Robert Parry — Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars

The enactment of new sanctions against Russia and Iran – with the support of nearly all Democrats and Republicans in Congress – shows how the warmongering neocons again have come out on top, reports.

It's really amazing how a relatively small number of people can capture US policy and use propaganda to convince the American public that it is in their interest even though the public is largely fed up with foreign adventurism.

Slouching toward war, or rushing?

Consortium News
Neocons Leverage Trump-Hate for More Wars

Robert Parry

Glenn Greenwald — Jeremy Corbyn Accused of Being Russian “Collaborator” for Questioning NATO Troop Build-Up on Border

The crazy.

The response to Corbyn’s call for better relations and de-escalation of tensions with Moscow was swift and predictable. The armed forces minister for Britain’s right-wing government, Mike Penning, accused Corbyn of being a collaborator with the Kremlin:

The Intercept
Jeremy Corbyn Accused of Being Russian “Collaborator” for Questioning NATO Troop Build-Up on Border

Glenn Greenwald

John Helmer — How The West Helped Invent Russia’s Election Fraud: Osce Whistleblower Exposes 1996 Whitewash

More disinformation from the West about Russia in the ongoing information war.

It get even worse.

The OSCE hasn’t just destroyed its credibility with its strange criteria for judging some Russian elections fair and others not. As the world considers Moscow’s charge of undue American influence on the organization, it’s worth pulling an OSCE “greatest hit” out of the memory hole. In the run up to the Kosovo war, the organization was used a front for the CIA to deliver communications equipment to the Kosovo Liberation Army, and to gather targeting information for an expected upcoming NATO bombing campaign.…

Dances with Bears
How The West Helped Invent Russia’s Election Fraud: Osce Whistleblower Exposes 1996 Whitewash
Mark Ames

Mike Lofgren — Blaming ‘Too Much Democracy’ for Trump

The latest lament of the neocon establishment is that America is suffering from too much democracy – leading to Donald Trump – but the opposite is more to the point, how elite manipulation set this stage, explains Mike Lofgren.…

British expatriate writer Andrew Sullivan recently returned to the public eye with a piece that has aroused considerable comment, some of it reasonably on point, and some bloviatingly incoherent.

What is all the fuss about? Sullivan, in critiquing the Donald Trump phenomenon and the political factors that gave rise to it, makes a few good points, but buries them under a ridiculous premise: The culprit responsible for Trump is too much democracy, and the cure is more elite control of the political process.…

The basis of conservatism is that some are better than others and ought therefore to rule over all. Conservatives are opposed to actual democracy and what they call "democracy" is some type of oligarchy, at present plutocracy and old boy networks.

Blaming democracy is actually rather funny since there is a deficit in actual democracy in the US.

Worth reading the whole piece. Mike Lofgren is a gifted writer in addition to being experienced in US insider politics as a veteran congressional staffer (GOP).

Consortium News
Blaming ‘Too Much Democracy’ for Trump
Mike Lofgren

Robert Parry — Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill

Hillary Clinton wants the American voters to be very afraid of Donald Trump, but there is reason to fear as well what a neoconservative/neoliberal Clinton presidency would mean for the world, writes Robert Parry.

Clinton is by far the most dangerous candidate based on history. There's no question about her in this regard. She is trigger-happy.

The problem is that she reflects the dominant position of the US foreign policy establishment and the US military establishment. It's questionable whether another of the candidates, including the presumptive GOP nominee, could resist pressure that will be brought to bear by the "experts" in international relations and US national security. But with HRC, there is no question.

Consortium News
Neocons and Neolibs: How Dead Ideas Kill
Robert Parry

US active duty service people don't want to go to war, and they think that HRC is more likely to "do stupid shit" than Trump.

Sputnik
US Military Supports Trump, and Probably Not Why You Think

Steven MacMillan — Retired Army Colonel Larry Wilkersonl: US Will Have a Presence in Afghanistan for Another 50 Years

In an interview at the end of 2015, the former chief of staff to Colin Powell and retired US Army Colonel, Lawrence Wilkerson, outlined the realistic timescale he believes the US will be involved in Afghanistan, in addition to emphasizing the strategic importance of the country to the US. Speaking to Abby Martin on her show ‘The Empire Files’ for Telesur, Wilkerson asserted that the “US presence in Afghanistan will not go away for another half-century” (from 20:05 into the interview):

“The war in Afghanistan has morphed; it’s not about al-Qaeda anymore, and it’s not about the Taliban anymore. It’s about China; Russia – the soft underbelly which is mostly Muslim of Russia; about Pakistan; about Iran; about Syria; about Iraq; about whether a Kurdistan is stood up or not; and ultimately about oil, water and energy in general. And the US presence in Afghanistan, I’ll predict right now, will not go away for another half-century… And it will grow, it will not decrease.”
This revelation by Wilkerson is important as the majority of the Western public continues to believe that the war in Afghanistan is predominately to do with fighting terrorism. Realistically, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan never really had anything to do with terrorism, but everything to do with geopolitics and the vast amount of economic riches the country possesses.…

Neoliberalism and neoconservativism converge with neo-imperialism and neocolonialism in asserting US global hegemony as national policy.
 
NEO
Retired Army Colonel: US Will Have a Presence in Afghanistan for Another 50 Years

Steven MacMillan

Danielle Ryan — Fukuyama’s Vague Criticism of ‘Putinism’ Distracts from Failures of Liberal Democracy

Some people never learn when to just shut up. Francis Fukuyama is one of them. Now he is just reminding us of how wrong he was about the triumph of neoliberalism and neoconservatism brought by American exceptionalism as "the end of history."

Russia Insider
Fukuyama’s Vague Criticism of ‘Putinism’ Distracts from Failures of Liberal Democracy

Danielle Ryan

Tony Wikrent — Paul Krugman on Challenging the Oligarchy

This past Sunday, Stirling Newberry noted that the latest New York Review of Books includes a review by Paul Krugman of Robert Reich’s new book, Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few. It is an excellent review of what promises to be a seminal book on crucial issues of political economy. Remarkably, Krugman review is entitled, simply, Challenging the Oligarchy. Read on if you’re wondering why that title is so remarkable.

Both Reich and Krugman are generally regarded as liberal stalwarts, but the fact is that both were dangerously neo-liberal in their beliefs in the 1990s and early 2000s. I think the multiple failures of the Dubya administration, especially the 2007-2008 financial crash, caused them to rethink some basic beliefs and assumptions. But what especially forced them to rethink their economics was the brutal and shameless way Bush and the neo-cons used their political power to drive us into the Iraq War. They seemed to have had nagging doubts regarding the issue of how political power impacts economics, but by the end of the Bush Jr. regime, both Reich and Krugman were openly discussing how political power was shaping economic results.…

real economics
Paul Krugman on Challenging the Oligarchy

Tony Wikrent