organization Veterans For Peace, with chapters in over 100 US cities, is calling on US Senators to vote NO on Pete Hegseth for US Defense Secretary, should President-elect nominate him.

Veterans For Peace is astounded that someone with the track record of Pete Hegseth would seriously be considered for the critically important role of US Secretary of Defense. His dubious and questionable qualifications are far overshadowed by the many reasons that should disqualify him. These include a well-documented record of misogyny, sexual assault, white supremacy, Islamophobia, financial malfeasance, alcoholism, and opposition to VA healthcare. Are …

Liberals and their Western allies, among the social-imperialist left in the U.S. and Europe, are celebrating the end of the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria after the stunning sweep across the country by so-called “rebels” led by the Al-Qaeda offshoot, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).  Their celebratory mood is informed by a tragic misunderstanding of what appears to be more of a coup d’etat in Syria than a military defeat. This was a coup orchestrated to replace the Syrian government with this coalition of Jihadists, which included the Turkish-supported Syrian National Army (SNA) and a coterie of depoliticized religious and …

Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country is a ‘Bill of Temporary Privileges.’ And if you read the news, even badly, you know that the list gets shorter and shorter.

—George Carlin

Disguising its power grabs in the self-righteous fervor of national security, the Deep State has mastered the art of the bait-and-switch.

It works like this: first, the government foments fear about some crisis or threat to national security, then they capitalize on it by seizing greater power and using those powers against the American people.

We’ve seen this play …

The melodramatic ending to 13 years of a horrific civil war in Syria had an additional drama. Muhammad al-Jawlani, who served five years in a U.S. prison in Iraq for terrorist activities, and was noted as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under U.S. Department of State Executive Order (E.O.) 13224, led the National Salvation Front that achieved the victory.

Muhammad al-Jawlani, as a reformed al-Nusra Front leader, may be an issue, but he is not the principal issue; his shadowy figure illuminates the principal issue — contradictions, dubious reports, manufactured facts, selective fancies, and fitting truths to agendas guide …

Excerpt from the book PsyWar: Enforcing the New World Order.

By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms… elections, parliaments, supreme courts and all the rest… will remain.

The underlying substance will be a new kind of Totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly like they were in the good old days. Democracy & freedom will be the theme of every broadcast & editorial. Meanwhile, the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite will quietly run the show as they see …

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When Japan, already considered an enemy of the United States, sent its air force to U.S. territory and bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, the same date on the calendar that former opposition forces of the Iraq government entered Damascus, the U.S. government and media emphasized the more serious situation ─ the U.S. was at war with Japan. Press coverage and U.S. government response to the “fall” of the Assad government distracted from the serious situation ─ Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), successor to former Al-Qaeda affiliate, Al-Nusra Front, which the U.S. labelled a terrorist organization and enemy of the United …

Why did Steven Staples join Pierre Poilievre, Justin Trudeau and other genocide promoters in smearing an anti-NATO demonstration as “antisemitic”?

On Saturday the Council of Canadians Treasurer and board member sent his PeaceQuest list an error filled, anti-Palestinian, power-serving ‘questionnaire’. As Israel’s holocaust in Gaza enters its fourteenth month, Staples published “4 ways to ‘shake off’ antisemitism claims. Can the pro-Palestinian movement take advice from Taylor Swift?” At the top of his smear against those challenging Canada’s complicity in genocide Staples quotes anti-Palestinian bigot Jim Good. A few posts below the one quoted by Staples, Good wrote on Facebook: “…

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories called for input for a report to the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council. World BEYOND War has just submitted a report called “Involvement of Canadian Weapons Manufacturers in Commission of International Crimes Connected to Israel’s Occupation, Apartheid, Siege, and Genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” The report notes that:

The export of weapons from Canada to Israel takes place via two primary pathways.The first pathway involves direct transfers to Israel. This requires export permits issued by Global Affairs Canada and overseen by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister …

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In mid-November, the Biden administration (given his diminished mental capacity, whoever is now in charge) authorized the Kyiv regime to launch Lockheed Martin produced Army Tactical Missile Systems or ATACMS to hit targets 190 miles inside Russia. In response, an ICBM was fired in wartime for the first time when the Oreshnik (“Hazelnut Tree), an intermdiate range, nuclear capable missile, took only 5 minutes to hit Dinipro, Ukraine. The Kremlin gave Washington a 30 minute warning before the launch. Putin called the U.S./NATO bluff and he promised that future retaliation could target “decision making centers” in Kyiv.

This new Russian weapon …

Sometimes, someone will ask me how Jill and I accomplish everything that we do. That is, travel about a third of each month, broadcast on TV and podcasts, write this substack, write books, write articles for other journals, garden, take care of our 20 horses, birds, dogs, and the farm, maintain a certain level of fitness, all the while taking care of our bodies and eating right. It is a lot, and we aren’t perfect. Things often fall through the cracks, emails get missed, and the Friday after Thanksgiving …

U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump is heading America towards very hot wars against China, Russia, and Iran, and for rather cold wars against Mexico, Canada, Europe, and Japan. The difference from Biden-Harris is unclear with regard to the hot wars — Trump has picked a team who overall are as neoconservative as the existing team — but is clearly turning America’s colonies and former colonies (the group that collectively together is commonly refered to as ‘allies’) hostile, because of Trump’s demands regarding tariffs and regarding immigration.

For example, on November 28, CNN headlined “Mexico’s president denies Trump’s claim …

Orientation
Situating my article

Often the rise of China and the Middle East appears to many Westerners as something recent, maybe 30 years old. Before that? Is Western dominance beginning with the Greeks and Romans – right? Wrong, not even close! The rise of the East and the South has roughly a 1,300 year history of dominance from 500 CE to 1800 CE. What is happening in the East today is no “Eurasian Miracle”. With the wind of 1,300 years at its back, it is returning to its long historical prominence …